Membership Package
What It Is
A membership package is the offering members recognize when purchasing membership, such as Regular Annual or a lifetime option. It uses the identity of an Accounting product rather than maintaining another independently named sellable record. Staff save that product first, then add its Membership extension. Accounting continues to supply shared catalogue information, including the product’s name, status, visibility and prices.
Membership adds the information particular to the entitlement: its program and classification, term rule, renewal choices, organizational seat allowance and optional grants or unit requirements. Reading the package combines the extension with current product information. Changes to the shared product therefore appear without copying those fields into Membership. The extension can be removed without removing the product itself.
What It Is Not
A package is distinct from a membership type. The type classifies the granted membership; the package describes an offering that grants it. Local dues are another product type associated with a unit. An order belongs to Commerce and can include the membership package alongside other lines. The package configuration does not itself prove payment or fulfilment.
How It Is Used
Administrators prepare several offerings for a program and adjust renewal settings as policy develops. Commerce and membership operations read those choices for their respective work. Staff should inspect both the extension and its product when availability is surprising. An active product does not settle every owner or membership eligibility condition. Removing the extension is also different from retiring the shared product. Readers of activity-filtered lists must follow continuation even when a returned page has no matching offerings.
Its Facets
Shared product. One identity prevents competing names and status fields.
Membership context. The selected classification belongs to the selected program.
Date rule. Length and calendar choices determine the period rather than its monetary price.
Renewal behavior. Continuation and reinstatement distinguish different later purchases.
Commerce and seats. Consumer hints accompany the organizational membership’s capacity setting.
Additional holdings. Grants describe bundled program memberships and their date choices.
Affiliation specialization. Package-specific counts and dues can override program defaults.
Change policy. Stored cases describe future upgrade and downgrade work that remains unavailable.
How It Relates
Programs and classifications give the package its membership context. The term lifecycle computes dates from its rule. Organizational units can offer package-specific dues products beside the package. Accounting owns the common product, while Commerce owns selling and monetary interpretation. The memberships module owns resulting holdings, terms and affiliations.
What It Could Become
The product should settle empty reinstatement semantics before migrated packages rely on them. It should also decide the presentation of packages prepared on inactive products and the compatibility checks required for grants. Future change processing needs validated policy references and a clear matching model. Those decisions can make the existing configuration usable without implying that every retained setting already changes behavior.