Introduction
In CiviPlus Price Sets are a way to create flexible and customisable pricing options for memberships. This can be especially useful when:
You offer multiple membership types.
You want to include add-ons or optional pricing components
You need to provide discounts, bundles, or variable pricing
Price Sets are groupings of pricing fields that allow you to:
Present one membership signup form with multiple pricing options.
Offer custom combinations of memberships, event tickets, or products.
Use conditional pricing or allow users to select multiple items
Some examples of where Price Sets may be used are:
Sign up for multiple membership terms at the same time.
Sign up for more than one membership in a single transaction e.g. national and local memberships.
Multi-tier Membership Form eg. Basic – £75, Student – £50, Emeritus – £50
Membership + Donation - choose membership level and add optional donation with suggested amounts
Allowing users to select an additional optional e-magazine membership.
Regional Pricing Options - different fees based on geographic region
Membership Bundles - buy a membership and register for event at a discounted price
Creating Price Sets
In this example we are going to create a price set that will be used as part of the membership joining process for an organisation called the EcoCitizen Collective. This organisation has a three tier membership structure (Individual, Student (Under 26) and Family/Household) which has already been configured in CiviPlus. They also have a regional group structure, but there is no membership associated with this. They accept donations to support their cause, and also some merchandise available to members.
To create a new price set navigate to Administer -> CiviContribute -> Manage Price Sets and then click the ADD SET OF PRICE FIELDS button at the bottom of the page (you could also go direcltly to Administer -> CiviContribute -> Manage New Price Set. Complete the form as shown below:
Price Set Title - This name will be shown to users completing the form containing the price set and to admin staff when they need to choose between price sets.
Used For - In this case we are selecting Membership, but Price Sets can also be used for Events and Contributions. In fact, you can share the same Price Set across each of these entities.
Minimum amount - This is really only appropriate when you have a price set that doesn't include memberships.
Default Financial Type - Choose Member Dues as this is a Membership Price Set
Price Set Pre Help and Price Set Post Help - Enter help text if you want to - this will be shown to the user when using the form.
Price set is active? - Check this option so that the Price Set can be used
Now click the SAVE button and you will be able to start adding the individual fields for this price set. Start with the Membership Type that the user is going to purchase:
Field Label - This is what will be shown to the user against the field. In this case we'll enter "Membership Type".
Input Field Type - There are various options here, but since we want the user to choose one of three available membership types we will choose the "Radio" option.
The Membership Options block will now appear, and we can add the three Membership Types that we want to offer. For each option you can change the label, amount and Financial Type. You can also select one of the options as the default, and change the order if you want. There may be times when you want a particular option to be only available to internal staff only, in which case change the Visibility of the option to "Admin".
Options Per Line - This will affect how the options are presented to the user (in most cases 1 option per line looks best).
Display Amount - If checked then the amount of each option is automatically shown, but if you don't check it then you should make sure you include the amount within option description.
The Order field allows you to specify where this field will appear in the list. If you add the fields to the Price Set in the order that you want them displayed you can just accept what the system suggests. if necessary you can reorder the fields at a later time.
Pre field help and Post field help can be used to hold help text which is displayed to the user.
Active On and Expire On can be used to specify the date this field becomes effective and expires, for example to provide earlybird or promotional pricing.
Required - This says whether the user needs to complete this field. For our example we need the user to purchase membership as a minimum (as we will see the the other pricing fields are optional.), so check this field.
Visibility - There may be occasions when you want certain pricing to be available for internal staff only, in which case change this setting to "Admin".
Active - Typically you would check this option when first creating a Field Set. You may decide to disable it at a later time if you no longer want it to be used.
Click SAVE AND NEW to create the next set of Price Set fields for the EcoCitizen membership joining form. When completed the following Price Set fields will have been created:
Some of the Price Case Fields have multiple options, as shown below.
You can see what the Price Set will look like by clicking the PREVIEW (ALL FIELDS) button - our example is shown below:
Adding a price set to a contribution page
In order to make a Price Set available to users it needs to be added to a Contribution Page. Navigate to Contributions -> New Contribution Page and complete the Title page/tab. Make sure that you tick the Is this Online Contribution Page Active? option before saving the page. Now go to the Membership tab, and tick the Membership Section Enabled? option. Complete the form, making sure that you pick the appropriate Price Set in the Price Set field. An example of a completed Memberships tab is shown below.
This is what the new Price Set will look like as an admin user creating a new EcoCitizen membership in CiviPlus:
And this is what the same Price Set/Contribution Page looks like in the Self Service Portal:
