Deciding what a member is allowed to do

Every member holds one of three roles, and the permissions matrix decides what each of them may do. Change somebody’s role on their own profile: Members → open the member → What they can do.

• Club Member — books a rink, sees the diary, uses the members’ app.
• Club Volunteer — all of that, plus the Duty Steward screen, managing anybody’s booking, the rota and the guest log.
• Club Administrator — all of that, plus members, money, settings and the club’s own records.

What each role may do is yours to change, under Settings → Permissions. The three roles are the handles; the matrix is the detail.

Committee role is a different thing. Secretary, Treasurer and so on are titles for the club’s own records and grant nothing at all.

Common questions

A member has not renewed yet. Can we give them a few days?

Yes — Settings → Fees, Grace period after a renewal falls due. Fourteen days by default. They keep the app, their bookings and everything else for that long, and their subscription card tells them the club is holding their place and until when. Set it to nought for the old behaviour, where access stops the morning after.

Does the grace period affect the end-of-season rollover?

No. Where you choose to lapse unpaid members as part of rolling the season over, that is a decision the committee has taken rather than a date somebody missed, and it happens as before.

Can I stop a steward seeing a member's whole record?

That is how it works from 10.6.0. Without the See a member’s full record permission — administrators have it, stewards and volunteers do not — opening a member shows a name, a telephone number, an email address and the emergency contact, and nothing else. No address, no subscription, no notes, nothing about money.

A member does not want the steward to have their emergency contact.

Untick The duty steward may see this emergency contact on their profile. Stewards then see a line saying the member has asked for it not to be shown and that an administrator has it. On by default, because the contact is on the record for exactly that purpose and a steward finding nothing on the day somebody collapses helps no one. The change is written into the member’s history.

Why not just untick the fields I do not want shown?

Because the limited view is a separate screen rather than the full one with things hidden. Hiding is the wrong shape: a field added next year would be visible to everybody by default and nobody would notice until a member asked why the person behind the bar knew what they owed. This way anything new is private unless it is deliberately put on the short list.

What is the Duty Steward role for?

The same permissions as a Club Volunteer, named for the job. A volunteer might be the person who cuts the hedge or the person running the bar on a Saturday — use this one and whoever runs the desk is obvious in the member list. They can take a shift on the tablet, work the till, cash up, manage anybody’s booking and record a check; they cannot change members, settings or the price list.

Can somebody be given a look at everything without being able to change it?

Yes — the Committee (read only) role. They see the bookings, the members, the reports, the officers’ app and the Duty Steward tablet, and cannot alter a thing on any of them. Meant for a new committee member, or somebody being shown the ropes, before they are trusted with the club’s data.

What exactly can a read-only account not do?

Anything that changes something. It holds only the view permissions, and on top of that every request that would write is refused before it runs — so it does not depend on each of Pavilion’s several hundred screens remembering to check. It cannot even book a rink or submit its own availability, because you asked for somebody who cannot create anything. A club that wants those back can tick them on the permissions matrix.

Why not just untick everything on the matrix?

You could, and it would mostly work. The trouble is that a screen written before the role existed had no reason to think about it, and in a plugin this size some will have been missed. The read-only role is refused at the door instead, so a gap in one screen is not a hole in the promise.

Our club advertises a set price for joining in August or September. Can Pavilion do that?

Yes, from 10.2.5. Set that membership type to A set price for a joining window under Settings → Fees, then give the dates and the price — 1 August to 30 September, £85. Somebody joining in that window is charged exactly that, not a share of the annual fee. The screen offers six windows per membership type and grows another row as you fill them, so a club pricing every part of the year in two-month steps is not boxed in — and a window may run past the new year.

What if somebody joins outside every window?

They pay the full annual fee. Pavilion will not invent a figure the committee has not agreed — if you want a fallback for the rest of the year, add a window covering it.

Can we work part-year fees out by days rather than months?

Yes, from 10.2.4 — Settings → Fees, at the top: Work part-year fees out by. Whole months is the default and is what Pavilion has always done. Days is fairer on a large subscription: on a £120 fee somebody joining on 28 October pays £60 by the month and £50.96 by the day. It is one answer for the whole club, because charging one membership by the month and another by the day is a difference no committee could explain.

How is a part-year subscription worked out?

By the rules you set per membership type under Settings → Membership: the full fee whenever they join, a twelfth for each month left, or pro-rata until a cut-off after which the fee also covers next season. The month they join counts in full. Any joining fee is separate and is never pro-rated.

Does the Add Member form use those rules?

Yes, from 10.2.2. Choose a membership type and a joining date and the fee fills itself in, with a line underneath saying why — “6 months left of the season, so 6 twelfths of the £120 annual fee”. Before that only the public join form applied the rules, so a secretary adding somebody by hand had to know them and do the sums.

Can I still charge something different?

Yes. The figure is editable and once you have typed one, changing the type or the date will not overwrite it — the note simply tells you what the rules would have given, so the difference is deliberate rather than accidental.

Can a member print a receipt from their phone?

Yes. In the app, the account card lists what they have spent; tapping a till line opens that receipt, with Print beneath it and Share where the phone offers it. It prints as a plain receipt rather than a photograph of the app, which is what somebody claiming an expense back needs. The same is on the portal page.

How do I change a member's email address?

On their profile, in the Email box, then Save email. It has its own button because it is what they sign in with — a typo does not fail, it quietly sends somebody’s login to nobody. Both the old address and the new one are told what happened, which is how a mistyped address gets noticed the same day rather than months later when the newsletters have stopped.

Does changing it stop them signing in?

Their password does not change, and they stay signed in wherever they already are. What changes is which email address works: the new one does, the old one no longer will. Their username still works either way — Pavilion gives every member one when the account is made, usually firstname.lastname, and that is untouched. So somebody who signs in with a username notices nothing at all.

What if I typed the new address wrongly?

Change it back on the same screen. The member cannot sign in with the wrong address and cannot reset a password to an inbox that does not exist — but the note sent to their old address will have reached them, which is why it is sent. Their username and password still work in the meantime.

It says another member already uses that address.

Two accounts cannot share one email address — it is the login. If a couple share an inbox, one of them needs their own, or link them as a household instead so one subscription covers both.

Somebody cannot start a shift on the steward tablet.

They are probably still a Club Member. Taking a shift needs the permission to manage bookings, which belongs to volunteers and above by default. Make them a Club Volunteer on their profile and their name appears on the tablet.

Why is the role saved by its own button?

Because it is the one field that decides what somebody can reach, and it can be refused — the club’s last administrator, or your own account. A refusal that happened quietly while a form was submitted would leave you believing a change had been made that had not.

I cannot reduce my own role.

No, and deliberately: you would lose the screen you are standing on. Ask another administrator.

It will not let me demote the last administrator.

That would lock the club out of its own website with no way back from inside Pavilion. Make somebody else an administrator first.

The profile says WordPress administrator and offers no choice.

That account can do everything on the whole website, not only in Pavilion. It is set on the WordPress Users screen, and swapping it for a club role here would take the rest of the site with it.