Does Access Start affect PayPal Subscription Renewal Date?

[TroyWolf]

I assume the answer is “no”. Here’s my dilemma…

I am setting up a brand new membership site for a club that has existing members. Up until now, the club has renewed all members on March 1st every year. If you joined on Oct 12, for example, they would charge you a reduced fee for the remainder of the current year to align your annual renewal date to March 1st.

I am relatively confident that I can’t support this with Simple Membership. It would require the system to be aware of this hard-set renewal date and do the math to reduce the initial membership fee based on this.

No problem! The club voted to change the bylaws to allow flexible renewal date based on the date you sign up–exactly how most systems work including how Simple Membership is designed to work.

BUT…right now I need to get all the existing club members signed up as members in the website. My initial thought was that I’d import all the users into my system. Then discovered there is not any import feature, and with only about 110 members, not worth my time to code that. Then I thought to start manually adding the members…then realized what I really want is for all of them to self sign up so that we get their new PayPal Subscription going. This annual payment automation is half the value of this project in the first place.

SO…I thought to send a link out to the members explaining that they should join the site. BUT, how can I modify these members’ renewal date to be March 1st, 2018?

I can modify their “Access Start” date to be March 1st, 2017, but I assume 2 things:

1. This will remove their access right now until March 1st, 2017 — not good
2. Their PayPal Subscription would still be whatever date they actually did the JOIN process — I need to align this with March 1st for these existing members

Going forward–once all the current, paid members are in the system, things can just work as normal with Simple Membership. I’m struggling with how to get this thing started.

[mbrsolution]

Hi, are you importing all the Users from WordPress into your members list? If you are the the following plugin should help you.

If the above does not help then perhaps the following plugin might do the trick.

Let me know how you go.

Regards

[TroyWolf]

I appreciate your response, @mbrsolution. Also nice to see that you do now offer a CSV import tool.

My problem (and my post) is not about how to import users, though. Let me start by explaining how a brand new system would work without any existing users…as I understand it.

I launch my website with 0 members. A new member joins, creates their PayPal Subscription, gets an email, follows the link to complete registration–filling out my registration form. The system will show this member’s Access Start date as the date they joined. My annual membership will expire in 1 year. (As I understand, Simple Membership will NOT send any reminder emails when the user gets close to expiration–this is a separate issue I’d like to discuss.) Following your documentation, I can configure it so expired members can still log in so they can go to my Renewal page.

Since I’m using a PayPal Subscription, you could argue the member does not need a reminder as their membership will auto-renew. True, but I think it’s more ethical to remind a member that their auto-renewal will occur in “5 days”, and they can cancel if they prefer.

That scenario sounds pretty good. It works. Now here’s my REAL situation. I’m starting with 100 existing members who are paid up through March 1st, 2017. I want them in the system today as paid members with an expiration date of March 1st, 2017. Ideally I want something to remind them to renew their membership. But remember, these members will never have created the PayPal Subscription. So how does “Renewal” work for these folks? Can the renewal button be to create the PayPal Subscription?

[mbrsolution]

Hi, when the membership expires you need to allow them to log in to allow them to renew their membership. That is when you set up the subscription payment. PayPal and the plugin will work out everything for you.

Now the above comment is based on the following comment. Assuming that these members had already signed up via the Simple Membership plugin payment system.

I’m starting with 100 existing members who are paid up through March 1st, 2017. I want them in the system today as paid members with an expiration date of March 1st, 2017.

Or are you referring to members that already existed in the website before you installed this plugin?

Let me know if the above makes sense.

[TroyWolf]

The site is brand new. I installed WordPress, installed Simple Membership plugin (and a host of other plugins), and now I need to add people to the system.

You say:

Assuming that these members had already signed up via the Simple Membership plugin payment system.

This gets to the heart of my confusion. It is my understanding that if these people sign up via the plugin, and the only Membership I have is “Member” and it costs $15 (subscription), then they can’t sign up without getting charged $15….AND the day they sign up will become their renewal date.

Do you understand my concern? What do I do?

[mbrsolution]

Yes I understand your concern.

So let me see if I understand you correctly. These members already sign up and there account is about to expire. But now you want these members to sign up for a subscription and not just a one time payment. Is that what you are talking about?

[TroyWolf]

They are NOT in the WordPress system yet. I need to put them in WITHOUT charging them anything (because they are already current, paid members of the club). I need to be able to set their expiration date to March 1st, 2017. I need them to have the ability to renew anytime they want between now and then.

From the perspective of the Club, they will be renewing their annual membership. From the perspective of PayPal, they will be creating their initial annual subscription.

[mbrsolution]

Okay thank you for sharing the extra information. Now I know exactly what you mean. In that case you can’t do much until the due date because this plugin does not have that any feature similar to what you are trying to do. Just before the due date you will have to import them into your system “website” then ask them to subscribe to your site via the plugin. As far as I know this is the only way to achieve what you want.

Let me know if you need more help.

Regards

[TroyWolf]

How about this…

Create 2 Membership Levels:

1. Special Membership
2. Standard Membership

Configure the exact same content access for both.
“Special” will have a price of $0.00.
“Standard” will be a $15 annual subscription.

Have the current members sign up for “Special” membership. This gets them into the system, lets them pick their own username, and gives them access to member content.

Once they create their account, I can individually edit their account to:

1. Set “Access Start” date to March 1st, 2016
2. Change their Membership Level to “Standard”

What I’m not clear about is what happens when I set their Membership Level to “Standard”, but the system does not have an PayPal data for the member?

Once all members are in and converted, delete the “Special Membership” level.

[mbrsolution]

Hi, I am not sure if your method will work. I don’t think you can have a zero value for a paid membership. However you can test your method if you like.

Another method I just thought up that might do the trick is by using the following plugin simple-membership-bulk-import-member-data-csv-file. This plugin will allow you to import your members into your system and you can also add some details for each member.

Let me know if my method might work for you.

Regards

[CSFLA]

To provide for a membership category that might have multiple individual accounts (like family membership – one wp account per family member, but only one payment for them all), I have written a plugin for the swmp system that enables you to create new members and generate registration links for them. You can specify their name, email and ‘access starts date’, then they get emailed a link requiring them to sign up. It effectively removes the PayPal part of the process, but allows you to select normal membership categories rather than a ‘free membership’ as per the core plugin. I assume you would be able to do something similar and customise it to fit whatever process you’re needing to follow. You wouldn’t easily be able to tie it to a PayPal subscribe option, however, unless tje member has already set up a PayPal subscription and you have existing PayPal subscribe references that you can assign to the member when you set up the account? When the renewal date arrived, they could however then opt for annual subscription.

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