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PatronManager October/November 2026 Release Notes: https://help.patronmanager.com/a/2136873
We're excited to share the October/November 2026 PatronManager release, featuring Gift Memberships (just in time for the holiday season!) and a new option to set a Discount limit on the Event or Instance, plus a handful of membership improvements.
In this release:
Let's take a look!
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Gift Memberships
Your supporters can now buy a membership for a friend or family member right on your Public Ticketing Site, and schedule it to arrive on a meaningful date like a birthday or holiday. It's a brand new way to welcome members; the recipient becomes a member in their own right while the order stays with the buyer.
Pro tip: you can offer an automatic member discount on gift membership Price Levels, to encourage your existing members to buy gifts for their friends!
What buyers see:
- Gift memberships show a "Gift Membership" label and gift icon, making it clear what they're buying.
- Note: if you've relabeled the "Membership" link on the PTS (as described in this article), your custom label will appear here instead of "membership".
- Buyers will enter the recipient's name and email, an optional personal message, and the date they'd like the gift delivered on a designated "Gift Details" step in the checkout flow.
- The buyer's order confirmation email lists the gift recipient's name, email, and delivery date alongside the membership, so they have a record of what they sent and when.
Gift memberships are always emailed to the recipient. If the order includes other items, the Delivery page lets buyers know that gift items will be delivered via email.
What happens next:
- PatronManager creates the recipient's member Benefit record with a Start Date matching the delivery date. Until that date, the Benefit shows as Upcoming, so member perks like discounts kick in on the day the gift arrives, not before.
- On the delivery date, PatronManager automatically sends the recipient your branded gift email. (Gifts scheduled for today go out within about five minutes.)
- You can resend the gift email any time on or after the delivery date with the new Email Gift Membership button on the recipient's Benefit record.
If you use PatronPortal, the gift email can include merge fields with the recipient's portal login link and username. First-time Portal users will receive a separate email with a link to set up their password.
Getting started:
- Create your gift delivery email template(s) in Membership Communications on the new Gift Membership Delivery tab. Merge fields let you include the recipient's name, the buyer's name, their personal message, the membership level and expiration date, and Portal login details.
- If you use Digital Membership Cards, add the card merge field to your gift delivery email. The separate Digital Membership Card email doesn't send for gift memberships, so the gift email is how recipients get their card.
- Set a Gift Delivery Email Template on each Benefit Level you'd like to offer as a gift. You can customize different templates for each, or reuse the same one.
- Set Giftable to Gift only on each Membership Price Level you'd like to sell as a gift. Gift memberships can't auto-renew, so make sure Auto-renewal is turned off.
Pro tip: you can sell gift membership Price Levels intermingled with non-gift membership options, or set up a special membership just for gifts and link to that option from the details of your primary membership offering. It all depends how you want it to look to buyers on the Public Ticketing Site!
Good to know:
- In this release, you can sell gift memberships online only.
- PatronManager Box Office doesn't support exchanging gift memberships at this time.
- If you refund a gift membership in the box office, PatronManager cancels the recipient's membership and the buyer receives their money back.
- If you have reports, list views, or automations that filter on a Benefit's Effective Status, you may want to account for the new "Upcoming" value.
Spread Member Discounts Across Events
Want to give members two free tickets per show, up to 10 per year, or two discounted admission tickets per visit? You can now cap how many times a member's automatic discount applies per Event or per Instance, not just across their whole membership.
This encourages members to attend throughout the year, helps you build self-enforcing membership parameters, and protects revenue on your biggest shows.
A new Member Limits section on the Discount Code gathers your member usage settings in one place, including two new options:
- Maximum Uses Per Ticketable Event limits how many items are discounted for a member across all dates of an event. This works particularly well for performing arts, and also applies to Retail Categories and Subscriptions.
- Maximum Uses Per Event Instance limits how many discounted items a member can receive for a single date or time slot. This is good for museum admission, and also applies to Retail Products and Subscription packages.
Good to know:
- You can use either new limit on its own or combine it with the existing Member Usage Limit (the cap across the whole membership), but you can't use both new limits on the same Discount Code.
- If you combine them, the overall Member Usage Limit should be higher than the per-Event or per-Instance limit.
- When you refund or exchange a discounted item, the member gets that use back.
Additional Enhancements
Membership Start Dates: Every Benefit now has a Start Date. PatronManager fills it in with the Created Date for your existing Benefits and for new purchases, and you can set or edit it yourself on any Benefit, just like the Expiration Date.
If you import Benefit records, be sure to include the Start Date.
Refreshed Benefit Records: Benefit records have a cleaner layout with an at-a-glance status badge (Upcoming, Active, Expired, or Canceled).
Quicker Access to Benefits in the Box Office: Membership items in PatronManager Box Office now link directly to their Benefit record.
That's all for this release!
Do you have ideas for new PatronManager features or want to tell us about a part of the system where you'd like to see updates?
Log in to the Client Community to suggest and vote on Product Ideas, track suggestions your organization has given us in the past, see what's planned and in progress, and much more. Read All About Product Ideas to get started!
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