How to deal with annual memberships?

Hello,

I have a client that has memberships starting at 1st July and expiring 30 June every year. The plans are set to expiry 30 June. Do you need to create a new plan for each year? For example a plan for 2017/2018 and then you need a new plan for 2018/2019?

We don't want people signing up for a plan in June that expires on the 30th June.

I would just appreciate some advice on how this is best managed.

Thank you
Kind regards
Lene

Hello Lene

No, you don't need to create a new plan for each year. The extension is smart enough to change the subscription end date of the subscription base on the date subscribers sign up

So in sort, just need a plan

Regards,

Tuan

Hi Tuan,

Thank for getting back to me.

Will the expiry date automatically change on the plan in the backend or does it just stay the same as when you created the plan but but will change for signup?

Also, with the plan automatically changing the subscription end date, that means the people should not renew their membership before after expiry? We had some people signing up in June meaning to sign up for the 2017/2018 year which then expired on 30 June this year.

I just need to understand how it works so I can explain it to my client. The manually changed the expiry date in the backend, reason for one of my questions above.

Thank you
Kind regards
Lene

Hello

1. The value in the plan will stay the same. The system will just change the date when they sign up

2. For renewal, users can renew any time they want. For new sign up, the date which is used for calculating subscription end date is sign up date

For renewal, the date which is used for calculation is the expired date for his current subscription

If the above mentioned date is smaller than the expired date, then the subscription end date will be the expired date you entered in the plan

If the above date is greater than the expired date of the plan, then the subscription end date will be moved to the next year....

So you only have problem with the new subscription (because they subscribe before 2017-06-30). For renewal, it will work well

For new subscription which subscribed after 2017-06-30, it will work well, too. For example, if you try to subscribe for new subscription now, your subscription end date will be 2018-06-30

It is quite complicated, so hard to explain but trust me, I understand your requirement and have it handled properly in the code

Regards,

Tuan

Hi Tuan,

They don't have many online subscriptions, but I did see one that did renew in May and the renewal shows expiry June 2018.

So it is just the new subscriptions that we need to work out a solution for as they signed up in June and expired in June this year. Not to worry, we will work it out.

it is a great component, I use it on a couple of websites, this is the only one that has the yearly renewal with set dates .

Thank you
Regards
Lene

For the new subscription which are having wrong date, you can go to Membership Pro -> Subscriptions, click on the subscription record to edit and change the date from there, save it

Regards

Tuan

Hi Tuan,

Thank you, I have provided my client with instructions on how they can manually edit the subscriptions .

Regards
Lene

OK Lene. Just a tip, if you were having Expired Date set to 2018-06-30, then the issue would not happen . Not useful for now, but might be useful for your future websites

Regards,

Tuan

To expand on Tuan's answer, hopefully for the benefit of others, as I also found this confusing.

I believe the new expiry date of each plan needs to be manually updated each year in the backend to include the following year, and this should be done on the day that you are happy to include next year's membership for NEW members (or returning ex-members). So if you are happy for new or returning ex-members to get 2017-2018 membership from say June 1st 2017 for example, you should manually update the plan expiry dates on June 1st each year.

You should also set (once only) the 'Subscription Settings - allow membership renewal' to the number of days prior to expiry that you will allow a renewal - for example 30 days would allow all existing members to start renewing next year membership from the 1st June.

This covers the following three possible situations:
1. New members joining after June 1st 2017 will receive the full 2017-2018 membership (like getting a bonus month),
2. Ex-members (who had let their membership lapse at some time in the past) can rejoin any time after 1st June - they are treated the same as 'renewals' by the system, so they will also receive full 2017-2018 membership if they 'renew' their membership after 1st June, and
3. Current members renewing any time after June 1st will also receive the full 2017-2018 (a normal renewal).

I was concerned about the third group under this scenario (current members renewing) - whether they would receive a full EXTRA year when renewing in June because the expiry date of their plan had now been extended in the backend, OR whether they would be UNABLE to renew because the expiry date of their plan had now been extended? I was not sure whether their original expiry dates remain unchanged?

Tuan perhaps you could confirm this last point please, I think it is the main cause of potential confusion.

Hope this is helpful to others.

Hi Mark

As I mentioned before, you don't need to change Expired Date manually each year. The system will handle it automatically. For example, in case you setup Expired Date to 30-06-2017, by the way the system works, if someone subscribe (new sign up) on 29-06-2017, the system will still set the expired date to 30-06-2017 (because they subscribe before 30-06-2017 - in this case, he will only have one day for the subscription - this is not right)

So the only case you have to change it manually is that you want users who subscribe nearly that date to receive real one year membership (for example, in the above case, subscription end date should be 30-06-2018)

So on the date you want to give users the real one year membership (for example, on 30-05-2017), you can change Expired Date to 30-06-2018) so that users sign up from that date will have subscription end date set to 30-06-2018

In this case, they will actually have more than one year membership (max one year + one month in the sample)

It is hard to explain but hopefully, you get the way how it works

For the point 3, yes, they will still can renew their subscription and also receive the full 2017-2018

Regards,

Tuan