# Membership upgrades

Perkville's integration with [a number of membership/POS systems](https://partners.perkville.com/) allows for the platform to track and [award points](/features/earning-rules.md) for membership upgrades. Perkville tracks for membership upgrades by viewing the member's previous membership type and comparing it to their current membership type.

{% hint style="info" %}
Review [our Partner Portal ](https://partners.perkville.com/)to see if membership upgrades are possible for your program
{% endhint %}

{% embed url="<https://partners.perkville.com/>" %}

## Upgrade recommendations and guidelines

We recommend **grouping your membership types into buckets** to simplify your earning scheme. This approach has two key benefits:

1. **Improved clarity for members** – A straightforward rewards structure is easier for members to understand and engage with
2. **Stronger integration resilience** – By reducing complexity, your program remains more stable when changes occur in your membership system

For example, if you currently have seven different membership types, you could consolidate them into three main groups instead. This makes it easier to assign and manage rewards while still accommodating different membership tiers.

| Membership tier/bucket | Membership types                                                                                              |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Tier 1                 | <p>Bronze unlimited<br>Bronze unlimited - zero down<br>Silver Sneakers<br>Teachers and veterans unlimited</p> |
| Tier 2                 | <p>Silver unlimited<br>Silver Unlimited - zero down</p>                                                       |
| Tier 3                 | Gold unlimited                                                                                                |

If someone upgrades from **Tier 1** to **Tier 2** they get points and if someone upgrades from **Tier 1** or **Tier 2** to **Tier 3** they get points.

## Tiered point rewards

One issue we like to avoid is allowing someone to earn points for upgrading more than once. This can get complicated when someone upgrades, downgrades, and then upgrades again. In the above example, if someone upgraded from **Tier 2** to **Tier 3** and then downgraded to a **Tier 1** and upgraded again to a **Tier 2**, we wouldn't want them to get points for this.

To avoid this situation and to simplify your earning rules, we recommend that you create [an earning activity](/features/earning-rules.md) for each bucketed tier. The point values for these rules should be setup so that if the member upgrades to the highest tier, they earn points for all the other tiers as well. The member will only be able to earn points for each tier once ever.

For example, if you want someone to earn 500 points for upgrading to **Tier 3**, you should set the point values as such:

| Membership tier/bucket | Point value |
| ---------------------- | ----------- |
| Tier 1                 | 100         |
| Tier 2                 | 150         |
| Tier 3                 | 250         |

That way, when the member upgrades to **Tier 3**, they get awarded points for all three earning activities and get 500 points.

If they upgrade from **Tier 1** to **Tier 2** they'll get 250 points and when they upgrade again later to **Tier 3**, they'll get an additional 250 points, rounding out the 500 points total.

## Upgrading from any membership

When designing your membership upgrade earning activities, you'll need to decide if members can earn points for upgrading from any membership at your business, even if the membership type is not bucketed into any of your tiers or if they have to upgrade from a specific set of membership types.

If we continue to run with the above example, the upgrade buckets are actually the following:

| Membership tier/bucket | Point value | Membership types                                                                                              |
| ---------------------- | ----------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Tier 0                 | 0           | Any membership type not included below                                                                        |
| Tier 1                 | 100         | <p>Bronze unlimited<br>Bronze unlimited - zero down<br>Silver Sneakers<br>Teachers and veterans unlimited</p> |
| Tier 2                 | 150         | <p>Silver unlimited<br>Silver Unlimited - zero down</p>                                                       |
| Tier 3                 | 250         | Gold unlimited                                                                                                |


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