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Every member with a paid membership has a validity date. This page covers what Orgo does as that date approaches and passes: which emails go out and when, what changes for the member once it is in the past, and how they put it right.

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Recurring or one-time

A membership level is sold as a one-time price, as a recurring subscription, or as both. That distinction decides everything else here. On a subscription, the card is charged automatically at the end of each period. The member gets no renewal reminders, because the reminder job skips anyone with an active subscription on that fee product; they get a Renewal Confirmed or Renewal Failed email after each charge instead. On a one-time payment, nothing is charged automatically and the membership lapses on the validity date unless the member pays again. That is what the ladder below exists for. A payment recorded by hand, a bank transfer entered by an administrator for example, is a one-time payment even when the level also supports subscriptions, because there is no card on file to charge next time. That is the usual reason a member you expected to renew automatically did not.

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The reminder schedule

One job runs daily at 18:00 UTC and sends at most one email per member per day, to members whose validity date falls exactly on a milestone: Nothing is sent between the rungs or after 30 days past expiry: a member who lapses and never returns hears from Orgo seven times, then stops.

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Worked example: a membership expiring on 30 June

Each rung is matched against the validity date exactly, so the whole ladder for one member is fixed the moment their validity date is known. For a membership valid to 30 June 2026, and taking that date as an example: Nothing arrives on any other day, and the moment they pay, their validity date moves and the remaining rungs no longer match. Because the match is on the exact date, a rung the job misses is not sent late: it is skipped. Membership renewal reminder templates listed with their send timing, from 1 Month Reminder through 30 Days After Reminder
The 1 Day Reminder template appears in the template list and can be edited, but the daily job has no milestone that reaches it, so it is not currently sent to individual members. The company version of that reminder is sent normally.
A member is skipped entirely when they have an active subscription on that fee product, their user type is marked as not eligible for a fee, their membership is covered by a company with its own validity date (the company is chased instead, not the member who cannot pay), or the fee period is under two months. Monthly fees get no ladder. Company memberships. A second job runs daily at 18:30 UTC on its own seven rungs. They are the same milestones with one swap: a company is chased the day before expiry rather than the day after, so the company version of the 1 Day Reminder is the one that is actually sent, and nothing goes out on the day after expiry. Each email goes to the company’s contact email address, or the first primary contact if none is set, copying the remaining primary contacts and any additional company addresses, so whoever can pay is always on the mail. The job chases companies that are Active or Pending, and only those with a membership plan and a renewal date. A company set to Inactive or deleted gets nothing: no reminder, and no renewal invoice raised for it either, since with the Invoices module on each reminder carries the company’s unpaid renewal invoice as a PDF. The status is checked again at the moment of sending, so deactivating a company also stops a reminder already queued for that day. Wording and switches. All fourteen templates (seven individual, seven company) are editable at Settings → Emails & Notifications → Email Templates, under membership renewal reminders. Settings → Emails & Notifications → System Emails → Membership Renewal Reminders switches the category off, and a per-template override beats it, so you can silence one rung and keep the rest.

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What an expired membership actually changes

Two different things are tracked, and the difference explains most support questions. The validity date has passed the moment the date is behind you, and for anyone who never paid. The fee is no longer active only after grace: Fee Valid Months and Fee Valid Days, under Settings → Payments & Fees → Membership fees → Validity Period, extend the window in which a member still counts as paid, and a lifetime level stays active forever when Lifetime Membership Available is on. Without grace the two coincide. Once the fee is no longer active:
  • their status shows unpaid on their profile and in the member directory, and My Membership Fee in their own menu carries a Due tag;
  • member-only ticket prices stop: events return an empty member-price list, so they see the public price;
  • they cannot create a referral for someone else, and get “You cannot create referrals at the moment” if they try;
  • with Require Contract for Membership on, their signed membership contract is cancelled, so they must sign again before buying a new membership.
Fee status is not part of the permission system, so on its own it does not stop a member logging in, reading discussions or attending events. Making fees mandatory does.

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When fees are mandatory

Settings → Payments & Fees → Membership fees → Membership Requirements → Fee Payment Mandatory redirects a member whose validity date has passed to their own fee page on every navigation until they pay. It keys on the validity date, not the grace window. Still reachable, so the payment can be completed: the profile fee and payments tabs, product payment pages, onboarding, document previews, donation pages and the payment confirmation page. The mandatory-course gate stands down while a fee is owed. The redirect never applies to HR_TENANT or FINANCIAL_TENANT holders, to user types not eligible for a fee, or inside the event app. With Company Fee Payment Mandatory on, a member of a company follows the company fee instead: primary contacts and financial representatives go to a company payment page, everyone else to a page explaining that the company fee is outstanding. ADMIN_TENANT holders are exempt.

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Automatic deactivation

Off by default, available only when fees are mandatory: Auto-deactivate on Fee Expiry plus Days Until Deactivation (1 to 365; a tenant with a delay outside that range is skipped rather than deactivated). A daily 07:00 UTC job sets any active member whose validity date is older than the delay to inactive, skipping user types not eligible for a fee and lifetime levels when lifetime membership is enabled.
The delay counts from the validity date itself, not from the end of the Fee Valid Days or Fee Valid Months grace window. If you set both, the deactivation delay is the number that decides when the account is switched off.

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How a member renews

From the user menu, My Membership Fee, or from their profile’s fee tab: Member fee card showing an unpaid membership with its status, amount, membership level and Pay button, above a history list with the current year unpaid and the two previous years paid Members can switch membership level only while expired, and only when more than one level is available to them. A FINANCIAL_LOCAL holder can change someone’s level at any time. Renewing early. Paying is always allowed once the membership has expired or was never paid. Before expiry it is allowed only inside the advance-payment window, at Settings → Payments & Fees → Membership fees → Eligibility Rules: After any payment the validity date is set to the end of the last period paid for, so an early renewal extends the membership rather than restarting it from the payment date. Example. An annual membership valid to 30 June 2026, with the default one month advance window and Fixed Starting Date for Fees off, so periods follow the member rather than the calendar. The member pays on 12 June 2026. The new period does not start on 12 June: it starts where the old one ended, so the membership now runs to 30 June 2027 and the renewal date stays put year after year. The same holds inside a grace window: with Fee Valid Months set to 1, a member who pays on 15 July 2026 still counts as active at that moment, so they too resume from 30 June and lose nothing for being late.

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Stopping an automatic renewal

A subscriber’s fee card reads “Auto-renewing membership” with an action to cancel it, then “Auto-renewal ending” with the last day they are covered. Only the member themselves or a FINANCIAL_TENANT holder can cancel. Cancelling stops future charges. It does not refund anything already paid and it does not end the current period early: the member stays active until the period they paid for runs out, and from that point counts as a one-time payer, reminders included.

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Troubleshooting

Work down the list. Do they have an active subscription on the fee product (subscribers are skipped by design)? Is their membership covered by a company (the company is chased instead)? Is their user type marked as not eligible for a fee? Is the fee period shorter than two months? Then check that Membership Renewal Reminders is on under Settings → Emails & Notifications → System Emails, and that the individual template has not been overridden off. Finally, look at their validity date: the ladder matches it against the exact milestone dates, so a validity date that was edited or recalculated in between can step over a rung entirely.
Expected. The under-two-months rule is read from whichever period applies to that member, so a level with a one-month Cycle period (in months) override is skipped even on an annual product, and selling the level as a subscription does not put it back in. Monthly subscribers still get their per charge Renewal Confirmed or Renewal Failed email, which is the only mail they should be getting.
Either the card was declined, in which case Stripe’s failure notice reaches Orgo and the member is sent Renewal Failed, or there was never a subscription in the first place. The second case is the common one: a payment an administrator recorded by hand, or a bank transfer, leaves no card on file, so a level being sold as recurring does not by itself make the member a subscriber. Check the Subscribers tab of the fee product before assuming a member is on automatic renewal.
The level chooser only offers prices that are not archived, not company only, not hidden from members, and it only appears to the member while their membership has expired and more than one level is open to them. A price marked Is only assignable by admins (hidden for members) is invisible to them by definition: a FINANCIAL_LOCAL holder has to assign it, and can do so at any time rather than only at expiry.
The job only looks at members who have a validity date. Someone who never paid at all has no date, so they are never deactivated by it, however long they have been on the books. Also skipped: user types not eligible for a fee, and lifetime levels while Lifetime Membership Available is on. If nothing at all happened, check that Fee Payment Mandatory and Auto-deactivate on Fee Expiry are both on and that Days Until Deactivation is between 1 and 365, since a value outside that range skips the whole organisation.
With Fee Payment Mandatory on, the redirect keys on the validity date, so it starts the day the date passes even when a grace window is still running. The pages needed to complete a payment stay reachable, so if the member is truly stuck it is worth checking the blockers on the fee itself: an unsigned membership contract when Require Contract for Membership is on, a bank transfer already in progress, or an active subscription. See Membership Fees.