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How does Autobilling work in Approach?

A quick explanation of the autobiller in Approach (also known as the cron) and how it works for recurring memberships.

What does the Auto Biller do?

How the Cron Script Runs for Auto Billing

How do I see my members who are set to bill?

How to see the results of an Auto-Billing?

How to address pending orders?

Can store credit be applied to recurring membership billing?

What Does the Auto Biller Do?

In your Approach environment, your auto-biller (aka the cron script) is on from the moment you receive your login access for the first time.

If your Approach environment was created before February 14th, 2025, your auto biller was not enabled from the beginning. If you are a new gym or have an onboarding in process, you will need to reach out to onboarding@approach.app to enable your auto biller. 

The auto biller is the mechanism that allows any recurring membership that has been sold to a customer to bill on its Next Bill Date, if its status is active, on hold, unpaid, or unpaid active. More information on membership statuses here.

What is the unpaid active status? This means the membership has unpaid dues (however, their most recent payment has been paid). This gives members with outstanding balances the ability to check in while they start to pay back what they owe.


On that date, an order will be generated containing all memberships billed to a specific customer. It will bill via their primary payment card on file. 

How the Cron Script Runs for Auto Billing

The cron script is designed to make 2 retry attempts to bill the customer successfully. These attempts are spaced out over specific intervals, providing multiple opportunities to resolve the payment issue. Each attempt bills the primary card on file only (the cron will not attempt to bill any other payment card on file).
  • Attempt 1: Initial Try (Day of Billing)
    • The first attempt is initiated on the day of billing. The cron script runs, aiming to process the payment and update the payment status for the membership. If the payment goes through successfully, the payment status is updated to "paid," and the order status is changed accordingly. If the payment encounters an issue, the retry attempts are triggered.
  • Attempt 2: Second Try (3 Days After Initial Try)
    • If the first attempt fails, the script schedules the second retry attempt to occur three days after the initial try. This provides a grace period for the customer to address the payment issue or update their payment information. The script runs again, attempting to process the payment and update the payment status for the membership.
  • Attempt 3: Third Try (7 Days After Initial Try)
    • If the second attempt is also unsuccessful, the script schedules the third retry attempt to occur seven days after the initial try. This extended interval offers further flexibility for the customer to resolve the payment issue. The script runs, making a final effort to process the payment and update the payment status for the membership.
Cron Script Behavior After Retry Attempts Exhausted

If the third retry attempt fails, the cron script stops attempting to process the payment for that specific order. The order remains in a "pending" state, indicating that the payment issue remains unresolved and necessary actions need to be taken.

How Do I See My Members Who Are Set to Bill?

The quickest way to find a list of your memberships and when they are set to bill is to navigate to the Membership Management>List tab in Approach:

How to See the Results of an Auto Billing and Pending Orders

The best way to review this in-app is to navigate to Store>Orders, and filter for "Automatic Payments" and select the date range you are looking for:

This will give you a view of all orders that were generated as well as whether or not they went through. "Completed" means that the payment went through successfully, and the order is completed.  "Pending" means that the payment was unsuccessful for some reason, whether it was a declined card or that the customer did not have a card on file. 

You can see more details in QuickSight, via the Pending Orders tab. 

 

How to Address Pending Orders?

"Pending Orders" for Auto billing
In situations where there is no card on file or a payment card issue occurs (e.g., card declined, insufficient funds, etc.), the customer's payment status for the membership transitions to "unpaid." Consequently, the corresponding order in the "Order tab" is marked as a "pending order." This indicates that the payment for the order has not been successfully processed.
 

Our recommendations

We recommend that you set a process internally for how you handle your pending orders each billing cycle. If you do not checkout or cancel a pending order, it will remain in the system forever. 

Some gyms set a cap on the number of failed orders before the membership is cancelled. If the customer comes back to the gym and wants to re-activate, they re-sell the membership. Please note, there is no way to automate this process. Facilities will need to manually manage each customer's pending auto billing orders (using either Quicksight or the Main App). It's also important to note whether the customer's pending orders are "auto billing" or "instore" orders. Checking out historic pending auto bill orders should never be a problem as the customer agreed to pay it and it is the gym's right to collect it. Collecting a pending instore order for something like a day pass will look to the customer as if they were charged on a day they didn't go to the gym. Thus, pending instore orders should be examined on a case-by-case basis. 

 

Important Note: These “Pending” Orders serve as a clear indication to staff and administrators that the payment process was not successful, and necessary actions need to be taken to successfully bill the client.

Checking out historic pending auto bill orders should never be a problem as the customer agreed to pay it and it is the gym's right to collect it. Collecting a pending order for something like a failed day pass will look to the customer as if they were charged on a day they didn't go to the gym. Thus pending instore orders should be examined on a case by case basis.

Can Store Credit be Applied to Recurring Membership Billing?

If you apply store credit to a customer's profile, by default it does not apply towards membership billing.

However, there is a setting we can enable to allow store credit to apply against membership billing. We call this Store Credit on Cron, and it's a backend setting. It is in beta, which means that the feature is working, but it is limited in that you cannot select individual members to have this apply to. It's a setting that is either universally enabled or disabled.

Either all members with store credit have it auto applied to their membership, or none of them.

If you would like to enable this setting, please email help@approach.app and ask to have "Store Credit on Cron" enabled. 

 

Do you still have more questions about the auto billing in Approach? Drop us an email at cxm@approach.app. You can also submit your question through the Questions form in the main app.