How do shooting ranges manage membership tiers and recurring billing without creating extra work for employees? They use an integrated point-of-sale system that connects membership plans, automatic payments, customer benefits, range activity, and retail purchases.
In this episode of Trigger Point, host Kevin Wosmansky speaks with Trident 1 FFL Software experts Jake Newbold and Daniel Peterson about building and managing a successful shooting range membership program. Their key takeaway is that memberships can generate predictable revenue, increase customer lifetime value, and build a stronger community. However, the program needs software that can manage the details without consuming hours of administrative labor.
Memberships give shooting ranges a more predictable revenue stream. Instead of relying only on daily lane rentals, firearm sales, and walk-in traffic, the business can collect recurring payments from customers who regularly use the facility.
A well-designed program may also encourage members to visit more frequently, purchase ammunition and accessories, bring guests, or upgrade to a higher tier.
Jake explained that memberships can increase customer lifetime value and help ranges build a community around their business. However, he also warned that billing and membership administration should not consume the additional margin the program creates.
The purpose of membership software is to automate repetitive work so employees can focus on customers rather than spreadsheets, payment reminders, and manual benefit tracking.
A shooting range can structure memberships around its facilities, customers, and business goals. Bronze, silver, gold, and platinum plans are common because they make the differences between tiers easy to understand.
A basic membership may include standard range access. Higher tiers can offer more valuable or exclusive benefits, such as:
Daniel explained that memberships allow a range to create something unique. Two retailers may sell the same firearm and compete mainly on price, but a customized membership package gives customers a reason to choose one range over another.
The challenge is ensuring the software can support the plan. A range can create an excellent membership structure on paper, but it will be difficult to manage if employees must manually apply every discount, guest pass, and access benefit.
Trident 1 FFL Software FFL Software allows businesses to build membership packages within the same platform used for retail sales, range operations, customer management, and payment processing.
The range defines each tier, including its price, billing schedule, discounts, access privileges, and included benefits. Once the plan is configured, an employee can sell the membership like a regular product. The system recognizes the recurring plan and applies the appropriate rules to the customer’s account.
Daniel described this as a “set-it-and-forget-it model.” The package is built once, allowing the software to manage the repeatable parts of the program.
Owners do not need to become software experts before launching memberships. The Trident 1 FFL Software team first learns how the range wants its program to work. Training can then focus on configuring and executing that specific business model.
Membership and retail activity should be part of the same customer record. This allows employees to see a member’s tier, available benefits, discounts, purchases, and range activity without switching between separate systems.
A customer profile can begin with a driver’s license scan that automatically fills in key information. Employees can then add contact details and assign the correct membership tier.
Once the membership is attached, the system can automatically recognize the benefits included in that plan. A silver member might receive an ammunition discount, while a gold member may also receive guest passes, premium lane access, or free transfers.
Purchase history can also help employees provide more relevant service. For example, a salesperson may see that a member recently bought a rifle but has not purchased an optic. That creates an opportunity to recommend a suitable product rather than making a generic sales pitch.
The same customer data can help the range identify active members, evaluate customer value, and find opportunities for membership upgrades.
Recurring billing reduces the need to manually collect membership payments every month. Subscription systems can automatically create invoices, process repeat payments, and manage billing cycles based on monthly, annual, or customized schedules.
Payment continuity is equally important. Cards expire, get replaced, or receive new account numbers. Without an account-updating service, employees may need to contact members individually to request new payment details.
Visa Account Updater allows participating issuers, payment providers, and eligible merchants to exchange updated card information for recurring and card-on-file payments. Updates can include new expiration dates, replacement account numbers, and account closures.
Trident 1 FFL Software’s integrated payment processing helps ranges reduce manual follow-up and avoid unnecessary interruptions to recurring revenue. When fewer employees are chasing failed payments, they have more time to serve members and operate the range.
A range should choose software that supports its business model natively. Membership management should not require disconnected programs, repeated data entry, complicated workarounds, or unexpected add-on costs.
Before selecting a platform, define:
The provider should be able to explain how each requirement works inside the system. As Daniel said, if the provider does not understand the model or requires the range to step outside the primary platform, “you’re in the wrong place.”
Ultimately, how do shooting ranges manage membership tiers and recurring billing effectively? They use one connected system that automates payments, applies benefits consistently, maintains complete customer records, and gives employees the information they need to provide better service.
Yes. A range can create multiple plans with different prices, discounts, access privileges, and benefits.
Yes. Recurring plans can be configured to charge members according to their selected billing cycle.
Yes. An integrated system can connect the membership tier to eligible retail and ammunition discounts.
Eligible payment details may be refreshed through an account-updating service, reducing failed recurring payments.
Yes. Guest passes can be included as a benefit and tracked according to the membership package.
No. Once the plans are configured, employees can sell memberships and manage customers through the same point-of-sale workflow.
A connected record gives employees a complete view of the customer’s membership, purchases, discounts, and activity.
Kevin Wosmansky: Hello, Jake and Daniel. Welcome back to our next episode of Trigger Point. How are you, gentlemen, today?
Jake Newbold: Doing well, Kevin.
Daniel Peterson: Doing good.
Kevin Wosmansky: I know this is one of your favorite things to do: jump on these calls and answer questions that our customers, prospects, and people in general are asking.
Jake Newbold: I’m happy to do it, as long as it helps.
Daniel Peterson: As long as it helps the industry, we’re all about it.
Kevin Wosmansky: That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re just trying to get information out there from the experts. I’ve got a fun one today. It’s summer, and it’s a great time. Obviously, a lot of us who like things that go bang at high velocity downrange are spending time out at the range and doing some shooting.
We had a great question come in, and I thought I’d tee us off with this one: How do shooting ranges manage membership tiers, recurring billing, and member benefits through a point-of-sale system?
We go to the range and like to have fun, but as enthusiasts, we don’t always think about the business side of what happens. I thought this was a great question that came in, and I’m going to kick this your way, Jake. Why do memberships matter for gun ranges?
Jake Newbold: That’s a great question, actually. It’s one we get a lot. Retailers are often contemplating whether to move to a membership-type model and, if so, what the pros and cons are and whether it is right for them.
I would say there are pros and cons to it. You have to do it right, and you have to have a system that helps you along the way. You need a solid CRM to track your customers, build profiles on them, track their sales, and everything else.
Memberships can provide predictable recurring revenue and a higher customer lifetime value. They can also help with community building, but only if the billing and management do not eat up all the margin in administrative labor.
Again, there are pros and cons to it, but we’re seeing a lot of customers who are doing it right. They are really able to increase their margin quite exponentially.
Kevin Wosmansky: Outstanding. Let me bring in the expert here. Daniel, you’re kind of the expert at this stuff. Let’s talk about some of the different membership tiers you see. How do a lot of Trident 1 customers, or shooting ranges in general, structure this type of setup?
Daniel Peterson: That’s another good question. What we see within the membership model is that it offers a level of uniqueness for that business. If you create your own type of membership, it creates exclusivity within your club or range. That’s something you’re not necessarily having to compete with other shops on.
The way I look at it is, if we’re both selling an AR, then we have to compete with each other on pricing because you have the same thing I have. But having the ability to create a unique product that your business offers helps you separate yourself from the pack.
There are an array of different designs and models. Probably the most common structure we see for businesses that have an indoor or outdoor range is something like a bronze, silver, and gold setup. Lower-tier memberships might get you basic access, all the way up to a gold or platinum level, which allows you to use areas of the range that other members cannot access.
Within that structure, it promotes the exclusivity I was talking about. There are also add-ons that go with these different packages. Trident 1 offers the ability to provide monthly billing memberships all the way up to lifetime memberships.
When building those types of memberships, you can add things like lane access or restricted access to certain bays or lanes. It might come with guest passes attached to the membership. For example, if you and I go shoot and you’re not a member there, I can use one of my free guest passes for you.
It can even include product discounts within the store for accessories or ammo. I’ve even seen memberships that offer free transfers. The array of options you have when creating your own membership really comes down to this: you can sit down and write it on paper, but you’re still going to be regulated by what the software can offer you.
You might come up with something the software does not even support. But the way Trident 1 is built, it covers such a vast majority of these membership packages and gives you the options to move in the direction you see fit for your business.
Kevin Wosmansky: Outstanding. Pretend I own a gun store and gun range, which I wish I did. Do I have to be an expert at software, systems, and managing this? Talk to me about how Trident 1 helps gun store owners and gun range owners when they want to create memberships.
Obviously, the lifeblood of any business is revenue, and recurring revenue is what a lot of these gun store and gun range owners are looking for. Do I have to be an expert in Trident 1 or in managing multiple systems in order to do something like this?
Daniel Peterson: No, you don’t have to be an expert. By the time you get with our team, this starts before you even learn about our software and how it operates.
We have an outstanding team that sits down with each of our partners and learns about their plan for the business. Since we are the experts in operating our own software, once we hear what the business plan is, we basically customize the training plan to fit it and show you exactly how to execute your plan within the system.
The processes built in for building memberships are very user-friendly. We take you through them. Once we have an idea, such as, “Kevin, you want to build a three-tiered membership,” we’ll show you how to do that.
Once you’ve done it once, it’s kind of a set-it-and-forget-it model. On the monthly memberships, you build that monthly membership package one time. Then, as you sell it, it gives you more time to interact with your customer.
It’s as simple as selling a product. Because the system knows this is a recurring-billed membership, the logic behind it takes care of the questions you asked. You’ve already built it, set it up, and told the software what you want it to be.
By doing that correctly and working with our team to make sure it’s exactly how you want it, you are then offered more time to interact with your customer base.
Kevin Wosmansky: Outstanding. Talk to me about integration. When we talk about memberships, obviously that’s on the shooting range side. Within Trident 1, how does this integrate with the retail side? I’d also like to know more about reporting and metrics.
If I’m that business owner, talk to me about the integration as well as what the reporting looks like.
Jake Newbold: I can take that one. We touched on building your customer’s profile within the system. The system is built so that you have products, customers, and the range. It all feeds together and connects.
When you build the profile of your customer, that can start as simply as scanning a driver’s license. The first time they walk in, we have integrated driver’s license scanning capability. You scan the driver’s license, and it automatically populates key fields like their address and name. Then you can get their phone number, and that is automatically tied to the customer record.
There are so many options within the system. You can get as detailed as you want. Maybe it’s just a walk-in customer who wants to come in, buy something, and leave. But then you have customers who want to buy a membership.
You can automatically set the customer record to the tier they are on. For example, this customer is a silver-tier member. That may come with a 10% discount on product, a discount on ammo and ammunition, or maybe their own locker. However you set it up at the beginning for those tiers, when Jim Smith wants to be a silver member, it’s as quick as checking the silver option. The parameters for what that offers are already set up.
Maybe he’s former military or law enforcement, and you offer a discount there as well. That’s also a quick check: he’s former military, so he gets 20% off.
Once you build that customer record, especially on the membership side, it gives you a lifetime history of the client. You can understand how valuable that client is to you. Is this member coming in and creating challenges for your customers or taking up a lot of your RSO’s time? Or is this a really high spender who stays active and comes in often?
We have all that data right on the customer record. It gives you a snapshot that allows RSOs or salespeople to know things like, “Jim last purchased a rifle, but we don’t see that he has a scope for it yet. Maybe we can offer him a discount on these six scopes we have coming out.”
That helps you upsell and really track the customer or member as they move through your business. Maybe you want to upsell them to a higher tier.
Then, of course, there are renewals. What are your terms for renewing memberships? Do they automatically renew? Is it something you want to notify them about? Probably not. You probably want it to automatically renew.
Our system allows that auto-renewal and also helps prevent a lot of issues we see with customers coming off previous systems, especially issues with automatic card updating. If a card expires or a customer gets a new card, you don’t want to have to call the customer and ask them to come in and give you the new card. Maybe they forgot about the membership and then say, “You know what? Just cancel it.”
Most businesses want some type of automatic updating with as few touches as possible so they do not lose that member. Trident 1 does a great job with robust integrated credit card processing that allows for automatic card updating. That way, you’re not missing recurring payments, and recurring payments are ultimately very valuable to a membership business.
Kevin Wosmansky: That’s great information. Again, recurring payments are kind of the lifeblood of every business: cash flow.
Let me wrap this up here. You guys did a great job answering this. Of course, when you have two industry experts when it comes to guns, shooting ranges, and software, it’s usually not a combination you throw together, but you guys are unique in that way.
Let me drive it home here. For any shooting range out there that is thinking about implementing memberships and looking at software right now, what’s one thing you would recommend? What’s that golden nugget you would tell anyone thinking about setting up memberships for their gun range? What advice would you give them?
Jake Newbold: Do you want to take that one, Daniel?
Kevin Wosmansky: I’m kind of throwing this at you cold here, Daniel.
Daniel Peterson: What would be the main thing I would say to focus on?
Kevin Wosmansky: Yes, when they’re looking for point-of-sale software.
Daniel Peterson: To me, if you can’t have the conversation we just had and get answers that check the box, then you’re in the wrong place. Obviously, you’re looking to fulfill a business model.
First, if they don’t know what you’re talking about, that’s an issue. Second, if it’s not native within the system or if it requires you to step outside of the system, then I think you’re in the wrong place.
In my opinion, it’s important for the shop to be very clear about the business model and know what they’re trying to execute. Then they need to be able to get a response like, “Yes, everything you just said does not scare us because we’ve already considered that, and it exists within the system. It’s not extra.”
There shouldn’t be an additional cost of, “Well, if you want to do this or that…” It should all come from a complete offering from Trident 1. That would probably be the first question that needs to be answered during the investigation of how to execute those memberships.
Kevin Wosmansky: Outstanding. I love getting to talk with you guys, gather this information, and put it out there. Running a gun store and running a shooting range is tough. It’s a hard business.
Obviously, at Trident 1, we support them. That’s what we do. It’s great getting to take your knowledge, especially because you see this across so many different businesses all across the country.
I really appreciate you guys sharing that knowledge.
Jake Newbold: Absolutely. Anytime.
Kevin Wosmansky: All right, gents. Have a good day. We’ll talk to you later.
Daniel Peterson: Yes, sir. You as well.
Jake Newbold: Thanks.
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