Core Concepts
Six records make up the Membership module, and most mistakes with it come from assuming a seventh that does not exist — a tier engine, an expiry rule, a points ledger account. If you want the vocabulary first, start here: the table defines each record as the applet that owns it defines it, and the pages under it take one record each.
| Term | What it is | Read more |
|---|---|---|
| Member (membership card) | One record per card: card number, member ID, referral code, class, labels, verification status, join / start / end date or lifetime, suspensions. May link to a customer; need not | Customer and member |
| Member class and member label | A class is the one tier a member is in — code, name, status. A label is a tag; a member can carry many, grouped into label lists. Both are assigned by hand | Classes and labels |
| Point currency | A named unit members collect — code, name, conversion rate, cross-over flag, status — plus a point-to-money rate per currency | Point currencies and balances |
| Point transaction line | Every earn, redemption, expiry or adjustment, with a source, a validity window and a display flag | Point currencies and balances |
| Point lot and running balance | Each earning creates a lot with its own end date and remaining balance; redemptions draw lots down; a separate record keeps the running total per member and currency | Points expiry |
| MLM lineage | Which participant of an MLM program invited whom, as uplines and downlines | MLM — lineage, program, commission |
What a member is not
A member is not a customer. The membership card is its own record; it may carry a link to a customer, and the backend can create that customer for it. A card with no customer still holds points — a manual adjustment or a point import credits the card itself — but POS General refuses it on a bill until it is linked to a customer (what the link will not do). The Customer Maintenance record is what carries credit terms, addresses and tax identity; the card carries the loyalty side.
A member is not a login. The e-commerce storefront’s post-registration step can create a member for a new login, and the contact centre can merge a contact with a card, but neither is required for a card to exist.
What the module has no engine for
Four things a loyalty platform is usually assumed to have are not here: no engine moves a member between classes, there is no expiry-rule screen (each lot expires on its own end date, and only when the scheduled sweep runs — Points Expiry), nothing posts points to the ledger, and there is no points-to-points conversion screen — that route exists in the applet but its menu entry is commented out, and nothing on the screens uses the currency’s cross-over flag (Conversion Rates). Membership in Depth: what the module has no engine for lists the other gaps and who does the job instead, and what posts to the ledger says where a redemption is posted.
Three ways a member gets value
| Path | What happens at the counter | Owned by |
|---|---|---|
| Member pricing | A price book whose price set has a Member Class rule changes the unit price or discount on the line when the member is on the bill | Pricebook |
| Points | Points earned on earlier bills settle part of this one, or arrive as a points-discount line | Membership Admin holds the balance; POS General redeems |
| Vouchers | A voucher or coupon serial is scanned and taken as settlement or as a line | Voucher Management |
Reward types sets the three side by side.
MLM — lineage, program, commission
The Membership Admin member form has two tabs for referral selling: Referrals (who this member invited and who invited them) and MLM (pick a program, then the member’s uplines and downlines with level, invite method and status). Behind them the product keeps seven kinds of record — programs, program participants, lineages (a member’s uplines and downlines), invitations and their acceptance, entity contacts and a link from a program to a contact-centre endpoint. The MLM Admin Applet is the screen over those records.
An MLM program is linked to one commission scheme. A Commission Scheme
whose commission type is MLM is applied by the sales-commission posting run: for each qualifying
document it walks the customer’s lineage and pays each upline at level n
the scheme’s Level n treatment, up to ten levels. That is the whole of what the product does with
a lineage — money through the Sales Commission Applet,
points through the same scheme’s Membership Points treatment. There is no separate “override
points” engine.
flowchart LR
C[Customer entity] -. optional link .- M[Member card]
M --> K[Class · one]
M --> L[Labels · many]
M --> T[Point transaction lines]
T --> LOT[Point lots<br/>end date each]
T --> BAL[Running balance<br/>per currency]
M -. program .- MLM[MLM lineage]
What to read next
- Configuration — what must exist before the first member earns a point.
- Use cases — the shapes the module supports, on the GadgetSphere backdrop.
- The jobs on these records, step by step: Registering a Loyalty Member, Member Classes, Member Labels.
- Membership in Depth — how a point travels from the bill line to the balance, and what the module has no engine for, in full.