LS Central loyalty program setup: members, contacts, and points

Loyalty & offers · 7 min read

A loyalty program in LS Central is not one setting. It is a small hierarchy — club, scheme, account, contact — plus a set of point rules that sit on top of it. Build the hierarchy in the wrong order, or skip the number series, and the program looks finished in the back office while earning nothing at the till. This guide follows the order the setup documentation prescribes, and explains the two ideas that make the whole thing debuggable later: the point-rule lookup order, and the difference between award points and other points.

The structure first: club, scheme, account, contact

Member Management can handle multiple member clubs in one company, each with its own rules and setup — a customer loyalty club and a staff club, for example, do not have to share anything. Inside a club sit member schemes: one club can have several schemes, such as Standard, Silver, and Gold. A common pattern is bronze, silver, gold, and platinum, with most or all members starting at the bottom level, the bronze scheme.

Members themselves are held in two layers. The member account is the loyalty account: it belongs to a club, is linked to a scheme, and holds the points. The member contact is a person linked to that account. The split exists because more than one contact can link to a single account — that is also why accounts and contacts have separate number series. A household, or a couple sharing one points balance, is one account with two contacts, not two accounts that staff later try to reconcile by hand.

Members are not frozen in their starting scheme. A member is linked to a scheme but can move between schemes based on calculation rules for issued member points — earn enough, and the member moves up. Clubs can also carry their own attributes: extra information about members that campaigns and offers use for statistics and as triggers. An attribute is linked to the account, the contact, or both, which decides whether it appears on the Member Account card, the Member Contact card, or both.

Setup in order

1. Create the member club. This is the first task in the documented sequence. Decide the club's purpose before anything else, because schemes, accounts, and point rules all hang off it.
2. Define the schemes for the club. Bronze, silver, gold, and platinum is the documented common combination. Keep the list short: every scheme is another level that point rules and upgrade behaviour have to make sense for.
3. Set up number series. Define series for member accounts and for member contacts — separately, for the reason above. Also define number series for member cards, and possibly for member campaigns, point offers, and staff accounts. Make each range as large as needed; a series that runs out mid-promotion is a self-inflicted outage.
4. Create member accounts. Each account joins the club and a scheme. New members normally start in the bottom scheme.
5. Create member contacts. Add the people to the accounts. Add a second contact to an existing account when a second person should share the same balance; create a new account only when the balance itself should be separate. That distinction is the whole decision framework for enrolment questions at the till.
6. Set up member points (next section). A rule for how points are calculated must exist, with at least one rule per member club — without it, accounts exist but nothing is ever awarded.
7. Optionally, set up attributes. Add club attributes, then attach values to account attributes, once the core program earns correctly. Attributes are refinement, not a prerequisite.

Point earning rules

Open the point setup the quick way: search for Membership Point Setup. That page is an overview of the total setup for all clubs, schemes, and accounts. The same setup is reachable from the Member Club and Member Scheme cards (highlight the club or scheme, click Edit, then Actions > Point Setup), and from the Member Accounts page (highlight the account, then Related > Account > Point Setup). Click New to create a rule. Three fields are required: Scheme Filter Type, Club/Scheme, and Unit Rate.

The remaining fields decide what earns. Filter Type scopes the rule to an Item, a Product Group, an Item Category, All Items, a Special Group, or a Tender Type — points can be earned by certain tender types, not just by what was bought. Customer Filter Type can be All, Price Group, or Account. Base Calculation on is Amount or Quantity, and the choice affects what the Unit Rate means: points per amount spent, or points per item bought. Members can collect points from POS sales, sales orders, and member point journals, and the rules can differ between clubs and items.

One behaviour is worth memorising because it explains most surprises: the system looks first for a point setup for the member account; if none exists, it looks for a setup for the member scheme; and finally for the member club. A specific rule therefore beats a general one. It is not necessary — or useful — to duplicate the same rule at club, scheme, and account level. Set the baseline at club level, override at scheme level only where a tier genuinely earns differently, and reserve account-level rules for genuine exceptions.

Award points vs other points

Points can be transferred from one account to another in the same club, and points can also be bought or transferred from other clubs. That transfer path is exactly why the two types exist: a transferred or purchased balance should be spendable without instantly promoting the member to a tier they never earned through sales. Retail offers and coupons, by the way, can be made valid for specific member clubs, member schemes, and member attributes — which is how a points program becomes targeted promotions instead of a blanket discount. A member can also be given a discount budget that limits the discount amount they can earn within a given timeframe.

What success looks like

• A test member can be created under the club, lands in the starting scheme, and carries both an account number and a contact drawn from their own number series.
• A sale for that member awards points at the rate the rule predicts — check the arithmetic by hand once: quantity-based and amount-based rules fail differently.
• Adding a second contact to the same account works, and both contacts draw on the one balance.
• Changing the scheme-level rule changes earning for that scheme's members, while the club-level rule still covers everyone else — the lookup order behaving as documented.

When points do not earn as expected

Work the hierarchy, not the receipt. First: does the club have at least one point rule at all? That is the documented minimum, and its absence earns zero everywhere. Second: is a narrower rule shadowing the one you are editing? An old account-level or scheme-level setup wins over the club rule every time, so the fix may be deleting a forgotten override rather than changing the club rule again. Third: check the filters — a rule scoped to a product group, item category, or tender type will correctly award nothing outside that scope, which looks identical to a broken program on a receipt. Fourth: if the member earned but did not move scheme, check whether the points were award points at all; bought or transferred points arrive as other points and never count toward upgrades.

FAQ

Can one person belong to two clubs? Member Management supports multiple clubs with different rules and setups. Accounts live inside a club, so treat each club membership as its own account and scheme position.

Do points have to be earned at the POS? No. Members collect points from POS sales, sales orders, and member point journals, all under the same point setup rules.

Should every scheme get its own point rule? Not by default. The lookup order means a club-level rule covers all schemes until a scheme needs to earn differently. Add scheme rules for real differences only — each one is another rule that can shadow the baseline later.