Family / comp access kept out of sales numbers (comped memberships)

Written 30 Oct 2026 (skills harvest). Trigger: the /learn/ family code went live at 19:32Z (plan "family", 400 days). Without this rule a family redemption reads as a sale and the "First Academy member" alert or a weekly report states the wrong thing.

What the membership platforms do (read 30 Oct 2026)

• Memberful, "Track paying members" (docs, read): a paying member is "a member who has a recurring payment that's active at the end of the month". These do not count until a renewal payment is collected: all-access passes, 100% coupons, free trials, admin-created subscriptions with no initial charge, gifted subscriptions. One-time plans are never counted. Their "Active Members" count does include those groups, "one reason the two metrics may not match". Metrics refresh daily at midnight UTC.
• Memberful churn (blog, read): a 100% coupon assigned to a subscription counts as a paying-member loss. A paid member moved onto a free code is churn, not a neutral change. The same post cites Recurly's benchmark of a healthy subscription business at about 6.7% annual churn (5-7%); that figure is Recurly's, not checked here.
• Ghost, "Free trials in Ghost" (help, read): complimentary plans grant paid access for a set time (1 week, 1 month, 6 months, 1 year or forever), with no card. When the time runs out, access ends unless the member upgrades in Portal. Members on a trial do not count towards MRR until they have made a payment.

The common rule is two counters, never one: active members (access) and paying members / MRR (money). Free, comped, gifted, trial and 100%-coupon members are in the first only.

How to do it

1. Tag the cause at grant time. Every entitlement row carries plan = paid | family | gift | trial | comp, plus a source (Stripe session id, or code:family-v1). Never infer it later from the amount.
2. Report three numbers: active members (all plans), paying members (plan=paid with a collected payment), and revenue from Stripe itself, not from the member table.
3. Alerts fire on money, not on access. "New member" alerts read Stripe checkout.session.completed with amount_total > 0. A family redemption never triggers a sale alert.
4. Give comps an end date. Ghost's options run from 1 week to forever. A dated grant (ours: 400 days) forces a later review instead of a silent permanent free tier.
5. Rotate, don't delete. A new code version (family-v2) keeps the old redemptions countable. Revoking the old hash stops new joins without signing anyone out unless that is intended.
6. Watch moves from paid to comp. A paid member who later redeems the family code counts as churn (Memberful's rule). Flag it once and decide whether to refund. Do not let it lower revenue silently.

How we apply it to Cedwyn

• member_sync.py / the cedwyn-api Worker: family redemptions are logged as count + time with plan:"family" (a worker, 30 Oct). The ACADEMY MEMBER SYNC schedule must message only on a paid new member. Checked 30 Oct 19:50Z: member_sync.py already prints family joins on their own line ("family_code: N new family join(s) ... (not sales, no payment)") from D1 learn_family_redemptions, and the 19:34Z and 19:47Z log lines show 0 family joins and 0 paid. Keep it that way.
• The Sunday growth report and the BIZDEV log show "Academy: X paying (Stripe), Y family" and never a single combined figure.
• If a paying £49.99/mo member later uses the family code, log it as a downgrade in the project workspace (never tell the project lead directly); a refund is the project lead's call, as a proposal only.
• Rotation runbook: the project workspace; use v-numbered codes so counts survive rotation.
• The same rule applies to documentary scene access codes: an access code granted without a Stripe payment is never counted as a £4.99 sale.

Sources

• memberful.com (read 30 Oct 2026)
• memberful.com (read 30 Oct 2026; Recurly 6.7% benchmark cited there, not checked)
• ghost.org (read 30 Oct 2026; published 18 Apr 2023)

Raw Markdown: comp-family-access-separate-from-paying-members.md · version and changes: changelog · machine index: agents.json