Some products are more than a transaction. A Ticket Package, a Membership, a Donation with a Benefit attached: these aren’t just things you buy, they’re things you use later. And “later” is a problem if nobody bothered to create an account.
This update gives admins a way to close that gap. It’s a small toggle with a surprisingly large job.
The Problem It Solves
Guest checkout is convenient, right up until it isn’t. A guest can buy almost anything in the system, including products that are supposed to be tied to a real, logged in user. Ticket Packages with future use, Memberships, Donations with a Benefit: all of these assume someone’s coming back. A guest checkout doesn’t leave anyone to come back as.
Single tickets don’t have this problem. Everything else with an ongoing benefit does.
How It Works
Admins now get a setting that marks a product as requiring registration and a signed in user to complete the purchase. Where that setting lives depends on the product type:
- Ticket Packages: set at the product level.
- Donation Pages and Membership Pages: set at the page level, which applies to every product on that page.
Once it’s switched on, an anonymous shopper cannot complete the purchase as a guest. They either sign in with an existing account or create a free one during checkout.
What Patrons See
Nobody likes finding out about a requirement at the finish line, so the system surfaces it early, and only to logged out users. Logged in patrons never see any of this; it simply doesn’t apply to them.
The alert shows up in a few places, each using the same “Account Required” messaging:
- On the Ticket Package product card.
- On the Membership Page, just below the page’s own content.
- On the Donation Page, just below the description.
- On the checkout screen, above the Complete Order button.
The checkout copy spells out the two ways forward: sign in now if there’s already an account, or flip on the Create An Account option and set one up in seconds. Until one of those happens, the Complete Order button stays disabled for logged out users. Logged in patrons complete checkout as soon as payment information is entered, no extra steps.
Where It Doesn’t Apply
This is intentionally narrow. Single tickets are excluded entirely; the requirement is only meant for products where a benefit needs to attach to a real account down the line.
Next Steps
Want to see how this fits into your workflow? Book a personalized demo and we’ll walk through it together.
