Membership level reset after first invoice

[stevemorel]

Hello,

I got an issue with the membership of my members (currently 10) when the invoice for the first recurring payment happens, their membership is either reset to the lower level, or kept but instead of “active” it becomes blank.
As a result after each member invoice I need to manually check the account of my user and either put it back to active, or put back the appropriate membership level otherwise they can’t access the membership protected content.
For now I only have 10 members so doing it manually is “kind of okay”, but with more members in the future, it will probably takes sometime, or eventually create time for my users to not have access until I put back their account in order.

Is it a normal behaviour of the plugin? or is it a bug? if it is a bug, anyone got a suggestion on how to solve this? :/

Thanks! : )

[The Assurer]

What you’re describing is not normal behavior for the Simple Membership plugin. After a successful recurring payment, the member’s account should remain Active and keep the same membership level.

Please enable your debug logs.
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/enable-debug-logging/

Also read this, and see if any of the issues apply to you.
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/understanding-the-impact-of-caching-on-membership-sites/

Also, Can you tell us:
* Which payment gateway are you using? (Stripe, PayPal, other)
* Are you using a subscription button or manual recurring billing?
* Does this happen to all members or only some?

• This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by The Assurer.

[admin]

Please enable the debug logging feature and capture the event so you can share the log file with us:
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/enable-debug-logging/

This will let us see what account status value is being used when the payment is received.

Usually, this issue can be caused by one of the two things outlined below, so please check them as well:

1) “Default Account Status After Payment” setting

The value of this settings field may be set incorrectly. Our plugin sets it to “active” by default, so it’s a good idea to make sure it is set to active and then save the settings.

2) swpm_account_status_for_subscription_start_date_update filter hook

The plugin has this filter hook, which can be used to customize the account status after a recurring payment. If your site is using this filter to apply custom logic that returns an incorrect account status value, it can cause this issue.

[stevemorel]

Hey there,

* Which payment gateway are you using? (Stripe, PayPal, other)
I use STRIPE.

* Are you using a subscription button or manual recurring billing?
Users subscribed with a button.

* Does this happen to all members or only some?
Yeah it happened to all my members, some had their membership reset to nothing but active, some kept their subscription but the active turned to void.

I will activate the debug, and check out your link, thanks a lot! 🙂

[stevemorel]

Hello,

The “Default Account Status” and “Default Account Status After Payment” are both set to “Active”.

How can I know if my website use “swpm_account_status_for_subscription_start_date_update” ?

[admin]

The swpm_account_status_for_subscription_start_date_update filter hook is only used if some custom code on your site explicitly hooks into it. It is not something that runs by default. So unless you (or a developer) have added custom code for it, your site is most likely not using this filter.

You can check by doing a quick search for the filter name in the following places:

– Your active theme’s functions.php file.
– Any custom snippets added via a code snippets plugin (e.g., Code Snippets, WPCode).
– Any custom plugins you may have installed on the site.

In the meantime, please go ahead and capture the debug log when the next recurring payment comes in for one of the affected members, then share the relevant portion of the log file with us. The log will show exactly what status value is being applied to the account when the recurring payment is processed, which will help us pinpoint the cause.

[stevemorel]

Hello,

well I don’t have any custom snippet, I only had a “stripe subscription payment” addon which I deleted when I got your plugin ^^;
I will send you log once the next recurring payment occurs ^^;
Thanks a lot for the follow up 🙂

[stevemorel]

Hey there,

so I had 2 persons trying to subscribe but both failed. Also someone bought some of my course via woocommerce and it seems their account was successfully added to simple membership (via the addon)

Here are some logs:

[2026/04/25 22:04:05] - SUCCESS: Member has updated the password from the SWPM profile edit page. Member ID: 143
[2026/04/27 05:26:15] - SUCCESS: Handling the user_register hook. swpm_woo_handle_wp_user_registration() - adding the user to Simple Membership.
[2026/04/27 05:26:15] - SUCCESS: Completed the profile_update hook handling - SWPM user profile (Member ID: 241) updated with the latest WP user data.
[2026/04/27 05:26:15] - SUCCESS: Completed the profile_update hook handling - SWPM user profile (Member ID: 241) updated with the latest WP user data.
[2026/04/27 05:26:20] - SUCCESS: WooCommerce Simple Membership integration - Order processed... checking if member account needs to be created or updated.
[2026/04/27 05:26:20] - SUCCESS: WooCommerce Simple Membership integration - Order status: processing
[2026/04/27 05:26:20] - SUCCESS: First name: (personal info of the user which I won't copy here)
[2026/04/27 05:26:20] - SUCCESS: Completed the profile_update hook handling - SWPM user profile (Member ID: 241) updated with the latest WP user data.
[2026/04/27 05:26:20] - SUCCESS: WooCommerce Simple Membership integration - Order processed... checking if member account needs to be created or updated.
[2026/04/27 05:26:20] - SUCCESS: WooCommerce Simple Membership integration - Order status: completed
[2026/04/27 05:26:20] - SUCCESS: First name: (personal info of the user which I won't copy here)
[2026/04/28 02:17:17] - SUCCESS: Stripe SCA checkout session create request received. Processing request...
[2026/04/28 02:17:17] - SUCCESS: Stripe SCA checkout session created successfully.
[2026/04/28 12:05:58] - SUCCESS: Completed the profile_update hook handling - SWPM user profile (Member ID: 241) updated with the latest WP user data.
[2026/04/28 12:05:58] - SUCCESS: Completed the profile_update hook handling - SWPM user profile (Member ID: 241) updated with the latest WP user data.
[2026/04/28 12:05:58] - SUCCESS: Completed the profile_update hook handling - SWPM user profile (Member ID: 241) updated with the latest WP user data.
[2026/04/28 15:00:39] - SUCCESS: Stripe SCA checkout session create request received. Processing request...
[2026/04/28 15:00:39] - SUCCESS: Stripe SCA checkout session created successfully.
[2026/04/28 18:19:15] - SUCCESS: Stripe SCA checkout session create request received. Processing request...
[2026/04/28 18:19:16] - SUCCESS: Stripe SCA checkout session created successfully.
[2026/04/29 01:20:46] - SUCCESS: Stripe webhook signing secret is configured. Validating this webhook event...
[2026/04/29 01:20:46] - SUCCESS: Stripe webhook event data validated successfully!
[2026/04/29 01:20:46] - SUCCESS: Stripe subscription webhook received: customer.subscription.updated and api version: 2018-05-21. Checking if we need to handle this webhook.
[2026/04/29 01:20:46] - SUCCESS: End of Stripe subscription webhook processing. Webhook type: customer.subscription.updated
[2026/04/29 14:02:45] - SUCCESS: Stripe webhook signing secret is configured. Validating this webhook event...
[2026/04/29 14:02:45] - SUCCESS: Stripe webhook event data validated successfully!
[2026/04/29 14:02:45] - SUCCESS: Stripe subscription webhook received: customer.subscription.updated and api version: 2018-05-21. Checking if we need to handle this webhook.
[2026/04/29 14:02:45] - SUCCESS: End of Stripe subscription webhook processing. Webhook type: customer.subscription.updated
[2026/04/30 00:39:54] - SUCCESS: Handling the user_register hook. swpm_woo_handle_wp_user_registration() - adding the user to Simple Membership.
[2026/04/30 00:39:54] - SUCCESS: Completed the profile_update hook handling - SWPM user profile (Member ID: 242) updated with the latest WP user data.
[2026/04/30 00:39:54] - SUCCESS: Completed the profile_update hook handling - SWPM user profile (Member ID: 242) updated with the latest WP user data.
[2026/04/30 00:39:58] - SUCCESS: WooCommerce Simple Membership integration - Order processed... checking if member account needs to be created or updated.
[2026/04/30 00:39:58] - SUCCESS: WooCommerce Simple Membership integration - Order status: processing
[2026/04/30 00:39:58] - SUCCESS: First name: (personal info of the user which I won't copy here)
[2026/04/30 00:39:58] - SUCCESS: Completed the profile_update hook handling - SWPM user profile (Member ID: 242) updated with the latest WP user data.
[2026/04/30 00:39:58] - SUCCESS: WooCommerce Simple Membership integration - Order processed... checking if member account needs to be created or updated.
[2026/04/30 00:39:58] - SUCCESS: WooCommerce Simple Membership integration - Order status: completed
[2026/04/30 00:39:58] - SUCCESS: First name: (personal info of the user which I won't copy here)
[2026/04/30 00:41:45] - SUCCESS: Stripe SCA checkout session create request received. Processing request...
[2026/04/30 00:41:46] - SUCCESS: Stripe SCA checkout session created successfully.
[2026/04/30 16:03:05] - SUCCESS: Stripe SCA checkout session create request received. Processing request...
[2026/04/30 16:03:06] - SUCCESS: Stripe SCA checkout session created successfully.

[The Assurer]

Are you trying to use both the SWPM subscription buttons and the WooCommerce addon at the same time? Or are you using the WooCommerce addon to also handle subscriptions?

• This reply was modified 2 months ago by The Assurer.

[stevemorel]

For the subscription I use the SWPM button. You can see here: https://uuguul.com/membership-join/
I also bought the WooCommerce and Simple Membership Plugin as I sell courses on the website too.
Subscription is not handled by Woocommerce but through the SWPM button. In the above case, users bought the courses (which are independent from the membership) and had their SWPM account successfully created via the Woocommerce SWPM add-on.

For the two users that could not subscribe, it seems they had issue with their card, so hopefully it’s not a website issue but a users issue. One of the two contacted their bank to renew the card or update it. I should know more soon. Hopefully they subscribe again and that time it works hehe ^^;

The next subscription recurring is on 8th of April, will have to wait until then to have the debug log report ^^;

[admin]

Thank you for sharing the log data. Unfortunately, this particular log doesn’t contain any recurring payment-related entries, so I’m unable to identify the issue from it. For us to troubleshoot effectively, the log file needs to cover the exact time when the issue occurs. I’d recommend resetting the debug log just before a recurring payment is due, so it captures only the relevant data from that event without unrelated noise.

A couple of clarifying questions to help us narrow this down:

1) When you mention “first invoice”, do you mean the very first checkout (when the user clicks the subscription button to create the subscription agreement), or the first recurring payment that occurs after the initial checkout?

2) From the timeframe covered by the current log, can you confirm whether the account was created correctly with the right membership level during the user’s registration/checkout attempt?

Also, since you’re using the WooCommerce addon as well, please go to that addon’s settings and make sure a value is set in the “Default Membership Level” field under the auto-create member account option. Missing this configuration can sometimes cause unexpected level assignments.

Once you’re able to share a fresh log covering a recurring payment event, we’ll take another look.

[stevemorel]

Hello,

I just reset the log. Will update here when the next recurring payment happens (on the 8th, so next week).

By “first invoice”, I mean the first recurring payment. The first checkout happened correctly. Then the issue happened after the first recuring payment.

For the two users that bought the course and had their account register with the woocommerce plugin, these account were successfully added to the Simple Membership with the right membership and active status.

I had a new users last week how had the right membership assignated, but I had to set the “active” status manually.
I’m not sure if the person did not see / ignore the activating email or if there were an issue on that side. Before I had a few other users that needed me to activate their account as well because the email was not working.

Finally, in the woocommerce plugin the default membership level is set, as well as the default status (active) so far user that had their account created through this plugin all add their account created correctly. So all is working on this side ^^ hehe

[stevemorel]

Hey there,

here is the code of the renewal payment.
It seems it went through without issue, as the user kept their membership level, and it’s also still active.

Here is the log info:

[2026/05/08 16:30:34] - SUCCESS: Stripe webhook signing secret is configured. Validating this webhook event...
[2026/05/08 16:30:34] - SUCCESS: Stripe webhook event data validated successfully!
[2026/05/08 16:30:34] - SUCCESS: Stripe subscription webhook received: customer.subscription.updated and api version: 2018-05-21. Checking if we need to handle this webhook.
[2026/05/08 16:30:34] - SUCCESS: End of Stripe subscription webhook processing. Webhook type: customer.subscription.updated
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Stripe webhook signing secret is configured. Validating this webhook event...
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Stripe webhook signing secret is configured. Validating this webhook event...
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Stripe webhook event data validated successfully!
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Stripe subscription webhook received: invoice.paid and api version: 2018-05-21. Checking if we need to handle this webhook.
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: End of Stripe subscription webhook processing. Webhook type: invoice.paid
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Stripe webhook event data validated successfully!
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Stripe subscription webhook received: invoice.payment_succeeded and api version: 2018-05-21. Checking if we need to handle this webhook.
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Stripe invoice.payment_succeeded webhook for subscription_cycle. This is a successful subscription charge. Capturing payment data.
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Updating the access start date if applicable for this subscription payment. Subscriber ID: /sub ID/, Email: /user_email/, Account status: active
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Found a record in the member table. The Member ID of the account to check is: 2 Membership Level: 4
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Updated the member profile with current date as the subscription start date.
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Value after update - Subscriber ID: /sub ID/, Start Date: 2026-05-08
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: Transaction data saved for Stripe subscription notification.
[2026/05/08 17:31:23] - SUCCESS: End of Stripe subscription webhook processing. Webhook type: invoice.payment_succeeded

[admin]

That looks fine to me. Everything executed as expected, and the recurring payment was processed correctly (membership level retained, account remained active).

One thing worth noting: the Stripe webhook events in your log are coming through with api version: 2018-05-21, which is quite old. This indicates the subscription button was likely created some time ago. You can upgrade the API version from the Developers menu in your Stripe account.

Since the button has been around for a while, it’s a good idea to review the current Stripe subscription button documentation and make sure all the steps are still valid for your setup:
https://simple-membership-plugin.com/sca-compliant-stripe-subscription-button/

You can also follow the documentation to create a new Stripe subscription button and replace the old one on your site. Existing subscriptions will continue running without interruption. Only new subscribers will use the new button. This is a good way to ensure that going forward, all new subscriptions are using the latest API version and the most up-to-date setup.

[stevemorel]

Okay I will check again, but that link you share is what I followed to create button and make the subscription in my stripe like 2 months ago when I started using your plugin.

I will digg into this : ) Thanks.

I had a second recurring payment today, and it seems everything went fine as well. I wonder if it’s a glitch that occurs only on first recurring payment?
Anyhow thanks a lot! 🙂

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