Renewal or double pay questions

[apeterka]

I’m using Buy Now buttons and thinking about having the membership level attached expire in 1 year.

When a member renews via eStore prior to their original expiration date, does the renewal begin when the first membership ends, or does it begin at the time of renewal?

And a possibly related question: What happens if I have a 1 yr membership duration set and a member decides to process a payment twice? Would that extend their membership to two years?

[admin]

When you use a “Buy Now” type button, it will give the user another 1 year from the date he makes the purchase. If you have a membership site where you expect the users to extend their membership for another term, you should try to use a subscription type button:

Membership Payment – Difference between "Buy Now" and "Subscription" buttons

For example, if you make a subscription payment button that charges $XX every 1 year then you don’t have to worry about the whole renewal thing anymore. If a member wants to cancel he can simply cancel his subscription payment (doesn’t have to worry about anything else).

[apeterka]

Ok, thanks for that clarification. Our membership dues are oddly based on annual gross income of the member, so subscriptions won’t work too well — members might need to adjust the dues they are paying on a yearly basis.

I think I am back to using a non-expiring member levels, and then moving members to a Former Member group either manually at years end, or automatically with the Auto-Upgrade feature. If I take this route though, will I need to create new member levels every year? And then adjust the eStore button(s) to point to these new levels? I keep thinking there might be a way to re-use membership levels to minimize admin management time. The fact that some members might want to pay their dues prior to current dues expiring though has me thinking admins will need to be involved every year.

Here is what I’m thinking:

Create Membership 2012 level

Create Former Member level

At end of year, move all Membership 2012 members to Former Member

Create Membership 2013 level

Create new eStore buy now buttons for new levels

Rinse and Repeat

Or is it possible to mark everyone in the 2012 level as expired at year’s end? Then perhaps I wouldn’t need to Former Member group.

Sorry so many questions invading my brain!

[admin]

What you described will work fine but you can do the following so you don’t have to keep creating new levels:

1. Create Membership called “Current Year Level”

2. Create Former Member level

3. At end of year, move all Current members to former member level

4. New members can keep signing up for the “Current Year Level” as they used to

You will only need to do step 3 at the end of the year.

[Author]

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