Running a wine club or wine subscription: shipments, invoices, member prices

A wine club keeps your best customers close all year: they get a shipment two to four times a year, preferential prices and invitations, and you know in advance how many bottles will go. The effort lies in the admin — member list, shipments, invoices, incoming payments. This guide shows how to set the club up and which part Vinosoft takes on.

Which model fits?

• The subscription with a fixed shipment. Every member gets the same case on the same date, for example six bottles in March and in September. Easy to plan and easy to invoice.
• The club with a changing selection. You put each shipment together anew, say the new vintage in spring and the reds in autumn. More exciting for members, more work per shipment for you.
• The club without a required shipment. Members pay an annual fee or nothing at all and buy at preferential prices whenever they like. Here the club is mainly a price list and a list for invitations.

Decide before you start: how often you ship, how many bottles, at what price, delivery or collection, how members pay and how they cancel. Write these terms down before the first member signs up.

Members in Vinosoft

Every member is an ordinary customer in Vinosoft. Give all members the same user group, for example "Wine club". Three things hang off it:

• Member prices. An article can have its own price per user group. When you create an invoice or an order for a member, Vinosoft fills in the club price automatically. Quantity discounts can also be limited to a group.
• The list. The customer list can be filtered by user group, and the turnover by user group statistic shows what the club brings in.
• Price lists. A price list based on the club prices can go to members as a PDF or a link.

For newsletters, Vinosoft keeps separate recipient groups. They are not linked to the user group, so add new members in both places.

Shipments: recurring orders or invoices

For each member you create a template once, and Vinosoft generates new documents from it on a schedule. The schedule takes a day (daily, a weekday or a day of the month), the months (every month or only the ones you tick, such as March and September), and a start and an optional end date. Early in the morning on the date, the new document is ready.

You have two options:

1. Recurring invoice. On the date, an open invoice with its own number is created. You create the delivery note from it. Good for a subscription that you ship and invoice at the same time.
2. Recurring order. On the date, an order confirmation is created. You mark the orders as delivered — several at once if you like — print delivery notes and packing slips, and then combine them into a collective invoice. Good if you pick first and invoice afterwards.

Each template belongs to exactly one member. With 60 members, that is 60 templates; there is no "whole club at once" run. If the selection changes from shipment to shipment, adjust the templates before the date or edit the generated documents while they are still open. That makes this approach ideal for a fixed-shipment subscription, and handwork for a club with a changing selection.

A missed date is not created afterwards; Generate creates the next document straight away by hand. A date shown in red in the list of templates tells you where that is needed. The details are in the help article Recurring invoices.

Invoice and payment

Every generated invoice is a normal Vinosoft invoice with a Swiss QR-bill. You can attach a payment link so the member pays online. You match incoming payments through the bank import as usual, and open items go into the dunning run.

The invoices are not sent automatically: you check them and send them by email, several in one go if you like. Vinosoft does not support direct debit (LSV), eBill or automatically charging a stored card, so a member pays each invoice themselves. You bill an annual fee as a separate recurring invoice with a "membership fee" article, once a year.

Talking to the club

With a "Wine club" recipient group, you send announcements of the next shipment, invitations to the members' tasting and the new price list as a newsletter, scheduled if you like. A newsletter goes to a whole group; selecting by purchase history or turnover is not possible.

What Vinosoft does not do

• A club sign-up in the webshop, or an online subscription that renews itself
• Automatic collection of club fees or shipments
• Sending the generated invoices automatically
• Subscription pre-sales of a vintage (en primeur)

You run the sign-up form, the subscription terms and the cancellations yourself; Vinosoft takes over from the moment the member is recorded as a customer with their template.

Checklist for the start

• Model, dates, prices and notice period written down
• "Wine club" user group created and club prices entered on the articles
• "Wine club" recipient group created for the newsletter
• A recurring invoice or recurring order for each member, with the shipment schedule
• A routine for shipping day: check the documents, print the delivery notes, send the invoices

How the wine club, the till and the loyalty programme fit together is covered in the overview Direct sales at the winery.

As of October 2026.