Memberships

ChessRoster’s membership system lets your club offer recurring subscriptions through PayPal. Members get discounted tournament entry (or exclusive access), and ChessRoster handles billing automatically.

How It Works

The membership system has two layers:

• Membership tiers — Define the product (name, description, feature list). Examples: “Club Member”, “Junior Member”.
• Billing plans — Each tier can have multiple plans at different frequencies (monthly, quarterly, annual) and prices.

Players subscribe via PayPal billing agreements. ChessRoster checks their active subscription at tournament registration and applies any discount you have configured.

Setting Up Tiers and Plans

https://[organization].chessroster.com/membership

The Player Subscription Experience

On the public membership page, players see a card for each tier with its benefit list. If a tier has multiple billing plans, a selector lets them toggle between the available frequencies (monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual).

When a player clicks Subscribe:

1. A dialog confirms the billing terms.
2. The player is redirected to PayPal to authorize a billing agreement.
3. On return, their subscription is activated immediately.

Players manage their subscription at:

https://[organization].chessroster.com/membership/manage

That page shows their current status, next billing date, and a cancel option.

Subscription states

Using Memberships with Tournaments

Membership discounts at registration

When creating or editing a tournament, you can configure a membership discount on any registration fee tier. The discount is captured in a fee snapshot at checkout and applied automatically when a player with a valid membership registers — whether that membership is a PayPal subscription or one you added manually. Expired manual members no longer qualify (see Membership expiration).

Requiring membership through the event date

Enable the Require membership to be valid through tournament end date checkbox on your organizer’s edit page (in the Membership Tiers section) to restrict discounted registration to players whose membership remains valid through the event date — not just at the time of registration. Players without a membership covering the event date pay full price.

This is an organizer-level setting that applies to all tournaments under your organization. It is useful for club-run events where member pricing is a benefit of continuous membership, not a one-time discount.

Upgrade flow

Players can upgrade from one tier to another. ChessRoster prorates the billing so the player is only charged for the unused portion of their current cycle when upgrading.

Managing Your Members

The member roster lives on the Members tab of your organizer edit page. It is also available from the organizer management hub at [organization].chessroster.com/manage?tab=members. Both surfaces render the same roster.

Summary bars

When you have members, two summary panels appear above the table.

A stats bar shows four counts:

• Total Members — every member record, manual and subscribed
• Active Subscribers — members with an active PayPal subscription
• Manual Members — members you added or imported by hand
• Expiring Soon — active members whose expiration date is within 30 days

If you have at least one active subscriber, a Subscription Revenue panel adds estimated recurring revenue:

• Active Subscribers — count of active PayPal subscriptions
• Est. Monthly Revenue — all active plans normalized to a monthly figure (a $120/year plan counts as$10/month)
• Revenue This Period — gross subscription payments collected since the start of the current month
• Net Organizer Revenue — revenue this period minus platform fees, with the platform-fee amount shown beneath

The members table

The table lists each member with First Name, Last Name, Email (with a copy icon), Tier, Source (Manual or PayPal), Status (Active, Inactive, or Expired), Member Since, Expires, Subscription status, and Next Billing date. On small screens the less essential columns collapse automatically.

Filter the roster with the Tier, Source, and Subscription dropdowns; a Clear filters link appears once any filter is active.

Each row’s actions (admins only) include Edit, Delete, and — for members with a PayPal subscription — Payments, which opens a payment history dialog where you can issue per-payment refunds.

Adding members manually

Click Add Member to record a member who is not subscribing through PayPal — for example, someone who paid dues by cash or check. You set their name, email, tier, member-since date, expiration date, and notes.

Membership expiration

• If you set an expiration date, the member automatically switches to Expired once that date passes — no action needed on your part.
• An expired member immediately loses member pricing and member-only registration access, the same as if you had deactivated them by hand.
• Expiration takes effect at the end of the expiration date, Pacific time. A membership dated July 31 stays valid all day July 31 and shows as Expired starting August 1.
• Leave Expires At blank for a membership that never expires.
• To renew a member, edit their record and set a new expiration date.
• Active Member is a separate switch from expiration. Uncheck it to deactivate someone for another reason — for example, they left the club — but you don’t need to touch it just because a membership ran out.
• This automatic expiration only applies to manual and imported members. PayPal subscription members are unaffected — their status follows the billing lifecycle instead (see Subscription states above).

Bulk importing members

Click Bulk Import to paste a list of existing members as CSV. Use this to migrate a club roster onto ChessRoster in one step.

Related Topics

• PayPal Setup
• Creating Tournaments
• Managing Organizer & Staff