Some membership applications become active memberships as soon as they are paid. Others must wait for a staff member to review and approve them. This article explains why an application is held, what the applicant sees while they wait, and how Rhythm confirms a group application after everyone has paid.
Why an Application Might Be Held
An administrator chooses the approval rule separately for each application process. A process can never require approval, always require approval for everyone who uses it, or require approval only when the applicant chooses a chapter your administrator marked for approval on the application or order. Choosing any other chapter does not hold the application. When someone completes an application, the status becomes Approved or Under Review based on that process setup. In the Portal, the applicant chooses the membership process before choosing a package or chapter, so the process they choose decides whether approval applies from the start.
Rhythm only holds a purchase for approval when the purchase includes an actual application. If someone buys a membership package with no application behind it, Rhythm does not hold anything for approval, no matter how the process is configured. The same rule applies when someone adds membership while registering for an event. If the join process behind that membership requires approval, Rhythm creates an application that waits for review, and the person does not have the membership until you activate it.
Some processes let applicants submit without paying right away by using an invoice instead of requiring electronic payment at checkout. In that setup, you can begin review before the invoice is paid. If a process uses its own checkout settings instead of your Rhythm account’s normal checkout options, you must also turn on invoicing or pay-later options for that process. The account-wide payment-timing setting is not enough on its own.
Warning
Rhythm holds an application for approval after payment, not before. By the time the application is waiting for your review, the applicant has already paid. They do not have a membership on their record yet, but the charge has already gone through.
While the application is held, Rhythm does not send the automatic activation email that would normally welcome a new or renewing member, even when that email is turned on for the process. Member contacts also do not appear on the related invoice while the application is under review; they appear after the application is approved. After you approve the application and activate the membership, Rhythm is expected to send the activation confirmation email then, if the process has it enabled. It does not send before approval, and it does not send a second time if the applicant already received the earlier confirmation email. The purchase itself follows the usual rules for updating a membership record. See How Buying or Renewing a Membership Package Updates Your Record for what that includes.
Warning
If an invoice for a membership that requires approval is posted to a batch before the membership is approved and activated, the deferral schedule generated from that batch can be built incorrectly. At that point, the membership’s expiration date does not exist yet. Wait until an application has been approved and activated before posting its batch.
Approving, Rejecting, and Activating an Application
You approve a held application from the application itself by selecting Activate Membership. This should also update the status in application queries that still show it as Under Review. If the person qualifies for a different membership level than the one they originally applied for, update both the membership level and the application process before you approve the application. The welcome email follows the application process in place at the time of approval, so leaving the original process can send the wrong welcome letter.
Before you approve a held application, confirm that the invoice shows paid and that the order’s related transactions show the payment attached. An applicant who chose to be invoiced or billed later stays in the same state until that invoice is eventually paid. Selecting Activate Membership starts the activation process, but it does not guarantee that every related order and membership update has already finished. If something still looks unfinished afterward, give it a moment before assuming it failed.
Tip
When you open an application for review or activation in the console, you see the membership type or package, the application process, any custom fields, and the list of members to be assigned to the membership. You cannot currently limit this view for individual reviewers, so anyone reviewing an application sees all of it.
Rejecting an application does not automatically refund any payment already taken. Rhythm offers the refund separately when you cancel the related order. For a paid application that requires approval, reject it by changing the application’s status to Rejected, then cancel its order by hand. Cancelling the order is where Rhythm offers the option to refund the card payment. After a payment has been applied to the application’s order, you may no longer be able to cancel the application itself; cancelling the order is then the way to unwind the purchase.
What an Applicant Sees While Waiting
If the process has a confirmation email enabled and configured, Rhythm sends it after the application is received and set aside for review. The applicant receives the email, or the group administrator receives it for a group application, as long as they have an email address on file and the order was not set to suppress confirmation emails to the customer. When a process delays the activation email until the membership is paid, the applicant still receives this earlier confirmation after the application is received. The activation email follows later, after you approve and activate the membership.
Tip
Previewing a confirmation or activation email uses different rules from the real send. The preview needs an existing membership record to personalize the message, so previewing it for someone who has only submitted an application, with no active membership yet, can fail with a record-not-found error instead of showing the email.
While an application is held, the applicant may still appear as a nonmember anywhere Rhythm checks their status, including in the same join or renewal flow they used. They may also be able to submit and pay for another application before the first one is approved. On the staff side, the application should show Under Review before activation and offer an activation action while it waits. Those are good signs that the application reached staff correctly and was not lost.
The application status is meant to follow the order as the order is processed, including changing to Cancelled when its order is cancelled. In the rare case that the status update does not go through, the application can still show an earlier status even after the order has moved on. For example, a status can revert from Under Review back to Not Yet Submitted if something updates the application again right after fulfillment sets it. An application shown as Approved in one place can also still appear as Under Review in some query results until someone opens, edits, and saves it again. A membership whose paid join application was approved can also keep a pending-order banner on its record until that is corrected, which can block the next renewal from starting. If a held application’s status looks out of date compared to its order, or its record still shows a pending order after approval, treat it as a status mismatch rather than assuming the approval failed. Ask Support if it does not clear up after a short wait, or if you cancel an order that should have set the application to Cancelled and the change has not appeared on the Application 360 page.
If the membership order, invoice, and payment were all created successfully but no application appears for approval, that is not expected. An application should exist whenever its process requires one. Two different situations can leave someone paid but not yet a member: the application exists and is correctly waiting under review, or the application was never created even though the order went through. If the application does not exist at all, cancel the affected order and have the purchase submitted again. That usually creates the correct application, which you can then approve. Separately, writing off an incorrect payment does not clear the way for a new application by itself. You still need to cancel the existing order, then cancel and delete its application order, before a replacement application can be created. An inactive membership status also does not guarantee that a new application can be started, because existing order or application records can still block a new one even while the status shows inactive.
Confirming a Group Application
When people apply together as a group, Rhythm closes out the whole group and confirms it to the group administrator after the order behind it has been fulfilled. This happens as long as at least one application on that order belongs to the group, and the group itself names a process and an administrator contact.
A very large group order can be processed asynchronously, so seeing only a handful of its applications converted to memberships right after checkout does not mean the rest failed. Give a large order time to finish before investigating. If a group order completes but the group record or its individual applications do not update to reflect it, you can correct them by hand, one application at a time or through a mass update, while the cause is reviewed.
Related
For details about how Rhythm prices the order behind an application, including any chapter it names, before the approval decision, see How an Application's Order Is Priced.