Membership Renewal with Auto-Pay

Setting up membership renewal with auto-pay in NetForum can create a perpetual membership-renewal cycle. Use the following procedure to renew memberships with auto-pay.

Important! Following this process will cause NetForum to charge your member's accounts immediately. Do not run this process unless you want to charge members' accounts now.

Add a membership with a credit card or an ACH account.

If you want to allow installment billing, you must setup installment billing while you are adding the Membership.

Check the auto-pay membership check box on the first page of the Membership Wizard when you add a membership.

To renew memberships with auto-pay using the Membership Mass Renewal Process:

  1. Go through the Membership Mass Renewal Process. NetForum automatically looks for members that meet the following criteria:
    1. they have ACH or credit card payment information entered
    2. they have auto-pay membership? selected
  2. NetForum uses an email template to send an email notice that this invoice has been paid.
  3. NetForum creates a perpetual membership renewal cycle for memberships that meet the above criteria.
    If this process creates an invoice (no invoice is created for failed payments), NetForum automatically attempts to pay for the renewed membership with the member's electronic payment information. If Payment Information > Type = installment (but not installment payments) is selected when creating the membership, NetForum attempts to pay the first invoice for the first installment. Otherwise, NetForum renews the membership by attempting to pay the dues in full.

Note: We support installment billing (one small invoice for each installment) for automatic membership renewal, but not installment payments (one big invoice at beginning, which you pay down with each payment). Auto-pay makes a withdraw only if there is an invoice or an order with a balance due. The invoice is always paid in full with auto-pay, a member can either pay an installment in full or the whole balance in full.

 

To renew a membership with auto-pay using a manual renewal process:

  1. Query or do a Find for members that meet the following criteria:

    1. they have electronic payment information entered

    2. they have auto-pay membership checked
      This step is critical. If you renew auto-pay along with non-autopay memberships, all of the non-autopay memberships become proforma invoices that you'll have to move to another batch before you close this batch.

  2. Choose your renewal method:
  3. NetForum uses an email template to send an email notice that this invoice has been paid.
  4. NetForum creates a perpetual membership renewal cycle for memberships that meet the above criteria.
    As soon as the renewal process creates an invoice, NetForum automatically attempts to pay for the renewed membership with the member's electronic payment information. If Payment Information > Type = installment (but not installment payments) is selected when creating the membership, NetForum attempts to pay the first invoice for the first installment. Otherwise, NetForum renews the membership by attempting to pay the dues in full.

    Note: We support installment billing (one small invoice for each installment) for automatic membership renewal, but not installment payments (one big invoice at beginning, which you pay down with each payment). Auto-pay makes a withdraw only if there is an invoice or an order with a balance due.

Credit Card Declined

What if you run a Mass Renewal or a manual membership renewal, and one or more of the members have a credit card declined?

Note: If a credit card is declined, NetForum will not allow you to retry the card for a certain number of days. You can change the number of days in the AutopayRetryAfterFailureDaysToWait system option and you can set the maximum number of retries is the AutopayRetryAfterFailureMaxAttempts system option.

The following tip works for all four payment tasks: Recurring Gift, Order Installment Generation (installment billing), Installment Payment, and Membership Renewal.

Tip: If a credit card is declined, these records are among those that fail. If you see in the history tab that some records failed, check the error detail child form for specifics. Also, if there is a credit-card decline, check the Gateway Error Log Profile for a record of the error. See the Automatic Renewal Failures topic for more details.

Tip: This also works for declined ACH payments.

To rerun credit card information for records that fail because of a decline, use the following steps:

  1. On the first run, click the remove records with no renewal invoice button to free those records to be gathered again.
  2. To search for declined records, write a query. See the Querytopic for information on writing a query. Query for the following:
    • a non-terminated member
    • who was set to auto-pay
    • set to do not renew
    • with an expiration date that is still in the time frame you are renewing after you have run the renewal process
  3. Once you find the declined records you can do one of the following:
    • Rerun the declines.
    • Contact the declines for new credit card information.
    • Edit the credit card information, one record at a time.

FAQs

  1. Q: Can I stop automatic renewal if a member asks me to?
    A: Yes, go to Modules > Membership > Members > Find or List Members > Member Profile and click the Edit button. The Edit - Membership page opens. Find the auto-pay membership? check box and clear it.
  2. Q: Why are my failure counts, statues, etc, not updating automatically?
    A: You must run the Update CPI Payment Task to update these numbers. Go to Admin > Task Scheduler > Dashboard > Misc section > Update CPI Payment to start this scheduled task. A best practice is to run this task daily.
  3. Q: Can I change the membership type upon auto-pay? Can the auto-pay apply to the renewal of a different membership type?
    A: Yes if you do a membership transfer before going through the membership renewal process, or if you transfer the membership package before running the membership renewal.
  4. Q: Why would a customer use membership renewal with auto-pay vs an installment payment setup?
    A: They will pay up front with auto-pay vs. over time with installment payment.

  5. Q: Is there a report or query that is available to generate a list of all members who were processed via auto-pay?
    A: There is not currently a preset query or report for auto-pay memberships. The best way to get a list of this type is to write a query with the following criteria:

    • invoice is closed
    • invoice advanced a year