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September 2025 Release Notes: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1984374
The latest PatronManager release is here! This update is designed to help you boost revenue, simplify membership management, and give your patrons even more flexible ticketing options.
Here’s what’s new:
- Membership auto-renewal — sell memberships with optional or required automatic renewal to increase retention and save valuable staff time.
- Non-timed ticketing — offer tickets with a date but no specific time, plus custom labels like “Afternoon” or “All Day” for maximum flexibility. This new feature is fully compatible with Mobile Wallets, unlocking Mobile Ticketing for even more use cases.
- Membership Hub — manage your entire membership program in one convenient place.
- Other enhancements — deactivate Benefit Levels when needed and add custom checkout fields more easily than ever.
Whether you’re focused on growing memberships, streamlining ticketing, or refining your patron experience, these updates are built to make your work simpler and more impactful. Let’s dive in!
Have you filed a Product Idea lately?
This release delivers 30 Ideas suggested and upvoted by clients just like you. Help shape the future of PatronManager by sharing your Ideas today!
Prefer watching to reading?
Join us at the Release Webinar on Thursday September 18 at 3:00 PM Eastern to see these updates in action and ask questions, live!
Coming soon in beta: Facility Rental Management
Do you rent space in your venue? Would you like to track and manage those rentals in PatronManager and keep all your data in one place? Great news - soon you can!
We'll be launching this exciting new feature through a limited early-access beta soon. Make sure you've upvoted this Product Idea, then stay tuned!
Membership Auto-Renewal
Your membership program just got a whole lot easier! With Membership Auto-Renewal, you can boost renewals, reduce staff workload, and give members a seamless experience.
Paired with the automatic credit card updater that comes built in to our Merchant Services solution, this feature ensures your memberships continue smoothly—no more chasing expired cards or sending last-minute reminders.
Why You’ll Love It
- Drive renewals & revenue automatically
- Save staff time with fewer manual tasks
- Make things simple for members (no interruptions, no hassle)
Enabling Auto-Renewal
First you'll check the Membership Auto-renewal Email Template and edit if needed.
Here's a sample of the default (the Renewal Details section is dynamic and can't be customized, but the highlighted text before and after is fully editable):
We recommend specifying how members can reach you if they have questions.
Then you'll control how auto-renewal is offered on each Membership Price Level:
- Disabled – No auto-renewal option (default)
- Optional: Default Off – Members can opt in
- Optional: Default On – Members are auto-enrolled unless they opt out
- Required – Always renews automatically (members can’t opt out)
Example: Offer a discounted price for members who commit to auto-renew by creating a special lower-cost “auto-renew required” price level.
Changing the Auto-Renewal settings will only affect future membership sales. It will not impact memberships you've already sold.
Q: Can I make an existing membership auto-renew?
A: Not directly. Auto-renewal can only be set up at the time of purchase, since it requires the member’s consent and is tied to specific background processing.
For your current members, we recommend using Member Renewal Reminders to encourage timely renewals. Going forward, you can encourage (or even require) auto-renewal when selling memberships so more of your base renews automatically.
A Fresh, Clear Checkout Experience
Members see simple messages and controls during checkout so they know exactly what’s happening:
- A bold message during purchase and in the cart (e.g. “Automatically renews every year”)
- A note on the credit card payment screen confirming their membership will renew using that card
Auto-renewal requires payment with a credit card. Gift cards and other payment methods are disabled for auto-renewing memberships.
Portal Updates for Members
We’ve modernized the Membership Renewal tab with cleaner, friendlier copy for patrons and new badge indicators on the membership for clarity:
-
Pending Renewal (blue)
- Auto-renewing memberships clearly show the renewal date and a button to cancel if needed.
- Active – Expires in X Days (yellow)
- Expired (red)
Whether/when a membership appears in the Membership Renewal Tab is determined by the visibility settings for Portal in PatronTicket Settings.
Behind the Scenes
- Pending Renewal Orders are automatically created 30 days before expiration around 9am local time
- Members receive an auto-renewal email notification at that time with renewal details (renewal date, card on file, membership name, etc.)
- If auto-renewal fails, your Benefit Administrator is notified with clear error messages and next steps
- New report shows all active auto-renewing memberships, so nothing slips through the cracks
Canceling Auto-Renewal
Flexibility is built in: members can cancel auto-renewal via Portal, and your team can cancel from the Benefit record or the Pending Renewal Order.
Once auto-renewal is canceled, future renewals stop and renewal reminders remain disabled.
Key Notes
- Auto-renewal only works with memberships sold through PatronManager’s built-in membership feature (not Benefits created manually or through custom automation).
- Orders that contain an auto-renewal must have contact info (first name, last name, email) and must be paid with a credit card.
- Renewal reminders are suppressed automatically for auto-renewing memberships (members will instead receive the auto-renewal notification email 30 days in advance).
- Auto-renewal is not yet supported for exchanges. If you want to swap an existing membership for one that will auto-renew, refund and process a new order instead.
- For clients in Canada only: auto-renewing memberships must currently be sold online (not through the box office) due to limitations related to some Canadian payment methods.
Ready to get started?
It's as easy as one, two, three:
- Review and customize your Membership Auto-Renewal email template
- Decide how you want to offer auto-renewal for each Membership Price Level
- Start selling memberships that renew themselves!
Non-Timed Ticketing
Great news for museums, galleries, and other organizations offering all-day or partial-day admission: you can now create Non-Timed Tickets!
This feature makes it easier to sell day passes and things like parking passes without requiring a specific time slot — and it unlocks the use of Mobile Tickets for these types of events.
On any Event Instance, just check the new Non-Timed box.
- On Mobile Tickets, only the date will display (no time) and the Section label will read Type to keep things flexible.
- Tickets will appear on a member’s lock screen starting the morning of the event date and expire at the end of that day.
Instead of displaying a specific time, tickets will now show a clear label (“Admission” by default).
Want a custom label? Use the Non-Timed Label field (up to 30 characters) to replace the default “Admission” text.
Note that this label is only editable if your Event is set to Date/Time View.
On Mobile Tickets, only the date will display (no time) and the Section label will read Type to keep things flexible.
Pro tip: name your Allocation clearly to tell the buyer when to arrive, if that matters (as in the "Afternoon Admission" example image above). The Allocation appears on the Mobile Ticket but the timeslot label does not.
Tickets will appear on a member’s lock screen starting the morning of the event date and expire at the end of that day.
Key Details
- Dates are still required — this isn’t for multi-day passes, but it works perfectly for all-day admission or morning vs. afternoon entry.
- If your Ticketable Event is set to List view, the Non-Timed Label field is read-only (times don’t appear on the Public Ticketing Site in List view). Use the Event Instance Name to get specific instead.
- Name your Allocations clearly if there is a time window for arrival
Membership Hub
Introducing: the brand new PatronMembership Hub!
Like the PatronTicket Hub and the PatronDonate Hub, this landing page and the related "PMGR Membership" app are designed to give membership managers all the tools they need in one convenient place.
Find it by looking for "PMGR Membership" in the App Launcher (waffle)!
Other Enhancements
Add Custom Checkout Fields More Easily
Previously, adding a custom field to the checkout page on the Public Ticketing Site required extra steps to grant permission for the new field to specific site Profiles. This was time-consuming and easy to miss.
Problem solved! Now you'll just add your field to the relevant Field Set, and you’re done!
Deactivate Benefit Levels
Managing a long list of Benefit Levels? This update is for you!
Previously, there was no way to deactivate a Benefit Level, which made it hard to tell which ones were still in use—especially for organizations with many membership tiers over time. Renaming was the only workaround, but since Benefit Levels are public-facing (e.g. on digital membership cards), this wasn’t ideal.
Now, you can keep things tidy with a new Active checkbox on every Benefit Level.
All existing Benefit Levels are Active by default.
To retire a Benefit Level, simply uncheck the Active box. Once inactive, that Benefit Level will no longer appear as an option when:
- Creating a new Membership Price Level
- Manually creating a Benefit
- Adding Benefit Levels to Discount Codes
- Adding Member Access to an Event Instance
Safeguards
If you deactivate a Benefit Level that’s still tied to a Membership Price Level, you’ll see a warning listing the affected price levels. Confirming will deactivate those Price Levels automatically.
If you re-activate a Price Level linked to an inactive Benefit Level, you’ll be prompted to confirm re-activation of the Benefit Level too.
Key Notes
Deactivating a Benefit Level does not affect existing members or their benefits. Their perks remain valid; you’re just preventing new memberships or benefits from being created at that level.
A new “Active Benefit Levels” list view makes it easier to focus only on currently available levels.
We recommend adding the Active checkbox to your “All Benefit Levels” list view for easier management going forward.
That's all for this release!
Do you have ideas for new PatronManager features or want to tell us about a part of the system where you'd like to see updates?
Log in to the Client Community to suggest and vote on Product Ideas, track suggestions your organization has given us in the past, see what's planned and in progress, and much more. Read All About Product Ideas to get started!
