Membership Application Form - User Guide

Overview

The Membership Application Form feature allows equestrian clubs and organisations to accept membership applications directly from their club site. A dedicated block on your club site renders a call-to-action card that links visitors to a public membership application form. The form supports optional custom questions, membership type/tier selection with pricing, optional online payment, and conditions-of-entry waivers.

Applications are submitted without requiring a login and trigger an in-app notification to your admins and staff with the Members and volunteers area, plus an email to the organisation. You then review, approve, or reject applications on the Members page. On approval, a full member record is created, including an auto-generated membership number if the organisation has that setting enabled.

Key capabilities:

• Public application form accessible to anyone with your club site link
• Custom form questions from your organisation's entry form template, with rules that show, hide or require a question depending on earlier answers
• Membership type selection with configurable pricing tiers, each priced as a base fee plus add-on lines (a grounds levy, an optional arena key)
• A sign-in prompt that fills in a returning visitor's name and email
• Online payment for membership fees
• Conditions of Entry / Waiver acceptance
• Bot protection built in
• In-app and email notifications to your organisation
• Review workflow: approve, or reject with an optional reason

Who Should Use This Feature

Perfect For

• Pony Club administrators wanting to accept online membership applications
• Riding club managers offering different membership tiers (Junior, Adult, etc.)
• Horse association organisers collecting applications with custom questions
• Any equestrian club seeking to streamline their membership signup process

Prerequisites

• An admin of your organisation turns on Member Management and Allow External Membership Requests. Membership fee types can also be set up by staff with the Members and volunteers area at Manage, and the club site block by staff with the Website area at Manage
• To review applications: an admin, or staff with the Members and volunteers area (View to see applications, Manage to approve or reject). See Staff Access
• Your organisation must have a club site set up
• Optional: Configure membership fee types for paid memberships
• Optional: Connect a Stripe account for online payment processing
• Optional: An entry form template badged Membership Application, for custom questions

Key Features

📝 Club Site Block: Membership Application Form

Add a "Membership Application Form" block to any page on your club site. The block renders as a styled call-to-action card with:

• Heading: customisable (default: "Apply for Membership")
• Description: supporting text (default: "Submit a membership application and our team will review it soon.")
• Button: call-to-action (default: "Apply Now")
• Success Message: shown after submission (default: "Thank you! We will review your application and be in touch soon.")
• Conditions of Entry / Waiver: optional terms text that applicants must agree to before submitting

💰 Membership Type Selection

Applicants can select from your organisation's active membership fee types. Each tier displays:

• Member type (e.g., "Junior Member", "Adult Member", "Affiliate Member")
• What the applicant pays, in your organisation's currency: the base fee plus any add-ons included in that type
• The lines that make up that figure, when there is more than one (e.g. "Senior Member $150.00 + Grounds levy $30.00")
• Optional description of what the membership includes

When the applicant chooses a type that has optional add-ons, they appear underneath it as tick boxes under Optional extras, each with its price and description, and a Total that updates as they tick.

A membership type priced as lines, with an optional add-on ticked.

Membership types and add-ons are configured by the organisation admin; see Member Management → Membership Add-ons. An add-on only appears here once it has been attached to a membership type; creating it is not enough.

📋 Custom Form Questions

Custom questions come from the entry form template carrying the Membership Application badge (see Entry Form Templates). When one exists, the public application form renders those questions (text, dropdowns, checkboxes, file uploads and so on) alongside the standard name and email fields. A file upload question accepts JPG, PNG, WEBP or PDF files up to 10 MB.

Clubs set up before that badge existed are still matched by a template named "Membership Application", so an older club site keeps working. A badged template always wins over a name match.

Form responses are stored with the application for admin review.

Rules: questions that depend on earlier answers

The form designer has a Logic tab beside Build. A rule reads When … then …: when the answer to "Do you have your own horse?" is "Yes", then show "Where is your horse kept?" and make it required. Rules run live on the public form as the applicant answers.

One rule on a club's membership application form.

• A field targeted by a Show rule starts hidden and appears only when the rule holds.
• A hidden question is not validated and not submitted, so a required question an applicant never saw can't block them.
• On the membership form a rule can look at the applicant's answers. Conditions about classes, tickets, horses or a rider's saved profile belong to event entry forms. A membership application has none of those, so such a condition is simply never true here.

The full list of conditions and actions is in Entry Form Designer, Rules and Event Templates.

🙋 Sign in to fill in your details

A visitor who is not signed in sees a prompt at the top of the form: "Already have a Horsify account? Sign in first and we'll fill in your name and email for you." Signing in is optional: applications never require a login. A signed-in visitor is told when their details were filled in from their account, and can change them.

💳 Online Payment for Membership Fees

When a membership fee is selected and Stripe is connected:

1. After submission, the applicant initiates payment
2. An embedded online checkout is presented
3. The checkout summary itemises the base fee and each add-on. If your organisation passes Horsify's fee on to payers, it is shown as its own Platform fee line
4. On successful payment, the applicant is redirected to a success page

Where bank transfer is available, the checkout also offers Pay by bank transfer: the applicant is emailed an invoice with your bank account details instead of paying by card.

If someone applies again with the same email and the same name while their earlier application is still pending, Horsify updates that application rather than creating a second one. A family applying for each person under one email address gets a separate application for each name.

🔔 Notifications to Organisers

When an application is submitted, two notifications are sent:

1. In-app notification: to your organisation admins and to staff who hold the Members and volunteers area
2. Email notification: to the organisation

If the applicant pays online, the organisation also gets a Membership Paid email saying the application is awaiting approval. When the applicant was signed in to a Horsify account with a confirmed email address, replying to these emails reaches them; an application made without signing in has no reply address.

✅ Admin Review Workflow

Applications are reviewed on the Members page, under the Applications tab:

• List applications: each one shows the applicant, membership type, payment and status (Pending, Approved or Rejected); the tab counts the pending ones. A Status filter (All applications, Pending, Approved, Rejected) and the search bar (name, email or phone) narrow the list, newest first, 50 to a page
• Approve: creates an active member record and emails the applicant a welcome (or a "membership renewed" email if they were already a member)
  • If the applicant already paid, their provisional record is promoted to Active status
  • If auto-generate is enabled, a membership number is assigned (e.g., "HORS12001")
• Reject: marks the application as rejected, with an optional reason that stays with your team. The applicant isn't emailed, so tell them yourself if you'd like to

🤖 Bot Protection

The application form includes built-in bot protection. Automated submissions are silently discarded without saving.

How to Set Up Membership Applications

Step 1: Configure Membership Fee Types (Optional)

1. In the organiser menu, open Organisation → Profile (or Settings → Organisation), go to the Member Management section and find Membership Fees
2. Add membership types such as:
   • Junior Member: $50.00
   • Adult Member: $120.00
3. Add descriptions for each tier
4. Ensure they are marked as Active
5. If the price is made of more than one part, add Membership add-ons on the card underneath and attach each one to the types that carry it, as included or optional

A type whose Membership kind is Family membership or Day membership isn't offered on the application form. Day memberships come with an event ticket, and you add a family yourself from the Members page (see Member Management → Family memberships).

Step 2: Create a Custom Form Template (Optional)

1. In the organiser menu, click Settings, open the Templates tab and choose Form Templates
2. Create a template and set its purpose to Membership Application. The badge, not the name, is what the public form looks for
3. Add custom fields such as:
   • Emergency Contact Name (text, required)
   • Emergency Contact Phone (text, required)
   • Medical Conditions (text, optional)
   • Riding Experience Level (dropdown)
4. Optionally open the Logic tab and add rules so a question only appears, or only becomes required, for the applicants it applies to
5. Save the template

Step 3: Add the Block to Your Club Site

1. In the organiser menu, open Club Site → Pages (the group is called Website on plans without a Club Site)
2. Edit the page where you want the application form
3. Add a new block → select Membership Application Form
4. Configure:
   • Heading: e.g., "Join Our Pony Club"
   • Description: e.g., "Apply for membership and start riding with us today"
   • Button Text: e.g., "Apply Now"
   • Success Message: e.g., "Thanks for applying! We'll be in touch soon."
   • Conditions of Entry: (optional) Add waiver text
5. Save and publish the page

Step 4: Connect Stripe (Optional, for Paid Memberships)

1. Open Organisation → Profile, go to the Payment Integration section and click Connect Stripe
2. Connect a Horsify-managed account or your own; see Stripe Account Management
3. Membership payments will use embedded online checkout

Step 5: Review Applications

1. In the organiser menu, open People → Members
2. Switch to the Applications tab
3. Review pending applications
4. Click Approve, or Reject and add an optional reason
5. Approved applicants are automatically added as members

Application Statuses

Related Features

• Member Management: managing the member directory, invitations, and roles
• Entry Form Designer, Rules and Event Templates: every condition and action a rule can use
• Entry Form Templates: template purposes and where templates are managed
• Payment Fees Configuration: configuring processing fee pass-through
• Custom Club Setup Guide: setting up your club site with blocks\n\n---\n\nSource: wiki/features/MEMBERSHIP_APPLICATIONS.md \nLast synced: 2026-10-21 13:12:51 UTC