When you cap how often something can be bought — a joining fee once per account, a paid taster once per child — Bizzly keeps count. Purchase eligibility on a customer's record shows you that count, so you can answer "why can't they buy this?" in seconds. It's also where you record a purchase someone made before they were on Bizzly, so a customer you've just brought across isn't asked to pay their joining fee a second time.
Where to Find This
Navigate to Services → Customers → All Customers → Contacts tab and click a customer's row (the arrow at the end of the row is labelled View details). Their window opens with their name at the top; scroll past Contact and their profiles to the Purchase eligibility heading.
Underneath the heading is the line that governs everything here: "Once-only and limited offers. Marking records a purchase made before Bizzly — it never charges, refunds, or creates a transaction."
The section only appears when you actually sell something limited — an account fee, or a product with How many times can it be bought? set. If none of your products are capped there's nothing to show, and the section isn't there. Set those caps on the products screen; see Purchase Rules: Who a Purchase Is For.
Any admin can read this list, whatever your plan — you need to be able to see why a customer is being refused. Recording a previous purchase is a Standard-plan feature: on the base plan the buttons aren't shown and a line reads "Recording previous purchases is available on the Standard plan." Team members on a restricted role don't see the section at all.
Reading the List
Each offer appears with its name, then the rule underneath it in plain words — for example Once per account, Once per member, or Up to 3 times per member, within a rolling window of 12 months.
Below the rule come the rows it applies to:
- An offer for the whole account shows a single row, This account.
- An offer for one member shows a row for each child, pet or vehicle on the account. If there are none yet, the section says "No profiles on file to mark against yet."
Each row's state is one of:
Recording a Purchase Made Before Bizzly
- 1
Find the row and click the button
On a once-only offer the button reads Mark as previously purchased. Where the limit is more than one it reads Record previous purchase, and stays available until the allowance is used up — an offer allowed three times may need two old purchases recorded.
- 2
Fill in the date and an optional note
A small form opens on that row with today's date filled in. Change the date paid to when they actually paid, and add a note if it helps — "paid by bank transfer, Sept 2024", "carried over from the old system".
- 3
Click Record
On a once-only offer the row switches to Previously purchased · Recorded, with the date beside it. On an offer allowed more than once the row shows how much of the allowance is now gone — Used 1 of 3 — and the button stays there so you can record another. Cancel closes the form without recording anything.
From that moment the customer is treated as having paid: your account fee stops being added to their basket and their purchases, and a capped offer counts this against their allowance.
Recording is bookkeeping, not money. It never takes a payment, never issues a refund, and never creates a transaction in Stripe — it only tells Bizzly the purchase happened. Nothing appears in your payments list as a result.
Undoing a record
A row you recorded carries a Remove record button. Click it and the marking is deleted — the row goes back to Available, and the customer can buy the thing again. Only records you added can be removed; a real purchase made through Bizzly stays.
Fees You Set Up Before Purchase Rules Existed
If your joining fee has been in your catalogue for a while, it may predate Bizzly's purchase-rule settings. It still works — customers are still only charged it once — and it now appears in this list like any other once-only offer, described as Once per account.
Marking it works exactly the same way: click Mark as previously purchased, set the date, click Record. Bizzly quietly sets the fee's rule up for you in the same step, so there's no detour through the products screen first.
Moved an existing customer base over? This is the job you'll do most often — mark the joining fee as previously paid on each record you've brought across, and none of them will be asked for it again. If you're bringing customers in from a spreadsheet, the customer import can record their fee for you as they arrive, so check Importing Customers From a Spreadsheet first rather than working through the records one by one.
If Something Goes Wrong
- "Purchase eligibility could not be loaded." — the list couldn't be read. Click Try again.
- "The list could not refresh — the states below may be out of date." with a Reload link — your change was saved, but the refreshed list didn't arrive. Reload to see the current states.
- "The change could not be saved." — the record wasn't created; nothing changed. Try again.
Tips
- Check here before you argue with a customer. "Already paid — once per family" on your website and Previously purchased here are the same fact, seen from the two ends.
- Record the date they really paid, not today's — it's what you'll want when someone queries it a year later.
- Marking is per member for per-member offers. Marking a paid taster as used for one child leaves their sibling free to take theirs.
Related Articles
- Account Fees: Joining and Registration Charges - The once-per-account fee this is most often used for
- Purchase Rules: Who a Purchase Is For - Setting the caps this list counts against
- Your Customer List - The customer list this record lives in
- How the Basket and Checkout Work - What a customer sees when an allowance is used up