Which chapters you can choose, which chapter Rhythm suggests, and what each chapter costs are decided as you complete a membership application or renewal. This article explains how those choices work together.
Which Chapters You May Choose
Rhythm offers the chapters allowed by the membership package you choose. Because a chapter type can be limited to certain membership types, changing your package can change the chapters you see. If you have not chosen a package yet, Rhythm does not offer any chapters.
Chapters your association has hidden from the Portal are still included in the results and marked as hidden. Whether you see a hidden chapter depends on how your Rhythm account's application form uses that hidden flag.
When you are signed in and requesting chapters for your own membership, Rhythm ranks chapters by nearest first and prices them for you. Rhythm does not show chapter offers or prices for a member you do not represent, so a Portal user cannot look up another person's chapter options this way.
Your association can cap how many chapters a member may join. A global minimum or maximum number of chapters can be set for the whole account under Setup › Other Settings wherever chapters are enabled. An individual membership package can set its own minimum and maximum instead by turning on Override Chapter Settings.
If the chapter choice on your form is required, you cannot finish joining, renewing, or reinstating until you pick one.
Rhythm does not filter out chapters you already belong to, so Add Chapter can still show chapters you already hold. If you choose one of those chapters again, you can create a duplicate chapter membership, so check your current chapters before adding another.
Tip
If the package list stays stuck loading for the chapter shown when the form first opens, change the chapter selection to a different one, then change it back to the one you want. This has been observed to get the package list to load when it does not load on its own.
How Rhythm Suggests a Chapter
Your association chooses one strategy for suggesting a chapter. If that strategy cannot return a suggestion, Rhythm falls back to distance. If you already have a primary chapter assigned, Rhythm keeps it and looks for additional suggested chapters around it instead of replacing it.
- Nearest by distance suggests up to five chapters closest to your address. Only chapters with map coordinates on their address can be suggested this way. If a chapter is closer than half a mile, the distance rounds down to zero and Rhythm drops it from the list, so the nearest chapter can sometimes be left out. If only some of your association's active chapters have an address on file, Rhythm can only rank those chapters. In that case, Rhythm may suggest a chapter that is not actually the closest one to you when the true nearest chapter has no address recorded.
- An assignment mapping checks your address against an ordered list of rules your administrator wrote. Each rule routes a postal code range, state, or country to one chapter. Rhythm checks the rules in order, and the first match wins. Postal codes are compared as plain text, so a differently formatted code, such as one with a four-digit extension, can fall outside a range that otherwise looks like it should include it. States must match exactly, though addresses are normally standardized to a two-letter code automatically. Countries match regardless of case. If no rule matches, Rhythm suggests the mapping's default chapter when one is set.
- Your account's own custom logic lets a function you control choose the suggestions.
If the selected strategy cannot answer because no mapping record exists, the custom function fails, or you have no address on file, Rhythm quietly suggests by distance instead. The screen does not show that a fallback happened. An applicant with no address on file gets no suggestions from any distance-based method.
How Chapter Dues Are Priced
Each chapter you are offered is quoted using its dues product for your specific membership package. If the chapter does not have a package-specific dues product, Rhythm uses its general dues product instead. A chapter is quoted at zero when its dues are switched off or when it has no matching active product.
In the intended chapter dues design, your first chapter is free, and only additional chapters carry the configured dues for each one. This first-free, additional-paid pattern applies across membership types and packages. It also applies when you change chapters in the middle of a membership, not only when you first join or add chapters.
Tip
If a chapter's dues look wrong, check whether your Rhythm account has more than one active dues product that could match the same package, or more than one general product. Rhythm uses whichever one it finds first, so a duplicate can quietly produce the wrong price.
When your membership package uses Commerce pricing, Commerce provides the dues quote in your own currency. Otherwise, Rhythm shows the chapter's stored price in United States dollars.
Chapters You May Not Remove
Your association can prevent you from removing your assigned primary chapter, or any chapter you are already paying dues for, while you renew or change your affiliation. These restrictions only apply when your Rhythm account uses the assignment-mapping suggestion strategy and lets members add or remove chapters themselves. The already-paying-dues restriction covers every chapter with an active dues product tied to you, even when that chapter's own dues setting is off.
Chapter affiliation otherwise works as an opt-out choice: an existing chapter keeps going unless you or your association removes it during the process. If you move from a chapter-eligible package to one that is not eligible for chapter membership, your existing chapter can still continue instead of dropping automatically. If the form you are using does not show a chapter component, any chapter you already hold still continues.
Your chapter can also remain associated with your membership through a renewal when the renewal invoice does not show a chapter dues line. Invoice visibility and chapter association are not the same thing. Once the invoice is paid, the chapter association stays in place.
Tip
If your Chapter field is disabled after you change to a membership package that does not automatically assign a chapter, and you still need to choose one, ask your association about moving the Chapter component to a later page of the application. That has been observed to make chapter selection work normally again in this situation.
Your administrator sets up chapters and assignment mappings. A chapter record, including its address, type, and dues setting, is created from Chapters › Create Chapter. The routing rules for the assignment-mapping strategy are created from Setup › Chapters › Assignment Mappings › Create Chapter Assignment Mapping.
Related
For how a chosen chapter's dues become a line on your priced order alongside your package, sections, and add-ons, see How an Application's Order Is Priced.