What a package is

A client is starting a course of treatments and would rather pay once than six times. You'd rather have the six payments now. That's a package.

They buy a bundle up front — six blow-dries, ten sessions, a course of facials — and draw it down visit by visit until it's gone.

Two screens, two nouns

Packages → Plans is what you sell. A plan is "5-pack Blowout, $180, includes five blow-dries". You build it once.

Packages is what people have bought. One row per client per purchase, with how many sessions are left and when it runs out.

The names are close enough to catch people out, so: if you're changing a price, you want Plans. If you're answering "how many does Nina have left?", you want Packages.

How it differs from a membership

Both let a client pay ahead. The difference is what happens next month.

A membership charges again. It's a standing arrangement, and it stops when somebody stops it. A package is bought once and runs down to zero, then nothing happens — there's no renewal to forget about and nothing to cancel.

That difference decides which one fits:

• Something with a natural end — a course of six, a treatment series, a wedding package — is a package.
• Something that repeats indefinitely — a monthly gloss, a fortnightly blow-dry — is a membership.

A client who stops paying a membership stops being a member. A client with three sessions left has three sessions left, whatever else changes.

What the money means

The money arrives before the service does. That's the appeal, and it's also the catch: an unredeemed package is work you have already been paid for and still owe.

That's not a bookkeeping abstraction — it's Saturday. Ten people with unused packages are ten appointments already paid for, competing for columns you can no longer sell. The outstanding packages report is where that liability is visible, and it's worth looking at before you sell a hundred of anything.