Recording payments and approving applications

Overview

In Wild Apricot, a newly submitted membership application goes through two main checks:

• Payment - whether it's received or not. Payment can be recorded automatically for online payments or entered manually (e.g. checks received). See Payments - Overview
• Member application review - whether or not membership application has to be approved by administrator manually

These options are setup individually for every membership level in Settings > Membership levels (See: Member applications workflow ).

Depending on these settings, membership application process can be:

• Completely automated, or
• Semi-automated, where administrator would have to confirm and record the payment and/or review and confirm member application.

When a new member applies through online membership application form (either with online or manual payment) system will automatically do the following:

1. create two financial records:
   • Payment record
   • Invoice
2. Follow "Member application review" settings for the selected membership level. New member will be either approved immediately after the payment is confirmed or manually by administrator.

After the successful payment, the payment record is settled with the corresponding invoice.

• For online payments this process is automatic and unless there is a server interruption you do not need to do anything.
• For manual payments, in cases when a new member pays by cache/check or similar, payment must be recorded by administrator manually.

In order to record the payment, administrator must find the new contact record from Contact database or corresponding invoice in Finances > Invoices (See: Find invoice).

After the payment is recorded member application will go through the second check where it will be checked against the membership level "Member application review" settings.

If "Member application review" in membership level is enabled, administrator would have to manually approve the new member. If it is not enabled then the new member will be approved automatically right after the payment confirmation.

When a manual approval is required, membership status is marked as "Application pending".
You can find members with this status from Contact list by doing a keyword search for "Application pending".

To approve a new member, go to Membership tab of the member record and click on Approve (or Reject) button.
Note, records of rejected members remain in the system as contacts. To delete a contact see: Archived vs. active records

After approval member record becomes Active (See: Access control by member status). Depending on the membership level settings, Member activation email can be sent to the new member and to administrator (See: Member applications workflow).

Audit log and financial transactions

The member record and logs for financial transactions can be accessed from member profile by going to Financial transactions.

It will filter all financial transactions just for this member.
Here you can view:

• Invoices
• Payments & refunds
• Audit log

See also

• Record Payment and Settle to Invoice
• Refunds
• Adjust or Cancel Payment or Refund
• Failed online payments
• Issue manual invoice