General
Fixed Membership Year
By default, memberships are "rolling" - the member's renewal dates can be varied. However for yearly memberships, if your membership year needs to be fixed (eg. it always needs to be Jan 1 to Jan 1), then you can enable and set the fixed anniversary date.
Do note that fixed membership years have several disadvantages. First of all fixed membership years reduce revenue - on average members would pay less than 1 year's dues on signup, while for rolling memberships members always pay a full year's dues when they signup. It can also disincentivize members from joining near the end of the membership year. So your ARPU (Average Revenue Per User/Member) would be reduced as compared to offering rolling memberships.
Secondly, with a fixed membership year you can only offer annual or multi-year billing, you will not be able to offer monthly, quarterly or semi-annual billing. And finally, with a fixed membership year, billing calculations are more complicated and more sensitive to how you configure your settings, so you will need to ensure your settings are all correct.
New Members
This section only applies if you enabled a fixed anniversary year.
In this section you will need to decide what new members pay if they signup partway through the membership year. You can either opt to have the amount pro-rated automatically based on when they signup, or define your own discount schedule.
For example, if your membership year starts on Jan 1, and you want new members to pay 50% if they signup after Jun 1, then you would setup a discount for 50% after Jun 1.
It is important to understand what should happen near the end of the membership year. Many organizations opt to not charge for the last 1-2 months of the membership year and just have the member pay for the next membership year. For example if your membership year starts on Jan 1, and a member signs up on Dec 1, you may not want the member to pay for the remaining 1 month in the current membership year and instead have them just pay for the upcoming membership year. In that case you need to setup a discount of 100% to kick in on Dec 1. The 100% discount applies only to the current membership year's dues, it does not apply to dues for the next membership year.
Once you have setup a discount that results in no amount being due for the current year, the system will automatically just charge the member for the next membership year.
Note that if you use a percentage discount, that percentage will be applied to the cost of the membership add-ons. If you do not want the discount to apply to add-ons, you should use a fixed dollar discount.
Renewals
In this section you can specify the renewal period. The renewal period is the period just before and just after the renewal date for the member, or in the case of fixed membership years, the fixed anniversary date.
During this period:
- Dues for the renewal are charged immediately if the member selects automatic recurring billing or credit card billing. It will not be scheduled for the future if the member selects automatic recurring billing. This ensures that if the member chooses to renew that your organization is guaranteed to receive the renewal dues, whereas a future scheduled automatic payment can fail if the card the member adds is replaced or expires. If the renewal payment is successful, then automatic recurring payment will be scheduled for the following membership period.
- If you have a fixed membership year, for a new member signing up during this period the dues for the next membership year is automatically added to the payment.
- If a member upgrades/downgrades during this period, there is no additional upgrade/downgrade fee. The member would just pay the new rate for the next membership period.
Note that the renewal period is specified as a percentage. So if the billing interval is annual, then it would be that percentage of 1 year. If the billing interval is monthly, then it would be a percentage of 1 month.
Upgrades/Downgrades
A member can upgrade or downgrade anytime, not just during renewal. When a member upgrades outside the renewal period, you will need to decide how the member should pay for that upgrade. Note that downgrades would be free regardless, no refund is issued for downgrades.
Also note that adding or removing membership add-ons is considered an upgrade or downgrade if there is a change in billing amounts.
For upgrades you can either choose to have the cost be pro-rated automatically, or charge the price between the old billing amount or new billing amount. We recommend allowing the system to pro-rate, as this provides the most equitable calculation for your members under all circumstances. If you choose to charge the price difference, do note:
- If the member upgrades to an option with a different billing interval (eg. from yearly to monthly), the price difference is not adjusted for the billing interval. It will still be the price difference.
- If you have a fixed membership year, you can specify a discount schedule to provide partial year discounts. Otherwise members may be charged the full price difference even when there is just a small fraction left on the current membership year. The discount schedule works the same way as described in the New Members section.
- For rolling memberships, the system may opt to reset the member's renewal date and restart at the new level. For example, if the member upgrades 2 months before their membership expires, it may not make sense to charge the price difference for the upgrade to cover just 2 months. It may be cheaper (on an adjusted basis) to discard the remaining 2 months of membership and restart at the new price.
For downgrades if you had selected pro-rating the amount of "credit" the member would have is pro-rated according to the remaining time of their old membership. If you had selected price difference, the amount of "credit" would be the difference between the old billing amount and the new billing amount. By default the credit is capped to the current billing period - if the amount of credit exceeds the membership dues for the current period, the leftover credit will be discarded. You can opt to allow the credits to be used for as many billing periods as possible to minimize the amount of credit that would be discarded. However keep in mind that if there are large differences in price between your memberships and add-ons, a member could end up being allocated multiple years of membership when they downgrade from a high price membership to a relatively low price membership. For example, if one membership is $10/year and another is $100/year, a member downgrading from $100/year membership to $10/year membership after 6 months would receive 5 years of membership at the $10/year level.
Past Due Charges
For expired members, if they choose to renew, you can decide whether the members should still pay for the entire period they are past due, or pay for the past due period up to a maximum amount (for example, you can opt to charge upto 1 month), or just forgive the past due period.
Note that the options for restarting the membership only applies when the member is past due beyond the renewal period.
When a membership is restarted, the member would be charged the following:
- The maximum amount to charge for past due period (if you opt to include past due period upto a maximum amount), plus
- Dues applicable for a new member if signing up today, plus
- Late payment fee (if specified)
So the maximum past due amount and late payment fee can both be included. You should specify a late payment fee if you want to charge a fixed fee for late payments, as the maximum past due amount would not apply until the pro-rated value of the past due period exceeds that amount.
Note that when a membership is restarted, the dues would not include any application fees or trial periods that may apply to actual new members. Only discount codes enabled for renewals/upgrades can be applied, discount codes only enabled for new members cannot be used.