The Best Coworking Membership Management Software to Automate and Scale Your Space

Building a thriving coworking membership takes much more than desks and Wi-Fi. Behind organized coworking spaces and services runs a web of operations and challenges. Since members behave dynamically, admins need to be prepared for everything in advance. They may have to deal with sudden plan changes, members leaving with no prior notice, and members adding additional services to their plan, etc.

These changes affect billing too. While manual workflows may be sufficient for early-stage memberships, they don’t assist with growth. Eventually, admins have to adopt a smart coworking membership management software that simplifies their complex operations.

This software isn’t only built to organize your coworking spaces, but also to help your membership grow sustainably.

The Real Struggles of Coworking Membership Management

There are many challenges that coworking memberships face on a daily basis. Overcoming these challenges can be tough, especially when your operations are run manually.

High Member Churn and Unpredictable Tenures

Coworking spaces support versatile membership cycles, that have no fixed durations. People come and go as they please, so the membership has fluctuating tenures. Some members may only commit for a short while (like three months) and some may stay around for years. This all depends on the needs of your members.

Since members are likely to opt for short-term commitments, the churn rate is high. Memberships need to constantly think about onboarding new members. There are some other factors too that make membership unpredictable. And these are plan switching, pausing and cancelling.

Members can switch their membership plans anytime, if you are offering tiers. Each tier contains a different number and level of services that the members can benefit from. Members can move from one tier to the other according to their comfort and budget.

Similarly, members can also put their membership on hold for a while when they have to take a break from work. Some may also stop showing up unexpectedly without a formal cancellation. All these factors make membership tenures highly unpredictable, and the member’s lifetime value unforeseeable.

Billing Complexity (Add-Ons and Variable Charges)

Coworking memberships give a multitude of services to their members. These services naturally complicate billing too. To start off, workers are given different membership plan options. For example, workers can choose from hot desks, dedicated desks, or private offices. Each plan is priced differently. These plans divide members into different segments and each segment needs to be billed differently as well.

More complications arise as members add additional services to their plans. These additional services can be a one-time purchase or may require further subscription payments. For example, members may pay an additional amount for lockers, meeting rooms, coffee machines, office snacks, or attending events.

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Billing can also become challenging because of the billing model used. Some coworking memberships may charge flat rates to each tier. But some may bill based on the hours spent in the coworking space. This billing mechanism is known as usage-based billing. There can be yet another membership type that provides both usage and flat-rate billing systems.

Chasing Failed Payments and Overdue Invoices

Missed or failed payments are unavoidable in recurring payment setups. Members may forget to pay their invoices if this process is manual. If payments are automatic, they can still fail because of expired cards and insufficient bank balance. But without an automatic payment recovery system, it is very hard to get these failed payments back.

Admins are required to reach out to customers manually and request for payment. This approach can waste hours while still being unsuccessful.

Operators Drowning in Manual Admin Tasks

Without membership management software, each task needs to be performed manually. Every step involved in membership management can be very time consuming. Manually communicating with customers, creating invoices, confirming bills, counting payments and keeping track of add-ons is all very time-taking. As your number of members increases, the number of tasks also increases, causing delays and inefficiencies in performance.

When the administrative burden exceeds a certain limit, the quality of your services is negatively affected too. Your team ends up with lesser time to actually improve things for the members as they waste more hours doing mechanical tasks.

How SubscriptionFlow Helps

SubscriptionFlow is a membership management software that changes the way coworking spaces function. It lets them manage memberships, member data, billing and payments. This automates daily tasks, relieving admin and saving precious hours that can be spent on enhancing services.

SubscriptionFlow is built for memberships that need to deal with recurring payments, or with a mix of recurring and one-time payments. It allows for the implementation of various membership tiers and supports additional purchases on top of plans. This software is ideal for growing membership businesses that operate in different locations and have a high payment volume, deal with a number of plans and allow add-ons.

Why It Fits Coworking Specifically

We discussed how coworking memberships are versatile. They deal with ever-changing member needs, and there is no predictable membership timeline. The flexible nature of this membership requires some dedicated features that can make the members’ lives easier, and the operations more organized.

• Dynamic pricing

SubscriptionFlow adapts to how your coworking membership actually works. So you don’t need to force rigid pricing models onto your members, when you can give them versatile plan options instead. Dynamic pricing involves pricing based on various factors:  usage, tiers, discounts, add-ons, number of users, etc. Admins can customize their prices according to various factors to keep the charges competitive, value-based and fair.

• Frequent plan changes

Since memberships involve frequent plan changes, SubscriptionFlow gives you a platform to manage those. Admins get to automate plan changes. This means that customers can change plans themselves, without any admin support. When they change plans, they automatically get updated bills and new plan access.

• Recurring and usage-based billing

Another feature of primary importance that memberships need is the support for recurring billing. Continuous coworking services survive on continuous payment streams. Manual payments are slow, can be missed, error-prone and difficult to track.

On the other hand, an automated recurring billing system fast-tracks charges, collects them instantly and builds clean transaction trails. SubscriptionFlow also allows usage-based billing so that workers can be charged on an hourly basis. This way they can be charged for only those days in which they actually used the coworking space, making bills fairer.

Core Features That Matter for Coworking Spaces

Other than the features mentioned above, these are essential for running a coworking membership:

Multiple Membership Plans

Members expect a number of plans that offer something to everyone. These tiers differ by price and services, and divide members into different segments. In order to set up these plans, collect payments associated with them, and track their renewal duration, admins need expert membership management software. They may also allow their members to buy additional services for a one-time fee to add to their plan.

Smart Dunning and Payment Recovery

A membership management software makes recovering payments easier. It provides a variety of dunning tools that make this task possible. The primary among these is the payment retry feature. With this feature, payment attempts can be re-made so that the previously declined charges can be collected again. Multiple payment retries increase the chances of payment collection for you. Other dunning tools include payment reminders, payment failure alerts and grace periods.

Auto-Proration for Plan Updates

Auto-proration is critical for businesses that deal with plan changes. When members move from one plan to another in the middle of their billing cycle, they need compensation for their days remaining. That’s what SubscriptionFlow does with its proration feature. It adjusts a member’s charges so that they cover a part of their new plan’s cost, or are refunded to them if their newer plan is cheaper.

Member Self-Service Portals

This software gives members their own portals where they can look after their membership plan. Using this portal, they can update their personal and billing information, and also add new payment methods. They can also access their renewal history and add-on receipts, and track their membership benefits. This helps members to manage their plans at their own pace, so they are not always reliant on customer support.

Real-Time Performance Insights

Coworking memberships can make intelligent business decisions on the basis of the insightful data that the software offers them. They get real-time reports on their revenue (monthly, annual, quarterly, etc.), payment performance (rate of failed and successful payments) and member behavior (churn and retention rate). These reports help them spot what needs improvement, and what is popular with the members already.

Integrations That Make Life Easier

SubscriptionFlow offers some helpful integrations that simplify membership operations further. Coworking memberships can utilize any of these to reduce manual workload even more, and increase operational efficiency:

Accounting Tools (Sage Intacct, QuickBooks, Xero)

Growing memberships often have trouble keeping a clean track of their finances. Bookkeeping is essential for them for auditing purposes, but how it’s done matters a lot. Manual bookkeeping requires copy-pasting information from the invoices by hand to enter into the general ledger. Your accounting and billing platforms basically work in isolation, resulting in more errors and inconsistent financial statements.

But SubscriptionFlow relieves your worries by offering built-in integration options to popular accounting platforms. Once connected, the billing system shares all the financial data with your accounting tool where it gets organized by itself. This means lesser effort and more accurate bookkeeping.

Payment Gateways

Having multiple payment gateways is important if you need many different payment methods for your members. Each member has a different payment preference. So, enabling multiple payment gateways covers maximum member preferences.

CRM Tools

Memberships can also connect with the CRM of their choice that can help them target member engagement better, and enhance communication. It also serves as another comprehensive member database that stores all the relevant information that your business might need.

When a CRM is connected via SubscriptionFlow, it again saves admins from manual data transfer. That’s because each customer’s profile, membership and payment data is automatically shared with the CRM where it can be easily accessed. This data also updates itself as it is updated in SubscriptionFlow or vice versa.

Looking to automate and scale your coworking membership operations? Try SubscriptionFlow now and enjoy effortless growth and easy integrations.