Your customers don't have to pay for things one at a time. A season of sessions, the joining fee and a branded hoodie go into one basket and are paid for in a single checkout, which means fewer abandoned purchases and one payment to reconcile instead of three.
Where to Find This
There's nothing to switch on. The basket is part of every published page on your site: a round basket button appears in the bottom-right corner as soon as a customer adds something, with a count on it, and opens a Your basket panel.
What you do control lives in two places:
- Website Editor: each pricing card decides whether it offers a basket button (see Choosing Which Buttons a Card Shows below).
- What you sell → Plans and packs → the plan → Who can buy: each plan's purchase rules and its joining-fee behaviour. See Purchase Rules: Who Can Buy a Plan.
If your site shows the WhatsApp chat button, the basket button sits above it rather than fighting it for the corner.
What Customers Can Put In One Basket
The rules the checkout enforces:
- One subscription per basket. A second one is refused with "Only one subscription can be bought at a time: check this one out, then add the next.", whether the customer tries to add it or reaches checkout with two. A subscription card also hides its Add to basket button while the basket already holds one.
- Up to 50 lines in a basket. Where a subscription is present, no more than 20 one-off lines can ride with it (a delivery charge counts as one of them); over that, the customer is asked to check out in two baskets.
- Signing in. Sessions, memberships and fees are recorded against a customer account, so the basket asks the customer to sign in before checkout. A merch-only basket stays guest-friendly, exactly as the store always has.
- Nothing is reserved by adding to the basket. Places are held in the same moment the customer presses Checkout, so an abandoned basket can never starve a session of capacity.
Buying one thing in one hop is still the fastest path, and every card keeps its ordinary Buy Now / Enrol / Choose … button by default. The basket is there for the customer buying a season pack, the joining fee and a kit together.
The Joining Fee That Adds Itself
If you sell a once-per-family joining or registration fee (a product whose purchase rule is set to the whole family, see Purchase Rules), it is added to a signed-in customer's basket automatically the first time they add something that counts as joining. The line is labelled Once per family, followed by a note that it was added for them, Added for new families where your site books for children or students, Added for new households for pets, Added for new accounts for vehicles. The customer can remove it, in which case it isn't re-added for the rest of their visit.
What counts as "something that counts as joining" is any priced thing you sell: a season pack, a camp, a single camp day, a one-off bought from a card, a membership. Shop items don't: a basket holding nothing but merchandise isn't a customer joining, so no fee is added to it.
Two things keep it honest:
- A customer who has already paid it never has it added again, and the fee's own card reads Already paid.
- Plans where you've ticked Do not add the joining fee when someone buys this (under More options in Who can buy) don't trigger it, and that's how a taster session avoids charging a joining fee to someone who hasn't joined yet. It still arrives with their first ordinary purchase. A basket holding only exempt items stays fee-free; add a season pack, a camp or a membership to it and the fee appears.
The fee no longer depends on the basket. A customer who buys straight from a card picks it up as a second line on the secure payment page. The routes are Buy Now, Subscribe, enrolling from the booking window and claiming a paid waitlist place. On a monthly membership, the fee is charged with their first payment. Same fee, same once-per-account rule, whichever route they take. See Account Fees: Joining and Registration Charges.
Choosing Which Buttons a Card Shows
By default a pricing card shows both its own purchase button and Add to basket beneath it. To change that for a card:
- 1
Open the page in the Website Editor and select the card
Click the card inside your Stripe Plans or One-Off Services block.
- 2
Find Purchase Buttons in the settings panel
It's in the Button Styling section on a plan card, and the Button section on a one-off service card. Choose Both (the default), Buy / enrol, or Basket. The caption reads "Choose which buttons this card shows: buy, add to basket, or both."
- 3
Style the basket button if you want to
Basket Button Background sits just below, with Basket Button Text Color on a plan card (Basket Button Text on a one-off service card). Leave them blank and the button stays an outline version of your main button colour; set a background and it becomes a solid button.
The Purchase Buttons choice doesn't appear on a card bound to a season pack or camp price. That card's button opens the booking window, which offers Add to basket itself, after the location, sessions and attendee have been chosen, which is the only point at which a basket line can carry them. One button on the card, not two.
A card also hides its basket button on its own when a basket line isn't possible: when the customer has already bought a once-per-account product, when the pack has ended, or when their basket already holds a subscription and this card sells one. It falls back to the ordinary purchase button rather than showing nothing.
What Your Customer Sees at Checkout
Each session or pack line names who it is for, the venue, the day and time and how many sessions. Under that it says Starts Sun 8 Nov, the date of its first session. For a pack you sell as Next session only, that is the next session the person can join, which can be later than the next session the class runs (a child too young for the nearer sessions, say). A camp sold by the day lists the days chosen, such as Tue 27 Oct, Wed 28 Oct. See Plans & Booking Quotas for the When can customers start? setting.
The basket panel totals everything as Subtotal, or Due today when a subscription is in it, with the ongoing charge spelled out underneath ("then £30.00/month until you cancel"). Delivery is noted only when something in the basket actually ships.
If a pack can only be partly filled, the basket stops before payment with a yellow notice headed Some dates aren't included. The notice:
- names the pack
- says how many sessions the customer is getting
- says which dates have no space
- says if they have been put on the waiting list for those dates
They press Continue to payment to go on. The notice appears when either of these is true:
- some sessions are full and the pack is set to Book what is available when some sessions are full
- some places are held for subscribers moving into the new season
Checkout takes them to your secure Stripe payment page. On their return the basket empties and they see Order confirmed!. Backing out without paying leaves the basket untouched and releases any places that were held.
What Gets Emailed
The confirmation your customer receives now matches what they actually bought:
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A basket holding at least one session, membership, credit pack or fee sends one email. Its subject starts "Your order is confirmed" and ends with your business name. The email lists every line with its own amount, then the total. Each line says what it means:
- sessions booked
- membership active
- credits added
- registration recorded
- a shop order following separately
A session or pack line also gets:
- First session
- Last session, when the pack has more than one session
- Where, the venue's name
- Joining instructions, what you wrote under How to find the door for that venue, left out if you wrote nothing
See Creating Locations.
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A basket of shop items only doesn't get that email at all. It goes through your store's own checkout, so the buyer receives the ordinary store receipt, unchanged from before the shared basket existed. Its subject starts "Order confirmed" and ends with your business name and the order number. It lists items, shipping and total.
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An enrolment is a season pack, a camp, a season subscription or a claimed waitlist place. Bought alone or in a basket, it gets enrolment wording. The email says "You're enrolled", followed by the sessions booked, the first and last dates and the venue. It never talks about credits to use or a date to book by, because there's nothing left to book.
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A credit product keeps the familiar credit confirmation, with the credits granted and their expiry.
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A once-per-account fee charged alongside another purchase is named on that same receipt, so the customer can see what the extra amount was.
Sometimes a line couldn't be fulfilled after payment, for example a session that filled up in the seconds between paying and booking. That line is refunded automatically and named on the receipt: "This couldn't be fulfilled, so we've refunded it." A further line says the money is on its way back to your card. The rest of the order stands.
Merchandise bought in a mixed basket still becomes a normal store order. It appears on the Orders tab of your Money screen and keeps its own stock, shipping and dispatch emails. It also shows under Orders in the customer's Plans. See Store Orders: Sending, Tracking and Cancelling and Setting Up Your Merch Store.
Tips
- Sell the fee, not the friction. Leave the joining fee to add itself rather than asking new customers to find its card.
- Keep both buttons on your headline products. The single-purchase button converts fastest; the basket button captures the second and third purchase.
- Check your season cards. A pack card intentionally shows one button. If you were expecting an Add to basket on the card itself, it's inside the booking window instead.
Related Articles
- Account Fees: Joining and Registration Charges - Setting up the once-per-account fee and keeping it off tasters
- Purchase Rules: Who Can Buy a Plan - Per-product "who is this for?", purchase limits and joining-fee behaviour
- Assisted Checkouts (Phone & Counter Bookings) - Make the same basket for a customer from their screen and send them a payment link
- Setting Up Your Merch Store - Products and shipping for physical goods
- Store Orders: Sending, Tracking and Cancelling - Where the shop orders in a mixed basket end up
- Plans & Booking Quotas - Season packs, camps and what a purchase books
- Automated Notifications - Every email the platform sends on your behalf