Beyond generating renewal orders and charging cards, a billing run can email members and drop memberships. This article explains who receives renewal notices, reminders, and warnings, what those messages include, and what changes when a member is dropped.
Renewal Notices Instead of an Order
Some billing run tasks send a renewal notice instead of creating an order for members you want to bill outside the run. Sending the notice still marks the member billed for that cycle, even when the email cannot be delivered. The billing run does not include a setting that sends a renewal notice without also marking the member billed. That is how this task works, even though the setup screen describes it only as sending an email.
When Rhythm can identify the member’s most recent order, the notice includes that order, its first invoice, and a payment link. Two limits apply: an organization member with no linked contact record does not get an order attached this way, and the attached order is simply the member’s most recently listed order, not necessarily the current renewal order. If the order has more than one invoice, the notice links only the first invoice.
These same order, invoice, and payment-link fields are available as merge fields on every billing notice, including reminders and card-expiration warnings. They create a working link only when Rhythm can identify a related order and invoice for that member. If a reminder or notice goes out before any order exists, those fields are blank. This can happen when a run’s notice task runs before its order-generating task in the same pass.
Generating a renewal order also marks the member billed, but it does not send its own confirmation email. See How a Billing Run Bills and Charges Members for more detail. If you want to create renewal orders and invoices for a batch of members without emailing anyone, leave the notice selection blank on the Generate Renewal Orders task.
Generate Renewal Orders and other order-creating tasks are the way to give members an invoice they can access. A notice-only task does not always have an invoice to link, as described above. If every recipient needs the same supporting document, link it from a billing notice instead of trying to attach it to the order.
Warning
Avoid including both a Renewal Orders task and a Renewal Notices task for the same members in one billing run. Both tasks mark the member billed, and whichever worker processes second for a member fails with an already-billed error. You cannot predict which task the member will actually receive, so run these as separate billing runs instead.
Generate Renewal Notices is intended for members who will sign in and renew themselves. Sending one marks the membership billed for the cycle and excludes it from later renewal-order and auto-renewal billing runs, including a later Process Credit Cards for Autorenewal Members run, until the renewal is completed.
For members you expect to renew automatically, use Send Reminders to Auto-Renewal Members instead of Generate Renewal Notices. That reminder action and the auto-renewal reminder it sends are a separate communication stream, and they do not mark the membership billed. Because of that, the reminder does not put an auto-renewal member’s automatic charge at risk the way a standard renewal notice would.
If you want to email existing members about enrolling in auto-renew for the first time, create a notice under Membership setup billing notices with the instructions they need. Then send it with a billing run’s reminder task.
If a member already received a renewal notice or already has a renewal order for the cycle, follow up with renewal reminders. Do not send another renewal notice or run another Generate Renewal Orders task, because running Generate Renewal Orders again for members who already have invoices risks creating duplicates. You also do not need to remove or undo an earlier renewal-notice run before you drop the same members later. A drop task does not check whether a member was already billed.
If a member received a renewal notice but the portal shows no open invoice, and a later Generate Renewal Orders run also skips them, check whether the earlier notice run already marked them billed for the cycle. That billed marker is usually the reason, not a hidden setting. If the wrong action set the billed status, you can correct it for that membership in the console. That puts the membership back into consideration for the next renewal-order or auto-renewal run.
A renewal notice or reminder can prompt a member to sign in, but its link does not take them directly to the membership-renewal page. After logging in, the member lands on the portal home page and must go to renewal from the Membership menu. Before a membership reaches its portal renewal window, sending renewal information with a billing run is the recommended approach. A member outside that window will not see the renewal option in the portal yet.
Tip
You can format a date merge field with the Handlebars moment helper, such as {{moment membership.expiration_date format="MMMM DD, YYYY"}}, to control how an expiration date appears in a notice. A link inside a notice can also include UTM parameters for tracking, just like any marketing link, whether or not you use Google Analytics to read the results.
If a billing-run error blocks automated renewal-notice generation for a batch of members, you can send the renewal information to those members manually as a temporary measure while you resolve the error. That way, they are not left waiting to renew.
To reference the membership package by name in a notice, use the membershipPackage.name merge field. The merge-field picker does not show a package-name field on its own, so type this one directly if you do not see it listed.
Generate Renewal Notices already leaves out members who are set to auto-renew. The candidate rule behind both Generate Renewal Notices and Generate Renewal Orders only selects members who are not enrolled in auto-renewal. You do not need to add your own filter to keep auto-renewing members out of a renewal notice, because they were never going to be selected for one.
Reminders and Card-Expiration Warnings
Renewal and auto-renewal reminders go out on the schedule you set up. Each sent reminder is recorded on the member’s membership, so you can see which reminder number was sent most recently. Reminders run only on the days the billing run itself is scheduled for, so a member can miss an expected reminder because the schedule skips certain weekdays, not because of anything on their record.
Sending a reminder does not create an invoice, generate a renewal order, or change the membership’s status. It only updates the reminder information on the membership and sends the notice you selected.
Reminders do not check whether a member has already been billed or marked do-not-renew, so those members can still receive them. The do-not-renew flag is a renewal-control setting, not a place to record internal notes about why a member said they would not renew. Administrators see it labeled “Do not include on renewal billing,” and members see the equivalent option as “Do not renew” when they update their membership. Neither field is meant to record why a conversation happened.
The “Do Not Renew” option members see on the join or renew form is not configurable, so you cannot remove it from the form. A related but separate membership setting, “Do Not Include in Renewal Billing,” only excludes a member from renewal-order billing runs, which are the runs that generate an invoice. It does not exclude that same member from renewal-reminder or renewal-notice runs, because those runs only notify the member that it is time to renew.
A renewal reminder can reach a member after their renewal order has been generated, because the order alone does not make the member renewed. Renewal depends on payment. This can also happen after the member’s record shows a renewed term. Reminder eligibility follows when payment was actually completed, not just whether a later expiration date is visible on the record. A member whose payment posted after the reminder date can still be included in that reminder run.
Once invoices already exist for a renewal, do not run Generate Renewal Orders again. Use renewal reminders, Generate Renewal Notices, or Finance & Billing’s Send Customer Statements for further reminder emails, depending on the follow-up you need. After a member has already been billed or noticed for the cycle, Send Renewal Reminders is the intended way to follow up, even though the record already shows they were billed. Do not run another Generate Renewal Notices task for them instead.
A billing run cannot resend the same reminder number to a member who already received it in this cycle. That combination fails instead of sending again. If you need another attempt, use the next reminder number. Excluding the specific member named in that failure does not fix it, because the reused reminder number caused the failure, not a problem with that one record.
A reminder can also miss a member if a related renewal action ran first and actually renewed them. In that case, the member’s expiration date moves, and they no longer match the reminder’s criteria by the time the run executes. A membership installment-payment reminder run has its own eligibility rule. It looks for installments whose last-processed date falls in the range you set, so an installment that has never been processed has no last-processed date and is left out of that reminder run.
Different billing-run tasks can leave different indicators on a membership’s Billing tab. A completed renewal-reminder action usually leaves the already-billed or renewal-pending banner in place, while a completed renewal-order action clears it once the order exists. Do not use the banner alone as proof of which action ran.
Voiding a membership’s dues invoice does not cancel the related membership order or stop the member from receiving reminders. If the membership itself was never dropped and has no termination date, it still meets the criteria for renewal reminders and renewal billing after its invoice is voided.
An expiring-card reminder tells an auto-renewal member that their stored card will expire before their membership renews. Rhythm does not check whether the member updated their card after the run was planned, so a member who already fixed their card can still receive the warning.
This reminder compares two dates already stored on the membership: the card’s expiration date and the membership’s expiration date. A membership with no recorded card-expiration value is left out of this reminder entirely, even when the member has auto-renewal turned on and genuinely has a card on file. If a run returns fewer members than you expect, check whether the affected memberships actually have a stored card-expiration value before assuming the run is broken. That value can be blank simply because the membership was saved before your account began recording card expiration dates. Older records are not filled in after the fact, so a blank field does not necessarily mean the stored payment method is missing.
Tip
Rhythm has no notification that tells you exactly when a member updates the payment method behind their auto-renewal. The practical way to stay current is to rely on your scheduled billing and reminder runs, including the expiring-card warning, so an updated card is picked up the next time a run executes. Some administrators also add a line to Portal pages asking auto-renewal members to review and, if needed, re-save their stored payment method as an extra prompt alongside these scheduled reminders.
Who a Notice Actually Reaches
For an individual member, a billing notice goes to that contact’s own email address. If the contact has no email address on file, the action completes without sending anything, and Rhythm does not treat that as an error. Rhythm also does not check whether the notice template is active at send time, so an inactive notice template still sends when the run is configured to use it. Unlike an organization membership, an individual membership has no built-in way to add a second person to receive its renewal notices. If you want someone else to see the notice too, forward it yourself.
For an organization member, the notice goes to the organization’s contacts who have the roles you selected when setting up the notice. If you leave the roles blank, every contact of the organization receives the notice. Choosing specific roles is useful when you only want the notice reaching contacts who can act on payment, rather than every contact on the organization’s record.
A notice can only bounce if it had somewhere to go. For an individual, that means an email address on the contact record. For an organization, that means an email address on the organization itself or on a contact tied to it through the relationship the notice used. When no qualifying address exists anywhere, there is nothing to bounce and no failed send. If a notice was not sent for that reason, but invoices were already created for the same cycle, Rhythm does not resend it automatically later. Staff need to notify those members another way.
A child organization’s billing notices go only to that child organization’s own contacts. They do not also reach contacts on its parent organization, and Rhythm has no automatic way to notify a parent organization’s contacts about a child organization’s membership invoice outside of a billing run.
Warning
When a billing notice is sent to “every contact” at an organization, Rhythm uses only the first page of that organization’s contacts. For a very large organization, some contacts may not receive the notice.
Individual memberships do not have an equivalent way to add a second recipient to their notice. Unlike an organization’s contact-role list, there is currently no built-in way to name another person who should also receive an individual member’s renewal notice. If someone else needs to be copied on that communication, you need to send it to them separately.
A membership package’s setting for billing renewals to the member’s organization is separate from a notice’s contact-role list. By itself, that billing setting does not decide who receives a billing run’s email. For an organization’s billing-run notice, recipients are still controlled only by the roles you choose on the notice itself, as described above.
When a child organization has a parent, a billing run’s renewal notice for the child’s own membership goes only to the child organization’s contacts. It never goes to contacts on the parent organization. This is true even when the child membership has “Bill to Parent Organization” turned on, and even when the membership’s origin is set to Principal. The run still bills and notifies the child organization directly, not the parent. There is currently no way to add a parent-organization contact as an additional recipient of the child’s notice. Rhythm also has no automatic way to notify a parent organization about a child organization’s membership invoice or open balance outside of what the child organization’s own notice already reaches.
Occasionally, a contact who no longer has a notice’s selected role, or who is no longer linked to the billed organization at all, has still received a renewal reminder meant only for current holders of that role. Rhythm’s intended rule is to send only to contacts who currently qualify, so treat that report as unexpected rather than as a setting you are missing. Because contact-role history is not fully retained on the record, audit logs may also not be able to explain later why a specific contact received a past renewal email.
For organization billing generally, the contact you designate as the billing contact does not always automatically receive the invoice email for a membership charge billed to the organization. If a designated billing contact reports not receiving an invoice, confirm delivery and resend manually instead of assuming the invoice was never generated. This differs from choosing “Bill my Organization” during a membership purchase in the portal. In that flow, the invoice notice currently goes to the purchaser, not automatically to the organization’s billing contact.
Warning
A contact who used to hold one of a notice's chosen roles can sometimes still receive a renewal reminder after that role is removed from their record, even though the general rule is that a notice should reach only contacts who currently hold one of the chosen roles. If you see this, double-check the contact's current roles before assuming your role selection is set up incorrectly.
What a Drop Changes
Before a run selects candidates for a drop task, it skips any membership marked “Do not drop this membership.” That checkbox only keeps the drop task from touching the record. It does not extend the expiration date, renew the membership, or otherwise keep it current, so a protected membership still needs its own renewal. If you are clearing memberships for a bulk drop and some are unexpectedly left out, check whether this box is checked on those records. You may need a mass update to clear it before the drop will select them.
When a billing run drops an expired member, the membership status becomes inactive and Rhythm records a termination date. That termination date reflects when the run was planned, not when the drop was actually run, so it can be earlier than the date you ran the drop.
The termination date is different from the membership’s expiration date. The expiration date stays as the date the membership actually expired, while the termination date appears only after the membership has been dropped. That termination date is also what allows the former member to use the join process again afterward.
A membership is not dropped just because its expiration date has passed. Between expiration and an actual drop, a membership can sit in expired status while still retaining access to its benefits. Nothing changes automatically at expiration or after a grace period on its own. Status changes only when a drop or terminate billing run actually executes. Your account’s default grace period is set separately; see Membership Terms and Renewal Rules. For that reason, a member who has not been dropped and has not otherwise been given a termination date keeps qualifying for future renewal billing runs if they still meet the run’s other criteria, even well past their expiration date.
Bulk changing a membership’s status by hand, or through a general mass update, is not the same as running a billing-run drop. A billing-run drop does more than set the status to Inactive. It also records the termination date and can end committee memberships and deactivate certifications, as described below. If your goal is to move a batch of unpaid or non-renewed members to non-member status correctly, including those effects, run a billing run’s drop task instead of a bulk status change. This is also the supported way to terminate members in bulk for nonpayment.
An expired membership does not drop or terminate on its own. An administrator has to create and process a billing run to do it. Once that run is processed, the membership’s status changes to inactive and a termination date is added to the record. Members created through the normal membership application flow appear like any other member in your contacts and membership lists before the drop. After a billing run drops them for non-renewal, they are removed from active membership results until they renew again.
If the run’s drop settings include ending associated committee memberships, the dropped member’s committee seats end as part of the same action. If the run’s drop settings include deactivating certifications, any certification tied to the member’s active membership is deactivated, except for a certification specifically marked not to be dropped, which stays active. Rhythm records either follow-on step as part of a completed drop even in the rare case that ending a seat or certification does not fully succeed. The membership itself is still terminated.
This same pattern can appear with related individual member records. Occasionally, when an organization or company-principal membership is dropped, an associated assigned member record does not update along with it and needs to be terminated by hand, even though most records in the same run update correctly. Dropping an organization membership can also terminate that organization’s related contacts, even when those individual contact records do not show “Do Not Renew” checked. The organization’s own do-not-renew setting is what the drop run acts on, and it does not need to be repeated on every related contact for the drop to reach them.
Dropping a membership does not automatically close, cancel, or delete anything tied to the membership’s billing. Any unpaid renewal invoice or open renewal order for that membership stays open after the drop. The same is true of any pro forma invoice created for the same expiration period, because Drop/Terminate Expired Members does not void it on its own. Review and cancel or void those items separately if you do not want them left outstanding.
A drop billing run can also fail for individual members because of invoice formatting, rather than anything about their membership. If the invoice referenced on a member’s record uses an inactive invoice template, or a non-default invoice template not meant for this purpose, that member’s action can error during the drop and again when the invoice is printed. Setting an active, default invoice template on the affected invoice resolves that specific failure.
Once a membership is actually dropped through a Dropped/Terminate billing run, it stops being eligible for the run’s other billing categories too. That includes renewal orders, notices, and renewal reminders.
Tip
If you have inactive memberships with a blank termination date, run a billing-run drop on them rather than leaving them as is. An inactive record with no termination date can otherwise advance to an incorrect future expiration date the next time it is touched. Using the drop process, rather than a manual review and adjustment, is the more reliable way to keep expiration dates advancing by the correct number of days.
Changing a membership’s expiration date by itself does not restore an Active status after a drop has already inactivated the record. If you need to correct a membership that was dropped in error after its expiration date was adjusted, look for records with the target expiration date, an Inactive status, and a termination date. Then remove the termination date and set the status back to Active by hand.
More generally, a membership left terminated and inactive by a drop does not regain access automatically after a payment or another update. To make it active again, either take the member through the join process or manually correct the record by removing the termination date and reactivating the membership.
Undoing a Drop or Fixing a Mistaken Billing Run
If a drop happened by mistake, you do not have to force the member through rejoining or reinstating. Remove the termination date and set the membership’s status back to what it was to restore the existing membership record. Treat this as an exception for correcting an accidental drop, not as a routine alternative to the reinstatement process.
Use a membership query to find and fix the affected records more easily. If a batch of members ended up with the wrong status because a drop did not update them correctly, a Mass Update against a query of the affected records can change their status in bulk to match what the drop should have done.
Dropping one member through a billing run works the same way as dropping many. There is no way to select a member directly by contact number, but you can use the member’s expiration date to bring them into the billing run’s selection. Then exclude every other record you do not want dropped.
Tip
You can also realign termination dates in bulk without a billing run. Build a membership query, export it to Excel, copy each record’s expiration date into the termination date column, keep the record identifier in the export, and upload the result through Security and Settings’ Mass Updates area.
When the dropped membership belongs to an organization, these same drop settings are not limited to the organization’s own membership. Ending committee memberships or deactivating certifications also applies to any downstream member contacts Rhythm can identify as receiving that organization’s membership by flowdown or by an assigned seat. Those people’s committee seats and certifications end along with the organization’s drop, not just the organization’s own.
That termination date matters beyond the drop itself. It is part of what lets the member use the join process again later, once any reinstatement window on your account has passed. The same thing can happen outside a billing run. If a staff member cancels an order placed in error, the affected record can also end up with a termination date, and the member can still complete a renewal in the portal afterward.
If the run’s drop settings include ending associated committee memberships, the dropped member’s committee seats end as part of the same action. If the run’s drop settings include deactivating certifications, any certification tied to the member’s active membership is deactivated, except for a certification specifically marked not to be dropped, which stays active. Rhythm records either follow-on step as part of a completed drop even in the rare case that ending a seat or certification does not fully succeed; the membership itself is still terminated.
Dropping an organization’s own membership does not, by itself, drop the memberships of its assigned seat holders or the people who received membership through flowdown from it. A billing run’s drop task only acts on the one membership it selected for that action, so if related memberships also need to end, plan to handle them separately.
Related
To learn how a member gets marked billed and what happens to their renewal order before a drop is considered, see How a Billing Run Bills and Charges Members. To learn how a run decides which expired members are candidates for a drop, see How a Billing Run Plans and Refreshes Its Actions. To learn what happens to an organization’s flowed-down and assigned memberships when the organization itself is dropped, see How an Organization's Membership Reaches Its People. For the reinstatement window, grace period, and related settings, see Membership Terms and Renewal Rules.