Class passes, punch cards & memberships

If you run classes — yoga, pilates, music lessons, art, tutoring, fitness — you've probably already been selling some version of a pass: a punch card, a 10-visit pack, a monthly unlimited membership. The idea is old. What's usually broken is the tracking: a paper card, a note in a phone, a spreadsheet column nobody updates consistently. This guide covers what class passes and memberships actually are, how to set them up, and how check-in debits them without you doing the math.

What counts as a "pass" or a "membership"?

Both are just prepaid access, structured two different ways. A pass (also called a punch card or session pack) is a fixed number of credits — a 5-class pack, a 10-visit pack — that a student buys once and spends down over time. A membership is usually time-based instead of credit-based: unlimited classes for 30 days, or access to a specific room or class type for a month or a year.

The distinction matters for how you price and how you track balances, but under the hood they're the same mechanism: a plan a student buys, that unlocks specific classes or spaces for a specific window or a specific number of visits.

How do passes and memberships work in Kahal?

You set up the plan once — how many credits, or how long it lasts, and which classes or spaces it unlocks — and Kahal handles the rest per student. Once a student buys a pass, it becomes active on their account. Every time they book or check into something that plan covers, Kahal checks that the pass is valid, and either deducts a credit (for a punch-card style pass) or simply confirms access (for a time-based membership).

You don't touch a spreadsheet to know who has three classes left versus who's out of credits — the balance lives on the student's account and updates itself.

How does QR check-in debit a pass automatically?

This is the part that actually saves the admin headache. At the start of class, a student scans a QR code (or an instructor scans theirs). Kahal:

• Confirms the student has a valid pass or membership for that specific class or space.
• Marks them as attended, so the instructor's roster is accurate in real time.
• Deducts one credit if it's a punch-card style pass, or simply logs the visit if it's unlimited.
• Flags it if the pass is out of credits, expired, or frozen, so the front desk or instructor sees it immediately instead of finding out later.

No one has to remember to update a count by hand, and there's no gap between "the class happened" and "the pass reflects it."

Can passes be paused, frozen, or cancelled?

Recurring memberships — the auto-renewing monthly kind — can be frozen and later reactivated in Kahal, so a student going on vacation or working through an injury doesn't keep getting billed or ticking toward renewal while they're away. One-time passes, like a fixed 10-class pack, don't have a freeze option today, since there's no ongoing billing cycle to pause. Any pass or membership can be cancelled outright by an admin if a student needs to stop it for good. That's enough flexibility to keep a recurring membership trustworthy without students guessing whether it'll still be there when they're back.

Can I sell passes and memberships if I'm outside Israel?

You can build, sell, track, and redeem passes and memberships in Kahal no matter where you are — the scheduling, credit tracking, and QR check-in all work the same everywhere. Where it's currently limited is collecting the payment for that pass and issuing an automatic tax receipt: that's live in Israel today, through the Sumit and HYP gateways. International card payments are on the roadmap, not live yet. So if you're outside Israel, the practical setup today is to manage the pass itself in Kahal — who has one, how many credits are left, what it unlocks — and take payment for it through whatever method you already use, until integrated international payments ship.

How do you set up your first pass or membership?

A short version of the process:

1. Decide the shape: a fixed number of credits (punch card) or a time window (membership).
2. Decide what it unlocks — one class, a category of classes, or a bookable space.
3. Set the price and duration, then publish it so students can see it on your booking page.
4. Sell it (or set the price to zero and collect payment another way for now, if you're outside Israel), and let check-in do the rest.

Start with one pass type — a single 10-class pack, or one monthly membership — before you build out a whole menu of options. It's easier to see whether the pricing and credit count actually match how students show up, and adjust, than to guess right on the first try across five different pass types at once.

Ready to set up your first pass? Start free on Kahal — or read how to take class bookings online and see what to look for in class booking software first.