Member says: renewal reminder, late fee, or relinquishment timing issue

Symptom-first guidance for the renewal and relinquishment questions that come up most. The mechanics here are opt-in and not real-time. Check the actual state before assuming automation ran (or didn't).

Check, in this order:

1. Is the reminder ladder even enabled for this renewal year? It ships off by default. An admin has to turn it on explicitly. If nobody enabled it, no household got reminders, and that's expected, not a bug specific to this member.

2. Is this household reachable at all? If every email on the household is suppressed (bounced, unsubscribed) and they haven't opted in to SMS, reminder steps are skipped entirely for that household rather than wasting a send attempt. These households are also flagged separately for staff as "unreachable." If that's the case here, the fix is getting a working contact method on file, not resending a reminder.

3. Does the household have an active renewal extension? An extension suppresses date-specific reminder steps (like a fixed-date text) while it's active. If staff granted this household an extension, some steps are expected to be silent. Day-relative email steps are not suppressed by an extension, so if they're missing all reminders, extension alone doesn't explain it.

What to tell the member: "Let me check whether reminders were turned on for this renewal year and whether we have a good email/phone on file for you," then verify against the checks above before promising a fix.

When to hand off: enabling/disabling the reminder ladder, or fixing contact reachability that needs a data correction, goes to a manager.

Check, in this order:

1. Were late fees enabled for this renewal year? Like reminders, late fees ship off by default. If they weren't turned on, this member wasn't charged a late fee by the system. Check what was actually posted to their invoice.

2. Did they have an active extension at the time? An extension prevents a late fee from ever being assessed in the first place. It isn't waived afterward, it's blocked up front. If an extension was live before the fee posted, the fee shouldn't have been charged; if it landed anyway, escalate.

3. Was the invoice processing at assessment time? A late fee can't be assessed while a bank payment on that invoice is mid-settlement. If they paid by ACH right around the deadline, this can explain timing that looks off.

4. If the fee is wrong, a manager or admin can waive it. Waiving records a new negative adjustment line rather than editing the original charge (financial records are append-only), and it doesn't by itself move the household out of delinquent; that only happens once the underlying invoice is paid. Full waiver steps: Late fees, extensions, waivers, and termination.

What to tell the member: "I'll check whether late fees were active for this renewal year and whether anything should have paused it," and escalate rather than promise a waiver yourself.

Escalate to: a manager for anything beyond confirming the fee was correctly assessed — waiving is done from Renewals and is a manager's call (or an admin's).

This is often expected behavior:

• Submitting relinquishment notice only pulls a household out of dunning if the renewal year's membership year was still upcoming, invoiced, or reminding at the moment they submitted. Those are the only states notice can move out of. (The reminder ladder and late-fee assessment themselves only ever act on invoiced/reminding years in the first place. An upcoming year has no invoice yet to dun.) If the year had already gone delinquent (a late fee already assessed) before notice was given, that fee stands. Giving notice doesn't reverse a fee charged before the notice, and the year doesn't move out of delinquent just because notice was submitted.

• The renewal year's dues invoice is not voided when notice is submitted. It's only voided once the notice is approved. So a member whose relinquishment is still under review can legitimately still show an open, unpaid invoice and keep getting reminders/fees on it. This is expected until a reviewer acts on the notice, not a sign something went wrong.

• Also check whether their notice actually went through: only one open relinquishment is allowed per household at a time. If they tried to submit again (or a family member submitted separately), the second attempt would have been blocked rather than silently queued. Confirm there's an actual pending notice on file.

What to tell the member: "Your relinquishment is still under review, so the renewal-year invoice stays active until that's approved — reminders on it are expected in the meantime. I'll flag it for review." Don't promise the billing will stop before approval.

Escalate to: a manager, to check queue status and prioritize the review if it's been sitting a while.

The bond is returned as a mailed check, never a Stripe refund or direct deposit, and it's only queued after the relinquishment is approved. Not at submission. The amount is capped at the bond balance on deposit, minus any approved late-notice penalty. For check-run timing and how the payable moves through treasury, see Relinquishment and Reports and CSV exports.

• Immediate workflow messages are near-real-time since 2026-08-19; scheduled/delayed steps now resolve within about 5 minutes since 2026-08-20. A workflow step tied to a date or a wait-N-days delay used to be able to arrive up to an hour after its due moment; the five-minute campaign-cron sweep now advances it as soon as its wait elapses, and the hourly sweep is only a backstop for anything that sweep misses. Still don't promise these to the minute. But "up to an hour" is no longer accurate.

• If you're troubleshooting a case that doesn't match anything above, don't guess at the mechanism. Check with a manager rather than speculating to the member about why something did or didn't send.