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Understand Your Configuration
Our system can be set-up to handle membership renewals in a few different ways, so it is important to understand a few key points about memberships.
- We create a new membership record, which is like a membership card, each time someone renews.
- Membership records are generated when a person visits the renewal page and confirms that they want to renew their membership
Here is how to renew an existing membership:
- To renew an existing member visits the online renewal page and confirms that they want to renew their membership.
- Members can only renew if they either have an unrenewed membership for the current year or they are renewing for the next year on or after the next renewal date.
- Confirming the renewal online is just the first step. The renewal then also has to be “processed” where we end the current membership record by adding an date to it and create a new membership record with the start, expiry and next renewal dates incremented by 1 year.
When renewals are actually processed depends on the set-up of your specific association.
- Most associations choose to only process the renewal when payment is received. In this scenario, they auto-process renewal for online credit / debit card payments and queue renewals in pending mode for other payment types.
- However some associations choose to auto-process all payment types right away.
- In rare circumstances, some associations choose to put all renewals in pending mode, regardless of payment type.
What happens after a membership expires can also vary based on the association’s set-up.
- By default, after a membership expires the member will only be able to access the renewal page when logged on.
- Some associations add a grace period that lets members access the full member area for a set time after a person’s membership expires.
- Less frequently an association may choose to ignore the expiry date and allow members to have full membership benefits until a staff member manually disables or ends the membership record. This requires a manual override in the code.