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Managing Memberships

In this guide, you will learn how to do to the following:

Table of Contents

 

Terms to Know

Recurring Memberships: A membership that bills the customer on a scheduled basis.

Nonrecurring Memberships: A membership that bills only once.

Billing Period: the period that membership bills in (weekly, monthly, yearly)

Getting to the Membership

First you will want to go to the membership summary view by going to the Customer Profile > Click on My Plans > Select a Membership. From here you can make edits to the membership.

Putting a Membership on Hold

 
If you want to put a membership on hold on a future date, the hold date will be the last day that membership is active before being put on hold.
If you want to cancel a membership on a future date, the cancel date will be the day you want the membership to be cancelled.
 
Example:
  • Want the membership to be active through the 31st but be on hold for the 1st? Set to 31st.
  • Want a membership to be active through the 31st but be cancelled on the 1st? set to the 1st.
 
NOTE: If you are wanting to put it on hold before they get billed for an upcoming billing period, please set it to go on hold on the last day of the prior billing period.
Example: If the membership bills on the first of the month and you want to put the membership on hold on December 1st. Please set the Hold start date to be November 30th. 
  • To set a future hold date, go to the membership and click the three dots in the top right corner > "Place On Hold."


  • You will see a dialog and an option to set the future hold date.
  • If the membership has an 'End Date', you'll need to extend the end date if the membership will be on hold past the end date: 
  • You will see on the membership summary it displays that the membership is set to go on hold at a future date.

  • To change the future hold date click "Change Future Hold"
  • You will see a pop up and options to change or remove the future hold date



    To find out how to set a hold fee please check out the Membership Type Creation guide.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you sell a membership with a future start date and schedule a hold to begin the day before that start date/bill date, the system will not automatically place the membership on hold. This is because the hold automation only applies to memberships that have already started — it does not process holds for memberships with start dates in the future. 
Example:

  • I sell a membership on September 20th and set the Start Date to be October 1
  • I then go to the membership and select to add a future hold date of September 30th
  • When September 30th roles around, the membership will NOT go on hold as the start date is October 1. 

Resuming On-Hold Memberships from the Customer's "My Plans"

Once you are on the Membership Summary, click the three dots in the top right corner > “Resume Membership” button. When a membership is resumed, the membership becomes active for the user to check in with.
 
After a membership is Resumed, the Next Bill Date will get updated to the next billing cycle. The membership will be updated to Active and will begin billing the membership price on the next bill date. The workflow for resuming a membership will depend if the membership is recurring or not.  

What happens when you place a membership on hold part way through it's billing cycle?

If you place a membership on hold part way through the billing cycle (let's say, 15/30 days), the hold will recognize that amount of days paid for and not used (15), and when the membership is taken off of hold and prorated, that proration fee is reduced by the number of days that were paid for and not used (15).

 

If the number of days that are applied to the proration are equal to the number of days remaining (let's say, 15 days applied with 15 days left), the reactivation fee will be $0. If the number of days that are applied towards proration are greater than the number of days left in the month (let's say 15 days applied with 10 days left), the reactivation fee will be $0 and the additional 5 days will be "lost". 

 
Resuming Nonrecurring Memberships:
When reactivating Non Recurring memberships a window will show how long they have been on hold with the option to increase the duration of the membership.
Here is a breakdown of the presented information:
 
Hold Date Start: This was the date the membership went on hold.
Resume Date: This is the current date.
Days Between: This is the number of days the membership was on hold.
 
You can choose between two options (As seen in the image below):
Add more days to the length of the membership or reactivate it without adjusting the end date. 
 
This is great for staff that are reactivating year-long memberships and want to add additional time for the customer! (In order for the customer to get their year's worth of climbing.)
 
Resuming Recurring Memberships:
Staff can charge customers a prorated amount when reactivating recurring memberships.
 

Proration Fee

The prorated amount will always be the number of days left in the billing period minus their credit days. The other option is to not charge a prorated fee.
 
For example: in the screenshot below, the customer will be prorated for four days.
29(days left in the billing period) - 25 (credit in days) = 4 (the number of days they will be charged for).
 
The information that is provided (as shown in the screenshot) is broken down below:
 
Billing Period: The billing period that the membership is about to enter. The first date is the current date and the second date is the date that the customer is going to be billed next. In the example image below, the customer is going to be charged on the 17th of December once it is reactivated. 
Days left in the billing period: This is how many days the membership will be active until the next billing date. In this case, the customer has 26 days until the next billing date. The staff will also have the ability to charge the customer for these 26 days.
Credit in days (days paid for on previous billing cycle): These are the number of days from the previous billing cycle that the membership was on hold for. These number of days will be subtracted from the days that will be charged to the customer as these days have already been paid for but were not usable while the membership was on hold. Note: Extra credit days that are unused will not roll over into the next billing period.
Membership Price: This states the price of the membership.

 

Cancelling a Membership

 Once you are on the Membership Summary, click the the three hamburger dots in the upper right corner and select  “Cancel Membership".  After a membership has been cancelled, the user will not be able to check in and the membership will no longer be billed. Note: Customers will not be able to check in on the end date.
 
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From this screen you have the option to cancel renewal, cancel today, or choose a custom date.
 
Cancel Renewal - This will set the membership to expire before the next billing cycle begins, allowing the customer to check in with the membership until the end date.
 
Cancel Now - This will immediately cancel the membership. The membership will can not be checked in with and will not continue to bill.
 
Custom Date - You also have the option of setting a custom date. The membership can be check in with up until the day of the custom date and then it will be cancelled.
 
 
 

Set an End Date on a Membership

Once you are on the Membership Summary, click the “Edit” button.
 
From this screen you can set an end date for the membership to expire. You can remove and edit an end date after one has been set, however if the cancellation flow has already been completed, the end date will only be prioritized if it is before the cancellation date otherwise the cancellation date will take precedent. In short, the "End Date" cannot be used to extend a cancellation, if the cancellation was already set. If you need to change the cancellation date for any reason, you must go back through the cancellation flow.
 
An active membership can be used to check in with up until the day of the end date. Once the end date is reached, the user can no longer check in with the membership and will no longer be billed.
 

Set a Discount on a Membership

Once you are on the Membership Summary, click the “Edit” button.
 
 
From this screen you can set a percentage or flat rate discount on the membership. The discount will be applied to every subsequent billing cycle unless an end date is set. Note: If the next Bill Date and the Discount End Date are the same, the discount will apply to that billing cycle.
 
 Screenshot 2025-09-30 at 1.14.24 PMScreenshot 2025-09-30 at 1.14.35 PM
 
Check the box to choose a Percent discount or a Flat rate discount. Once a discount has been applied, it will take effect starting on the next billing date. After a discount has been set, the user can remove or adjust the discount as needed in the future.
 

Please note, Discounts apply to the price field, not the hold field. Currently a hold fee cannot be waived or discounted. One option is to enable store credit billing and give a customer store credit to offset their hold fee, should it need to be waived. You can find info on store credit billing in this store credit article. 

Deleting Memberships in Approach?

At Approach, we avoid "deletion" across the app because of the importance of maintaining data integrity, which means you cannot delete memberships, passes or products.

That being said, you can make these items inactive and inactive items will not show up in their respective places across the app: purchase pass and membership flows and shop. In terms of passes and memberships, Approach allows users to set inactive passes and memberships as entrance requirements when configuring events, if necessary. 

In terms of organizing passes/memberships you will not sell again, what we recommend and it solves the major pain point around potentially selling something that is inactive is to rename the membership something like "DO NOT SELL-Family Membership" or "INACTIVE-Student Membership." 

The Membership 'Resume' page

When a membership is given a Resume date, it DOES NOT automatically start back up the membership.

To manage all membership that are on hold, navigate to the "Membership Management" tab on the left sidebar of the main app. Select the "Resume" tab from the drop-down menu that will appear. The Resume page will display all of the memberships currently on hold in your environment. This page gives users faster access to resuming those memberships, with the only other way to achieve this being navigating to the customer's profile and resuming the membership within "My Plans". We suggest having this be a daily duty.

 

This concludes the guide for Managing Memberships

Do you still have more questions? We want to make our Knowledge Base as accurate  and as in-depth as possible. If you think this article is missing anything, please let us know here. We will update the article and let you know we have done so!