The Membership Module | TORO Cigar POS

TL;DR

Charge your members automatically. A membership is what a customer pays — monthly or annually, on the card stored in their account — and the discount level they get for it. TORO starts the membership, charges the first payment, sets up the recurring charge with your card processor, records every renewal, loads store credit if the membership includes it, shows you who's behind or has no good card, and (if you want) pulls a member's discounts when their payment declines — giving them back when they pay again. It can also find the membership payments your processor took before you had the module and add them. It's $24.99 per month, with a free trial that runs through the end of next month, so you always get at least a full month to try it.

Where to find it: Dashboard → Modules & Integrations → Memberships ("Recurring memberships, renewals and members"). The first time you tap it, TORO offers the free trial.

How a Membership Works in TORO

A membership has its own name, price and billing — and points at a discount level. When someone joins, TORO puts them on that level, so their pricing comes from the level exactly as it always has. Several memberships can share one level: Gold Monthly and Gold Annual can both give Gold pricing.

The discount level and the membership are separate on purpose. A customer can still be put on a level by hand — a comp, a friend of the store — without being a member. They get the discounts, but they aren't billed and they don't show up as members.

Setting Up a Membership

Open Membership Setup and press Add Membership (or select one and press Edit). The window has five sections:

Membership — the Name customers and staff will see, the Discount Level members get, and Active - offered on account details. Untick Active to stop offering a membership; the people already on it keep renewing.
What They Pay — the Item rung on the sale (use Set Item; one item sells one membership), the Charge (it comes from the item's price — set the price on the item), Billed monthly or annually (an annual payment covers 12 months), and Partial Month: when someone joins between billing days, Always charge for the days left, Ask each time, or Never charge and let the rest of the month be free.
Gift Card Credit — Credit Per Month is the virtual gift card credit loaded for each month paid (0.00 for none). Credit Given decides when it loads: Monthly loads the first month at the sale and then one each month; Up front loads every month paid for at the sale. This is how "pay $50, get $30 back in store credit" memberships work. Tick Only top up to this amount to give only what brings their balance back up to the credit (more on this below).
Declines — Remove the customer's discounts if their membership payment declines. More on this below.
Gift Card Balance — Full price for members until their virtual gift card balance is under the amount below, and the Amount (it starts at 3.69). More on this below.

View Members lists everyone on that membership, with View Member to open their account, their Recurring Charge (see Members below) and Link Schedules. Show Active Only and Deactivate on the setup list do what they say.

In Membership Settings, Recurring billing day is the day of the month memberships are charged. New memberships set up their recurring charge for that day.

Starting a Membership

Open the customer's account. The Membership panel shows what they're on and when they're paid through.

For someone who isn't a member, press Start Membership (it's also a tile on the Memberships landing screen). TORO walks you through it:

Pick the membership.
Check the discount level they'll get.
Pick the card stored on their account, or Add a Card.
If the membership asks about the partial month: Yes - charge for the partial month or No - the rest of this month is free.
Check the preview — what's charged today and when the recurring charge starts — and press Charge $….

TORO charges the card, records the sale, marks the paid months, loads any store credit, and sets up the recurring charge with your processor for your billing day. Nothing is charged until you press that last button.

Changing or Ending a Membership

On a member's account:

Change Membership moves them to another membership, with the same check-it-then-confirm steps. If they had an old recurring charge, TORO asks Which old recurring charge should be cancelled? so they aren't billed twice.
End Membership shows what happens before anything is done: they go back to the discount level they had before they joined, and you tick which recurring charges to cancel at your processor (PayaConnect). Ticked charges are cancelled first, so the card isn't charged again. Ending can't be undone.
View History shows each membership period — started on, by whom and how; ended on, by whom and how — and everything else that happened to their membership below it.
Set Up Schedule appears when a member has no recurring charge, so you can set one up on their card. It also appears when TORO finds a recurring charge at your processor that isn't linked to the membership yet (Recurring charge not linked, or (other amount) when it charges a different price) — it lists the customer's existing recurring charges first, so you can link the right one instead of setting up a second.

Voiding a membership sale offers to cancel the recurring charge it set up. No is the default.

The Landing Screen

Opening the Memberships tile shows everything at a glance, including your Est. Monthly Value — what your memberships bring in per month. From here:

Start Membership — sign someone up.
Members — who your members are and whether they're paid up.
Membership Charges — what your processor billed this month: what went through, what declined, and what still needs a sale recorded.
Virtual Gift Card Balances — what your members are holding in store credit.
Membership Reports — who's behind, what memberships bring in, what you owe in store credit, and declined cards.
Import Past Payments — find membership payments your processor took before you had the module.
Membership Setup and Membership Settings.

Members

The Members screen lists every member with their membership, Last Payment (the day they last paid), Next Due (the month their next payment is due — an annual paid today is next due a year from now), whether they're paid up, what they owe, and their store credit. Only show members who are behind narrows it for collection day.

No Recurring / No Card finds the members who will slip through the cracks. TORO checks each member's card with your processor — it only reads, nothing is charged — then lists only the members with no recurring charge, or no good card on file. Card On File says None, Expired, or ? when the card couldn't be checked. Press Show All Members to see everyone again.

The Recurring Charge column asks your processor about each member while the list is open — it says Checking... for a moment, then:

Yes — their recurring charge is linked to the membership and active.
Not linked — there's a recurring charge at the membership's price at your processor, but TORO doesn't know it belongs to the membership. This is common for members who were set up before you had the module.
Other amount — they have an active recurring charge, but not at the membership's price.
None — no recurring charge at all.
? — your processor couldn't be reached. Close the list and open it again.

Link Schedules links every Not linked member in one go. It shows you who it will link and the charge for each, then asks first — nothing is charged. Once linked, Change and End Membership cancel the right recurring charge for you. Members with more than one matching charge, or an Other amount charge, are listed at the end: open their account and use Set Up Schedule to pick the right one. Link Schedules is on both the Members screen and View Members.

For anyone behind, Charge Membership collects the payment: Charge Now runs their card on file right away, or Charge Later schedules it for a day you pick. View Account, Membership History and End Membership are here too.

Membership Charges

This is the month's ledger, straight from your processor. Charges that went through but don't have a sale in TORO yet show as Needs Transactions — press Record Missing Sales and TORO rings the membership item, adds any store credit, and marks the month paid. Show Declined lists the cards that didn't go through; Retry Decline runs them again now or on a day you pick. You can page back through previous months, and Remove Discounts is here too if you want to act on a decline by hand. Right-click any charge and choose View Account to open that customer.

Bringing In Past Payments

If your members were paying by card before you had the module, TORO can find those payments and add them, so everyone's paid months and history are right from day one.

Import Past Payments (landing screen or Membership Settings) reads your processor one month at a time, going back to when your card account started. The first time can take several minutes; you can cancel at any time, and whatever was read stays saved. After that it only reads the months it hasn't seen.
Past Payments on a customer's account does the same read, then shows just that customer.

Either way, nothing is added until you've looked. You go through the customers one at a time — each payment, what it matched, and any questions — and press Save & Next or Skip This Customer. Saving adds the sales on the days they were charged, so reports for those days will change. Nothing is charged and no store credit is given for past payments.

If a payment is already in TORO twice, TORO tells you which sale and won't add to it until the extra copy is gone.

⚠️ Your card processor only keeps a limited history available to TORO, so very old payments may not be found. Anything already recorded in TORO stays as it is.

Hands-Off Mode

By default, TORO records nothing on its own — everything above waits for you. Flip that in Membership Settings with Record membership payments automatically. When it's on, your main station checks your processor when it starts up, records the renewals, adds the store credit, and follows each membership's own decline setting — unattended. Leave it off if you'd rather review each month in Membership Charges before anything is recorded.

When a Payment Declines

A decline never takes anyone off their membership. What it can do — only if you ticked Remove the customer's discounts if their membership payment declines on that membership — is take their discounts off while they're behind: their level goes to NONE. They stay on the membership, and paying again puts it all back — instantly if TORO is recording payments for you, or when you record the renewal in Membership Charges if you're doing it by hand. So a lapsed member keeps their place but pays full price until their card works, and nobody on staff has to remember who's in the penalty box.

With automatic recording off, discounts are never pulled behind your back — you'd use the Remove Discounts button in Membership Charges yourself.

Topping Up Instead of Adding

With Only top up to this amount ticked, each month TORO fills the member's virtual gift card back up to the Credit Per Month instead of adding the whole amount. If the credit is $50 and they still have $15 on it, TORO loads $35, so they start the month at $50. If they already have $50 or more, nothing loads that month; Membership Charges shows $0.00 - balance already $50.00+ for it. Their gift card history reads like Gold membership top-up to $50.00 (had $15.00).

It's the whole gift card balance, including gift cards they bought, the same as Spend the Credit First below.
It never loads more than the credit. A member who is $10 under zero still gets $50, not $60.
Monthly only. Choosing Up front unticks the box and greys it out.
Missed months catch up as one top-up. If your main station was off and three months load at once, the member is filled up to the credit once, not three times.
Re-credit tops up to the full credit again, so voiding a top-up and pressing Re-credit never shrinks what they can get.

Spend the Credit First

If your membership gives store credit, you may want members to use that credit before their discounts kick in. Tick Full price for members until their virtual gift card balance is under the amount below on the membership, and set the Amount.

When a member is rung up with that much or more on their virtual gift card, the whole sale is full price — none of their member discounts apply, even if the sale costs more than their balance. Once their balance drops under the amount, their discounts come back on the next sale. The Amount starts at 3.69 so a few leftover cents don't hold anyone up; set it to 0.00 if any balance at all should hold their discounts.

The cashier sees a short note — Member discounts on hold — with the customer's balance, so nobody thinks the discounts are broken. Paying with the gift card on that sale doesn't change it partway through; the balance counts as it was when the sale started.

A few things to know:

It's the whole gift card balance — not just the credit the membership gave. Gift card money they got any other way counts too. So check your members' balances before turning this on for a membership that doesn't give credit.
Changes made during a sale count. If you open the customer's account mid-sale and change their level, their membership, or their gift card, TORO checks again when you close it.
Every register follows the setting on its next sale after you change it — no restart needed.
It only holds the member's own discounts. Coupons, promotions and item sales still work as usual.

Membership Reports

Everything above, as numbers you can export: who's behind and since when, what memberships bring in (with averages), your outstanding store-credit liability, and the full decline history — including what action was taken on each (discounts removed, dismissed, retried). Export to CSV hands any of it to your bookkeeper.

Don't see the Memberships tile unlocked on your dashboard? Give TORO Support a call and we'll get you set up.