Member contact cards in LS Central: creating and managing loyalty member contacts

Member management · 7 min read

Most member-contact confusion in LS Central comes from one misunderstanding: a member contact is not a standalone record. It hangs off a member account, which hangs off a member club and one of its schemes — and a card is a fourth thing again. Create them in the wrong order, or in a club that isn't set up for it, and you end up with contacts that can't be found at the till, accounts with no main contact, or a loyalty signup that exists on paper but not at the POS. This guide walks the whole chain in the order the system expects.

The four records people mix up

LS Central's Member Management documentation describes the pieces like this:

The member card is separate again: Member Management's general tasks cover creating and assigning membership cards, and the number series setup treats cards as their own series, distinct from the account and contact series. When a cashier says "the card doesn't work," the fault can sit in any of these four layers — checking the contact alone is not enough.

Before you create anything: club, schemes, number series

The documented setup order for a new member management system is: member club first, then member schemes for the club, then number series. There are separate number series for member accounts and member contacts — deliberately, because more than one member contact can link to a single member account, which is what lets several people share one membership's benefits. You also need a number series for member cards. The documentation's warning is worth heeding: define the range of each number series to be as large as needed. Running out of numbers mid-signup-campaign is a self-inflicted outage.

One club setting matters more than the rest for this article. Whether member contacts are created on the Member Contacts card at all depends on the club: that is only the creation route if Member Contacts Only is selected in the Contact Handling field on the Numbering FastTab of the Member Club card. If your team goes looking for the Member Contacts card workflow and the club was set up differently, the procedure below is not the one your system is using — check the club before retraining anyone.

Step 1: create the member account

A member account must be created for each member in a member club, and contacts are created for the account — so the account comes first:

1. Search for Member Accounts and open the list.
2. Choose New. The Member Account card opens.
3. In the No. field, use the lookup to select a member club from the Member Club list. This is the club the account is linked to; the account number itself is generated automatically a little later in the process.
4. Fill in the Description. The Club Code and Scheme Code fields fill in automatically from the club you selected.
5. Set Account Type: Private, Family, or Company.

Two rules to internalize before you go further. First, once a transaction has been made on an account, you cannot move it to another club — the Club Code link is permanent at that point. Second, accounts can move between schemes inside the same club; the upgrade and downgrade processes do exactly that. Pick the club carefully; be relaxed about the starting scheme.

Step 2: create member contacts on the account

Member contacts are the records that hold the information about the account's members, and one is created for every member account — accounts with a household on them will have several. Assuming your club uses the Member Contacts Only handling described above:

1. Search for Member Contacts and open the list.
2. Choose New to open the Member Contact card.
3. In the Account No. field, use the arrow to select the account and link the contact to it. (The dialog also offers a New option that opens the Select – Member Account card, if the contact belongs to an account in another club.)
4. Press Tab twice — the Contact No. fills in automatically from the contact number series.
5. Set the Main Contact check box if this person is the account's main contact. The first contact you specify for an account becomes the main contact by default; every account must have one main contact, and you can override the choice later on another contact's card.
6. Set Send Receipt by Email if the member wants ScanPayGo receipts by email. Leave it empty and the contact inherits the value set in Member Management Setup.
7. Fill in the remaining fields, then repeat for any additional contacts on the account.

When you finish, the No. of Accounts and No. of Contacts fields on the Member Club and Member Scheme cards update to reflect what you added — a quick way to confirm the records landed in the club and scheme you intended.

Cards, attributes, and day-to-day management

A contact becomes usable at the till when it is an active contact with a card; assigning cards is a Member Management general task, separate from creating the contact. The same general-tasks area covers blocking and unblocking accounts — the right tool when a card is lost, rather than deleting anything. Periodic activities round out the lifecycle: up- and downgrading member accounts between schemes, expiring member point entries, and updating member information.

For richer member data, clubs can carry their own attributes — extra information about members that Member Campaigns and Offers use for statistics and as triggers for promotions. Each attribute's Linked To setting (Account, Contact, or Both) decides whether it appears on the Member Account card, the Member Contact card, or both — set it wrong and staff will swear the field doesn't exist. Attribute types are Text, Integer, Decimal, Date, and Boolean, and the Visible Type decides whether members see the value themselves: Private attributes are displayed in the member's Loyalty app or eCommerce account view; System attributes are not.

One more creation route is worth knowing about so it doesn't surprise you: in LS Activity, turning on Always Create New Members creates a member contact automatically from the name, email, and mobile phone entered on a reservation, and assigns the member number to that reservation. It is duplicate-aware — entering an email or mobile number that already exists in the member records assigns the existing member instead of creating a second contact. If your member count grows faster than your signups, look for automatic creation paths like this before blaming data entry.

Working with member contacts at the POS

Member contacts are not back-office-only records. The POS command list includes MEMBERCONTACT (Member Contact Management) and MEMBERCARD (for entering the member card number), plus MEMBER_EMAIL, which sends a new member email to head office. And the product is still moving here: LS Central 27.0 added the ability to select a Member Scheme when creating and editing a member in the Member Contact Panel on the POS, via the SELECTSCHEME parameter. If your tills can't do something the release notes describe, version is the first thing to check — see our integration overview for how the pieces fit together.

What success looks like

• The account exists in the intended club, on the intended scheme, with the right Account Type — and you checked before its first transaction, while a club mistake is still fixable.
• Every account has exactly one contact flagged as Main Contact, and the club/scheme cards' No. of Contacts moved by the number you added.
• Contacts that should transact have a card assigned; contacts that are information-only are understood to be exactly that.
• At the POS, the member can be pulled up through Member Contact Management and the card number accepted — the real end-to-end test of everything above.

FAQ

Can one account have several contacts? Yes — that is the design. Separate number series exist for accounts and contacts precisely because multiple contacts can link to one account, so a household can share one membership's benefits.

Why can't staff find the Member Contacts creation flow? Check the club's Contact Handling setting first. Contacts are created on the Member Contacts card only when the club is set to Member Contacts Only.

A member signed up twice. Now what? Duplicates usually come from manual creation; automatic creation paths check email and mobile against existing member records and reuse the match. Merge habits are a process fix, not a delete key — blocking is the documented tool for accounts that should stop working.