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All About Membership Auto-Renewal: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1988902
Your members are important to your organization as some of your most dedicated patrons. So how can you make it as easy as possible for these important members to renew their memberships? That's where membership auto-renewal comes in!
With membership auto-renewal, you can drive renewals while saving your staff and members time! In this article, we'll cover:
What is membership auto-renewal?
Membership Auto-renewal makes memberships renew themselves - effortless for you and your members!
First, you'll set specific Membership Price Levels to renew automatically, either optionally or as required. When a member buys one of those memberships, online or in-person, they can have their membership renew automatically on their saved credit card.
Members receive an auto-renewal notification 30 days before renewal. On the renewal date, payment is processed and perks are granted immediately. The process will repeat the following year, and expired credit cards will update automatically too. Everything is completely hands-free for you and your members.
Tracking is simple too. You can view the status of each renewal on the Benefit record and make changes if needed. With PatronPortal, members can see their auto-renewing memberships and manage cancellations themselves, saving you time.
How can I enable membership auto-renewals?
To enable membership auto-renewals, you'll need to:
- Review the language in the Membership Auto-renewal Email Template and optionally make adjustments
- Update the Auto-renewal field on Membership Price Levels to select which ones are eligible for auto-renewal
We have full step-by-step instructions here to guide you!
Can we make changes to memberships that are auto-renewing?
Yes, you can make changes if needed. Here's how that works: From the Benefit, you can see whether or not the membership is set to auto-renew, change the credit card on file, and cancel the auto-renewal at any time.
Thirty days before an auto-renewing membership expires, a Pending Renewal Order is created, which you'll see linked on the original Benefit. You can edit the items on the order to upgrade or downgrade, re-send the auto-renewal notification, submit the order to process it early, and cancel it to stop the renewal.
We have detailed instructions on handling Pending Renewal Orders for membership auto-renewal here.
Remember: You won't need to do anything to handle expiring credit cards - they will be updated automatically!
How do my members see information about auto-renewing memberships?
Members are notified about membership auto-renewal in a few different ways:
- On the Public Ticketing Site when purchasing online
- In their order confirmation email
- In the Membership Renewal tab in PatronPortal
- In an email notification sent 30 days in advance of the renewal
Can we report on membership auto-renewals?
Absolutely! We have more information on auto-renewal reporting for you here.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
In order to take advantage of membership auto-renewal, your organization must be using the standard Membership functionality.
Memberships created manually, such as by manually creating a Benefit record for a patron, will not work with auto-renewals.
No; only memberships purchased after a Price Level is set for auto-renewal will auto-renew.
If auto-renewal didn't process for a membership, check to ensure that the membership wasn't exchanged into an auto-renewing membership.
If you received an error message, check out our guide here for how to handle your error.
Please note that if a member's card expires, auto-renewal should still work because the system will automatically update the credit card. But if the member closes the account associated with the card, you will be notified that a new card is required to process the renewal.
Absolutely!
For PWYW Memberships, please note that when the membership auto-renews, it will renew for the same amount the member paid the previous year.
If the minimum Price for the PWYW Membership has been increased to an amount greater than what the member paid last year, in the auto-renewal they will be charged the new minimum Price.
Because memberships with auto-renewal enabled don't require action from your members, the system will not send member renewal reminders for auto-renewing memberships.
You can see this on the Benefit: The "Reminder 1/2/3 Status" fields will say "Not Scheduled" and the buttons to manually re-send renewal reminders will be disabled.
However, separate from membership renewal reminders, members are automatically notified that their membership will renew in advance. Thirty days before their membership expires, members with auto-renewing memberships receive a notification (using the Membership Auto-Renewal Email Template) informing them that their card will be charged and their membership will renew.
At this time if a membership is exchanged from a membership without auto-renewal enabled into one with auto-renewal, auto-renewal will not be set up for the new membership.
If you wish to move a member from one without auto-renewal enabled, your best best is to refund the membership and then sell a new one with auto-renewal enabled.
If you'd like this to work differently, please submit a Product Idea.
If you refund a member's auto-renewing membership, auto-renewal will be disabled for that membership.
Currently, the Benefit record's "Auto-renew" field will still say "On," even though the Benefit itself will be canceled.
Our team is working to improve this to reflect that auto-renewal will not happen. If you'd like to be notified when this is updated, please submit a Product Idea.
Existing memberships that were sold when the Membership Price Level had auto-renewal on will continue to renew every year. The Benefit and the Ticket Order Items for the existing membership will reflect that auto-renewal is on too, since it was when the member purchased their membership.
Only memberships sold to this Price Level moving forward will not have auto-renewal.
If you're in Canada, memberships with auto-renewal enabled can only be purchased online via the Public Ticketing Site (PTS).
Because Leap's Merchant Services (LMS) does not currently support saving cards for future use in PatronManager Box Office (PMBO) in Canada, you won't be able to process an auto-renewing membership internally.
If you're in Canada and would like the ability to sell auto-renewing memberships internally via PMBO, please submit a Product Idea.