Managing New Members Using Dashboard > Membership
The Dashboard > Membership page allows you to pull up new members quickly so you can take action. From Dashboard > Membership, select the date range to view in the top left corner. The "New Members" box will display all members who joined in that date range. You can click on each name in the list to pull up that account, or you can also click on the box title to pull up all the accounts listed in order to email them as a group or export their information.
Managing New Members Using Membership Level Actions
You can use membership level actions as part of your workflow to approve new members, or to separate your members into different chapters. Membership level actions are set up under each membership level in Labels & Membership > Membership Levels.
Creating A Process For Approving New Members
You can use membership level actions to manage your member approval process by having new members added to a separate folder from members who have already been approved.
To do this you should first create a folder to place your pending members. Then go to the Actions tab in each membership level. In the "On signup add to" section select the pending members folder instead of the "Members" folder and save your changes. Note that the selected folder(s) will be highlighted in blue.
Once this is set up members who join will automatically be placed in the pending members folder. Once they have completed your approval process you can approve them by moving the account to the Members and/or appropriate approved member folder(s).
For billing the simplest option is to allow us to process the payment when the member joins, and refund the payment only if the member is not approved. This is ideal if your rejection rates are low.
The second option is to use Automatic Recurring Billing and setup a trial period to allow for the approval process. With Automatic Recurring Billing, new members will be required to enter a credit card, but with the trial period, their card will not be charged until the trial period ends. If the member is not approved, you can simply cancel the membership billing to prevent the user from being charged. If approved, move the member into the appropriate folder without changing their membership billing, they will automatically be billed at the end of the trial period. You can also adjust the renewal date if you need the charge to occur sooner (note that it can still take 1 business day for most payment gateways).
The third option is to allow members to sign up without a credit card using a separate free membership level. Once approved, change the member's membership level to the appropriate level, and ask the member to sign in on your website to make a payment. This is not recommended as it requires additional effort from the member and final conversion rates will be lower.