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Member statuses

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Zane Pimiskern
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Overview

Member statuses indicate whether your members are in good standing or require attention. For instance, your members may have a status that reflects their overdue renewal invoice, or they may be in a grace period and have some time to settle their membership invoice before they lapse. Lapsed members have restricted membership benefits and may require administrative attention. Member statuses in MC Professional include:

  • Active
  • Active - In Renewal Period
  • Pending
  • Graced
  • Lapsed
  • Lapsed - In Renewal Period
  • Deceased

Active

Indicates the member is in good standing with your organization and can login and access their full member benefits based on your member type settings. If members are in active status, it's likely that they do not require immediate attention. Active members have not entered their renewal period for the following year.

Active - In Renewal Period

Indicates the member is in active status and in their renewal period. A member's renewal period starts when your first renewal notification email is sent. During this period, a member retains full member benefits and can either renew through a form, their profile, or a renewal link sent by email.

For more information on how members can renew their membership, see our article on the Member self-service renewal process.

Pending

This status indicates the member has not been approved for membership by an administrator. Whether your members enter a pending status when they join your organization depends on your member type settings. To confirm if you have this set up for your member types, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Database > Member types.
  2. Hover over a member type in the list then click EDIT.
  3. Under General Settings, confirm if Require approval for new members is checked off. If enabled, new members will enter pending status until they are manually changed to active status by an administrator.
  4. Repeat steps 1 - 3 for all member types in your database.

View our Member types overview and default settings article for more information.

Graced

If you have a grace period set up in your member type settings, your members will enter a grace period if they have not settled their renewal invoice before their membership expires. During this grace period the member retains full membership benefits and can access their member profile as normal. After their grace period ends, they will move to lapsed status if they haven't settled their membership renewal invoice.

You cannot manually set a member's status to Graced. This status updates automatically based on your member type settings.

Lapsed

This status indicates that a member was once in good standing but they've allowed their renewal due date to pass without renewing their membership. Lapsed members are still counted as member profiles in your database but with restricted member benefits.

Lapsed profiles cannot log in to your site. To access member benefits, they will need to renew their membership by taking a renewal form. If lapsed profiles do not renew after a year or more, you might consider moving those profiles to the prospect member type. As a prospect profile the user can retake your membership application form to rejoin.

It's important to move any lapsed members back to active status before turning Membership Automation on. If you don't, members that have already lapsed (those with expiration dates in the past) will not receive notifications and won’t be able to renew. Membership Automation must be turned on by an MC Professional team member for your automatic renewal notifications to send out. If you aren't sure if membership automation is switched on, please contact our support team.

Lapsed - In Renewal Period

This status indicates the member has lapsed with an open renewal invoice located in their profile. This happens when the system automatically generates the member's invoice, based on your renewal notification settings, and updates their status. See the Lapsed section for more information on the lapsed membership status.

Deceased

The deceased status sets aside member profiles so they don't appear in your profile list. You can manually search for deceased members if necessary. Deceased profiles still count towards your custom profile limit. If you have deceased members but need to clean up your member profile limit, you might consider deleting these profiles instead. Deleted profiles are still retained within your database and they don't count towards your custom profile limit.

A few notes regarding deceased members:

  1. Deceased members cannot log in to their profile through your website.
  2. Deceased members do not display in your membership dashboard.
  3. Deceased members will not be included in any administrator action that involves pulling members into a list. This includes: sending emails, changing member types, or any action in the profile list (unless the Deceased status is selected in your search criteria).
  4. Deceased profiles do not appear in member directories on your MC Professional website.

If you're over your member profile limit, you might consider removing deceased members from your database. For more information, see our article on Exceeding your database limit.

Renewal notifications based on member status

To customize renewal notifications for your member types based on membership status, see our article on Customizing renewal notifications.

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