What should be in your clinic's loyalty program terms and conditions?

A clinic's loyalty program terms and conditions should set out, in one place, how points or benefits are earned and redeemed, whether and when they expire, what happens if a membership lapses or is cancelled, how the clinic can change the program, and who a client contacts with a dispute. A clinic that skips writing these down is the one fielding the complaint the day a client's expectation does not match what actually happens.

Updated 2 October 2026

What should a clinic's loyalty terms and conditions actually cover?

A loyalty or membership terms and conditions page does not need to be long, but it does need to answer five questions before a client, or a staff member at the front desk, ever has to guess at the answer. Terms are the written half of designing a clinic loyalty program.

1. How points or benefits are earned. What spend, visit or action actually counts, and whether every service qualifies or only some do.
2. How they are redeemed. Minimum balances, blackout periods on promotions or new launches, and whether a reward can be combined with a discount.
3. Whether they expire. A fixed date, a rolling inactivity window, or no expiry at all. Should your clinic's loyalty points expire? covers how to choose between the three.
4. What happens on cancellation or lapse. Whether an already-earned balance survives a membership ending, and for how long.
5. How and when the clinic can change the program. Covered in detail below, since it is the term that generates the most pushback when it is missing.

Why does a clinic loyalty program need written terms at all?

An unwritten program runs on whatever the last staff member told a client, and two staff members rarely give the same answer to the same question. One client hears that points never expire, another is told they lapse after a year, and neither answer was ever actually decided, just improvised at the desk.

Written terms exist for the one moment they get tested, a redemption dispute, a cancelled membership, a client who feels a rule changed without warning. Handling a cosmetic clinic client complaint covers the in-the-moment response; terms and conditions are what the clinic reaches for to know what it actually promised in the first place.

What should the terms say about changing or ending the program?

This is the section clinics skip most often, and the one that causes the most damage when it is missing. A program with no stated change process leaves a clinic with two bad options when it genuinely needs to adjust: quietly change the rules and risk a client noticing the difference, or announce a change with no framework for how it applies to balances clients already hold.

The terms should state plainly that the clinic can update the program, that changes apply from the change date forward, and that a benefit or balance a client already earned under the old terms is honoured rather than stripped retroactively. This is the same principle the points-expiry guide sets out for a new expiry policy specifically, applied to the program as a whole.

If the program is ever paused rather than changed, for example during a temporary clinic closure, that is a clinic policy decision the terms should also anticipate rather than leave as an improvised call in the moment. Keeping clients through a temporary clinic closure covers that specific scenario.

Where should a clinic publish its loyalty terms and conditions?

At one stable, linkable web address, not a printed flyer that goes out of date the moment a rule changes and not a verbal explanation at the front desk that a client has no way to check back against later. That one address should then be linked from everywhere the program is mentioned: the sign-up moment, the clinic's website footer, and inside the branded client app.

This is a different document to the clinic's privacy policy, which covers how client data is collected and stored under the Australian Privacy Principles rather than how a loyalty program itself is run. Privacy Act obligations for cosmetic clinics covers that separate, legally mandated requirement.

Is a clinic legally required to have loyalty program terms and conditions in Australia?

Not as a named, standalone requirement. But the Australian Consumer Law's general prohibition on misleading or deceptive conduct, and its unfair contract terms provisions for standard form contracts, apply to how a loyalty program is actually described and run, whether or not a clinic has written anything down. A verbal promise that points never expire, followed by a policy that quietly expires them, is the kind of gap those provisions exist to catch.

Writing the terms down does not create a new legal obligation, it is how a clinic demonstrates it applied the one it already has. If a reward is ever redeemable against a Schedule 4 injectable treatment, the usual advertising and discounting rules still apply on top of this, including the requirement in the AHPRA advertising guidelines to state the terms of any gift, discount or inducement, covered in full in can clinics discount injectables in Australia? This is general information, not legal advice; a clinic should have its own drafting checked against current ACL guidance.

Written loyalty terms are not paperwork for its own sake. They are the document a clinic points to the one time a client's expectation and the program's actual rule do not match.

Clinic App does not draft a clinic's loyalty terms and conditions. But the policy a clinic actually sets, points value, expiry window, tier rules, runs live inside the client's branded app rather than sitting only on a page nobody reads, the same principle behind how an expiry countdown is shown to the client directly.

Zoe Wogan

Founder, Clinic App

Zoe co-founded Clinic App and works hands-on with cosmetic and skin clinics across Australia on patient retention, memberships and loyalty that keeps clinics on the right side of the TGA.