Pricing a prepaid package without losing money
A ten-visit pass is the most reliable way a small business can get paid before it does the work. It is also the easiest place to give away more margin than you meant to, because the discount is buried in a round number.
Work out what you are actually discounting
'Ten coffees for the price of nine' is a 10% discount. 'Ten for €28 instead of €32' is 12.5%. Round numbers hide real differences, so calculate the percentage before you commit to the price.
The useful frame: you are buying certainty and cash flow, and the discount is what you are paying for them. Ten to fifteen percent is the range most independent businesses can carry. Above twenty, you are usually funding a discount for people who would have come anyway.
The exception is a genuinely new customer. A package that converts a first-timer into ten guaranteed visits is worth a bigger discount than one sold to a daily regular, because you are buying a relationship rather than pre-selling one you already have.
Size the package to the habit, not the invoice
Bigger packages get you more cash today and worse outcomes later. A twenty-visit pass sold to someone who visits fortnightly takes ten months to use, and an unfinished package is a customer with a grievance.
Aim for something the customer will finish in about three months. For a daily coffee habit that might be twenty; for a monthly treatment, five is plenty.
Remember the money is not yours yet
Cash from a prepaid package is a liability until the visits are delivered. Spending it as revenue is how a good month becomes a bad quarter — you have already been paid for work you still have to do, at cost, in a future where your prices may have risen.
Track outstanding balances as what they are: services you owe. Wivly shows the total on the analytics page for exactly this reason. If that number is growing faster than you are delivering, you are borrowing from your future self.
Check the rules where you trade, too. Stored-value balances above certain thresholds are regulated in some jurisdictions, and expiry dates on prepaid credit are restricted or banned in many.
Do not stack it with the loyalty card
A customer on a discounted prepaid package who also earns stamps toward a free item is getting the discount twice. Usually that is not intended, and it turns a 12% package into a 20% one.
Decide which programme a prepaid customer is in, and say so on the card. Most businesses do better keeping prepaid for the price-sensitive committed customer and the stamp card for everyone else.