Membership dues

If your organization charges membership dues, OrganizeOS collects them from members directly, tracks who is current, and applies a policy you choose when someone stops paying. This article covers the organizer side. For what a member sees and does, see My Membership.

Before dues can do anything

Two things have to be in place, and neither of them lives on the dues screens:

1. Payments connected. Your organization needs its payment setup completed and able to accept charges. Until then, a member who tries to start paying is told the organization has not finished setting up payments.
2. A tier with a price. Dues are charged by membership tier, not by a dues screen. A tier with no price attached is a free tier and is never billed. Set prices under Administration, then People, then Membership tiers.

There is no pricing control anywhere in the dues area itself.

Where to find dues

Dues is not a sidebar item. There are two entry points:

• The roster. Open People in your sidebar, land on Overview, and choose the Dues card. Anyone with dues visibility on your team can reach it.
• The settings. Open Administration, then People, and choose Manage dues settings on the Membership dues card. Owners and admins only.

Dues status also appears as a column on People, then Members, with an All dues filter alongside the other filters there.

Reading the dues roster

The Dues page answers one question: who is paid, who is past due, and who has lapsed. It is read-only -- there are no buttons on it beyond the filters.

A row of filters across the top shows live counts for All, Paid, Past due, Grace, Lapsed and Free. Selecting one narrows the table below, which shows each member with their tier, status, cadence, and renewal or expiry date.

The statuses mean:

One wording note, because it looks like a discrepancy and is not: the roster filter says Paid, and the member sees Active on their own membership page. They are the same state.

The last column reads differently depending on the arrangement: "Renews" and a date for recurring dues, "Expires" and a date or "Lifetime" for a one-time payment, and "In grace since" and a date once someone has fallen into grace.

Clicking a member's name opens their profile. Dues themselves are not shown on the profile -- the roster is where dues information lives.

Setting your lapse policy

Manage dues settings has exactly two controls, and they decide what unpaid dues actually do.

When dues lapse offers three policies:

• Not in good standing -- keep membership but suspend voting and paid benefits until dues are current. The member stays in your organization, and their own membership page tells them their benefits are paused rather than removing them.
• Downgrade to free tier -- move the member to your default free tier. Their recurring billing is stopped at the same time. This only moves them if your default tier is genuinely free. If your default tier has a price on it, the member is marked lapsed and their tier is left alone, with no warning -- so check your default tier before choosing this policy.
• Status only -- track status with no automatic effect. Nothing changes for the member; admins act manually.

Grace period (days) is how long after a failed or expired payment the policy waits before applying. It defaults to 14 days and takes any whole number, including 0.

Save confirms when the change has been stored. The policy applies from then on; it does not retroactively change anyone already lapsed.

What happens automatically

Once a day, OrganizeOS reviews every member's dues and moves them along:

• Recurring dues. A failed payment sets the member Past due while recovery is attempted. If the payment still has not gone through after about two weeks, they move to Grace. After your grace period they become Lapsed and your policy is applied.
• One-time dues. When the term expires the member goes straight to Grace, then to Lapsed after your grace period.

Members are emailed along the way, without you doing anything. There are five of these:

• "Your {organization} membership dues are active"
• "Receipt for your {organization} membership dues"
• "Action needed: your {organization} dues payment failed"
• "Your {organization} membership is about to lapse"
• "Your {organization} membership has lapsed"

Lapsing never removes a member from your organization under any policy.

What members do themselves

Everything on the paying side is member-initiated, from their own My Membership page: starting dues, updating a card, cancelling, and resuming. Cancel dues stops billing at the end of the period they have already paid for -- it is not immediate, and it does not end their membership. After cancelling they can resume.

Members paying a one-time or lifetime fee have no ongoing controls, since there is nothing recurring to manage.

What you cannot do here yet

Worth knowing up front, because these are the four things organizers most often go looking for:

• You cannot record a payment manually. There is no way to mark a member as paid for a cheque or cash. Everything on the roster comes from payments made through OrganizeOS.
• You cannot export the roster. There is no download from the Dues page.
• You cannot override, waive, comp or extend a member's dues. The roster is read-only. The only writes come from the member's own actions and the daily review.
• You cannot enrol someone in dues. Only the member can start paying, from their own membership page. There is no dues invoice or reminder you can send by hand.

Who can do what

Viewing the dues roster requires dues visibility, which owners and admins have by default and which you can grant to a custom role. Changing the lapse policy and grace period is owner or admin only. A plain member sees neither.

Why this matters

Dues are where a lot of membership organizations quietly lose money, not because people refuse to pay but because a card expires and nobody notices for eight months. The daily review and the five automatic emails handle the noticing for you. What the product cannot decide for you is what a lapse should actually mean in your organization -- whether someone stops being in good standing, drops to your free tier, or simply gets flagged for a human to call. Choosing that deliberately, and setting a grace period that matches how your members really behave, is the whole configuration. After that the roster is a report you read, not a system you operate.