Renewals and dues

Each renewal year, member households renew (or relinquish) and pay annual dues. Staff run the renewal year from Renewals; dues amounts and deadlines live in Club → Membership. Turn late fees and the reminder ladder on or off from Renewals.

Most clubs renew once a year, and that is the default. Nothing here changes unless you change it. If your club bills more often, set Renewal cadence in Settings to quarterly or monthly. The renewal year still starts in October; the cadence decides how many renewal periods it is divided into, so quarterly runs Oct–Dec, Jan–Mar, Apr–Jun, Jul–Sep, and monthly starts with October.

Prepare the list then lays out every period of the year at once, four renewal records per household on quarterly, twelve on monthly, and you send invoices for each period when it comes due. Tier prices are set per period, so a quarterly club prices each quarter separately.

One thing to know before switching: the dues deadline in Settings is a single month-and-day, which only means something once a year. On quarterly or monthly, dues are dated to the start of each period instead, and the deadline setting is ignored.

Renewals is a top-to-bottom checklist. Confirm the year's facts first, then prepare the list, then send invoices. The send button stays off (with a reason) until those facts are in place.

Before you open

The Before you open card summarizes what will be billed:

• Tier prices for the year — edited right here (the only place). Every active tier needs a price before you can send. Inactive tiers show under Not offered this year. Club → Membership shows the same prices read-only.

• Dues deadline — set in Club → Membership (Dues and renewal). Link from Renewals; do not edit it elsewhere.

• Late fee — turn on or off here. The dollar amount is in Club → Membership.

• Reminder emails — on/off and the schedule live under Edit reminders on this page (not a separate settings screen).

• Autopay — on/off here; members still opt in on their own payment methods page.

A line turns red when it blocks sending (any active tier without a price, or no dues deadline).

Step 1 — Prepare the list

Prepare {year} list creates a renewal record for each current household. Nothing is emailed or invoiced. Running it again only adds households that are missing. If nobody clicks it, nothing invoices this year.

Step 2 — Send dues invoices

Send {year} invoices invoices every household on the list and starts reminder emails. This cannot be undone. Because a full club roster would time out in one request, sending runs in the background in small batches and may take a few minutes — reload to watch the status counts move. An hourly recovery check finishes a batch that stalls, so you usually do not need to restart by hand. Running send again only invoices what was missed.

Send stays disabled until: the list is prepared, every active tier has a price, and the dues deadline is set. Reasons you may see: Set a price for every tier first, Set the dues deadline first, Prepare the list first. The confirm dialog restates the household count, the prices and the deadline before you commit — and those exact figures travel with your click. The platform re-checks them against live data at the moment of sending. If a colleague changed a price or the deadline, or the household count moved in between, nothing is sent and you see a message naming what changed (for example Regular is now $1,250.00, not $1,200.00). Reload, check the numbers, and confirm again.

Two behaviors worth knowing before you rely on "sent" meaning "fully invoiced":

• A tier priced at $0 for the renewal year (commonly board or honorary) is confirmed straight to paid automatically. No invoice is created for those households.

• A tier with no price set is blocked at the checklist — you cannot send until every active tier is priced.

Checkout is ACH-first (bank transfer):

• Bank transfer (ACH) pays the invoice face value. Processing cost to the club is much lower than cards.

• Card, by default, adds a disclosed processing fee so the club still nets the invoice total after Stripe fees. Whether the surcharge is on ("passthrough") or off (club absorbs the card fees), and its rate and fixed component, are all configured in Settings (card_surcharge_*): don't assume a fee applies without checking, since an org can turn it off.

Encourage bank transfer when talking to members: the card fee is real money the pool does not keep.

After the dues deadline (configured in Club → Membership), unpaid invoices can pick up a late fee and move through delinquency messaging. but both the reminder ladder and late fees ship turned off by default. Nothing dunning-related happens until an admin explicitly enables each one on Renewals; don't assume a household is being reminded or fee'd just because the deadline passed. The late-fee dollar amount is set in Club → Membership, not on Renewals.

A household's actual deadline can differ from the renewal-year default: staff can grant a renewal extension from that household's own page (the renewal card under Households → [household], not from Renewals), and it requires a manager or admin. An extension is the source of truth for that household's deadline: it suppresses date-specific reminder steps (like a fixed-date text) while it's live, though day-relative email steps in the ladder still go out on schedule, and it prevents a late fee from ever being assessed against that household. Full mechanics, waiving an already-charged fee, and termination live in Late fees, extensions, waivers, and termination. This article stays focused on the renewal year itself. See also Renewal review prompts and extensions for the renewal-review flow extensions are usually granted alongside.

Reminder ladders and workflows may also email or text. Pause or edit those from Workflows / Renewals rather than inventing one-off blasts.

Under Edit reminders, choose Email or Text message for each reminder and enter either days after the invoice was sent or a date in the selected renewal year. Select Save reminders to save the schedule. Keep each Reminder ID unchanged unless you intend to add a new reminder: changing an ID can allow households that already received it to receive it again when reminders are enabled and due.

The Late fees on, Autopay on, and Renewal reminders on switches are separate from the reminder schedule and save themselves the moment you flip them — there's no adjacent save button for these three.

The Reminder preview shows one eligible household, selected alphabetically, whose dues invoice has been sent and whose renewal is invoiced or reminding. It lists the planned dates and whether each reminder has already been sent or is due now. Viewing the preview sends nothing. It is not a full-audience test and stays empty until there is an eligible household. Sending dues invoices does not turn reminders on; reminders must be enabled separately.

Immediate workflow messages are near-real-time since 2026-08-19. Since 2026-08-20, date-keyed and delayed workflow steps also resolve fast: the five-minute campaign-cron sweep advances them as soon as their wait elapses, so they land within about 5 minutes of their due moment rather than lagging up to an hour. The hourly sweep is now only a backstop.

A household that stays unpaid past the point of dunning eventually moves to delinquent and, if nothing changes, can be terminated by a manager or admin. See Late fees, extensions, waivers, and termination for that whole path, including what termination does and doesn't do to the bond.

An invoice is only paid (or processing) when Stripe webhooks say so. A member finishing Checkout and landing on a thank-you page is not enough. ACH often shows processing for several business days before it settles.