Member applications workflow

High-level workflow overview

1. Prospective member submits online application
2. According to your Payment settings, member is directed to pay online - or receives an invoice and payment instructions. (Unless free membership is selected)
3. According to your membership level settings, membership can be approved and activated immediately - or left in 'Pending - New' status for later review
4. If a manual (offline) payment has been selected, site administrator can activate membership right away and record the payment immediately or later on
5. If your settings require manual membership approval, site administrator has to approve new member from the member profile

If there already is a contact associated with the email used in the application form, then the membership application is associated with the existing contact, and the contact fields are updated to reflect the information on the application.

See also Access control by member status.

Along the way, Wild Apricot sends appropriate email notices, invoices and receipts to the member and/or administrators (everyone specified in Settings -> Routing of system emails will receive the admin email copy).

Member records can also be added manually by the site administrator - see Adding member records manually

For workflow on bundle memberships (e.g. corporate ) see Membership bundles

Workflow settings

Every membership level is configured individually. Go to Settings / Membership levels and open the appropriate member level and click on New applications tab.

You can activate new members as soon as their application is submitted online, or you can keep them in "Pending - New" status until their application is reviewed and /or payment is received in full.

Membership Application Review

• Membership applications must be approved by administrators
  If this option is unchecked, all incoming applications are considered approved.
  Otherwise, incoming applications are marked as Pending - New. The site administrator must look over the application and make sure it matches the criteria for membership. They approve the application via the Contacts list, or Reject it if it does not. Note, rejected member record remains in the system as a contact record.

• Payment has to be received in full before membership is activated
  (This option is not applicable to free memberships)
  If this selection is unchecked, a membership application is activated as soon as it is approved.
  Otherwise, membership will be activated when it has been paid in full - either by a successful online payment or by recording a manual payment.

The following table shows the different combinations that the options can be set to and how they impact the automatic activation of members:

Note: If neither option is selected, all new membership applications activate as soon as submitted, and have full access to your site at the membership level they have applied to. Please be careful when you are making your selections.

You can also choose to send an application initiation email (sent after member submits application) and / or an application activation email (sent after member is activated).

Automatic emails

There is a number of emails which can be automatically sent by Wild Apricot during the application process. When you create a new membership level, these emails are copied from Default membership emails. If desired, you can further customize them in each membership level separately.

For instance, you have the following membership level e-mails:

• application initiation e-mail - sent when the application has been received (whether payment has been received or not).
• member activation e-mail - sent to confirm that the membership has been activated and that the member now has full access to the system.

For both emails you can specify whether to send it to applicants, site administrators (with full or restricted access), or anyone else you have assigned to receive membership emails, see Routing of system e-mails.

You can review and edit each email template - either via the default emails screen (where it can be applied across all existing levels or to new ones) - or within a particular level.

Click [Edit] to customize the e-mail.

You can use rich-text to format the e-mail - for example, include your organization logo or links to the documents.

When you customize emails, you can insert some fields from the member application through e-mail macros (highlighted in orange). To insert e-mail macros click on [Insert macro] button located in the editor toolbar.

You can always revert to the default email template using the [Restore default] button.

To test the e-mail use [Test email] button. Note that a test e-mail that you will receive will contain a sample data (that you can see when inserting macros).

Member invoices

An invoice is generated and emailed to the member automatically for every new online application transaction (regardless of selected method of payment - online or manual). But if a new member is added manually by the site administrator, you would have to create a manual invoice that you can e-mail to new member.

See Invoices - Overview

Site administrators can look up all invoices and print or re-send them via Income report (see Income Reports)

Prorating

If your membership level is set up to renew on a specified date (e.g. January 1 of each year, or the member's join date) and is not set to automatically recur, you can prorate their application fee and selected costs that are associated with their application. For more information on how you can prorate the application fee, see Prorating membership dues for new applications.

Dealing with failed payments

In some cases online membership payment might not get completed. This could happen due to the failed credit card transaction or if the applicant decides to abandon the application in the middle of the transaction.
In this case, transactions will stay marked 'In progress' for 24 hours, after that it will be automatically marked as "Probably abandoned".
You can find these records by going into your contact database, using 'Attention required' filter and typing 'abandoned' into search field.

For more details on how to deal with failed transactions see Failed online payments