When a member joins or renews with a membership package that allows sections, Rhythm builds the section list before the application form displays it. This article explains how Rhythm chooses, groups, and prices those sections.
What Goes Into the List
Rhythm starts with every section defined in your Rhythm account, then filters that list for the package the member is applying for:
- Inactive sections and inactive section types are left out. Rhythm only offers active sections that belong to active section types.
- Sections the package's membership type excludes are left out. If a section is limited to certain membership types, Rhythm offers it only when the package’s membership type is on that list. If every allowed membership type in the restriction has been deleted, Rhythm treats the section as unavailable to everyone.
- What's left is grouped under its section type, in the order your account chose for those types. If no sections remain under a section type after filtering, Rhythm leaves that section type off the list instead of showing an empty group.
How a Section Is Priced
Rhythm prices each offered section with the dues product that applies to the selected package. If no specific dues product matches, Rhythm uses a catch-all dues product when one exists. If dues are turned on for the section but no active dues product applies, Rhythm still offers the section at a price of zero and does not show a warning.
When the application identifies a specific person, such as after the applicant is selected on the form, and the package is tied to a business unit, Rhythm looks up that person’s price the same way it would price an order for them. If there is no named person, or the package does not have a business unit, Rhythm shows the section’s stored price in US dollars. If the person-specific price lookup fails, or if Rhythm can no longer find the package for this offering, the whole section offering fails instead of falling back to stored prices.
A Custom Section Rule
If your Rhythm account uses a custom function to decide section eligibility, Rhythm calls that function and uses the list it returns. Rhythm does not check the returned list again for eligibility, activity, or price. If the custom function fails, cannot be found, or does not return anything usable, Rhythm quietly falls back to the standard offering described above. Only your Rhythm account’s logs show that the custom rule did not run.
Tip
Because the custom function receives only the already-filtered standard list, it can remove more sections, but it cannot bring back a section the standard rules already excluded unless it builds that section’s data itself.
On an organizational membership, a custom rule built for section pricing is usually meant to give each covered contact one Section-type selection at no additional cost. The configured fee applies only to that same contact’s additional Section-type selections. Selections with the Division type are priced at $0 by default and do not count toward that one free Section-type selection. Because the allowance applies separately to each covered contact, free selections need to be counted per contact. If more than one contact under the same organizational membership chooses the same section, counting only the total number of section lines can make the discount lower than expected.
Warning
On accounts using this kind of custom rule, adding a Division-type option before a Section-type option for the same covered contact has been observed to charge for a Section-type selection that should have been free. Adding the Section-type selection first, and the Division-type option second, has produced the expected $0 price for that first Section-type selection. If a covered contact’s free section is billed unexpectedly, try re-adding the selections in that order, or contact Rhythm Support.
What Happens at Renewal
When Rhythm generates a member’s renewal application, it keeps only the sections the member is still allowed to hold under the renewing package. It uses the same section offering described above. If the member held a section that is no longer offered, such as after they move to a membership type that excludes it, Rhythm quietly drops that section from the generated renewal application. Neither the member nor staff are told this happened. To catch this before it affects a renewal, review the generated application’s sections before the application is submitted or billed.
A section hidden from the Portal’s section picker works differently. Because it is still part of the standard offering, a member who already holds it keeps it at renewal.
Related Reading
Chapters go through a similar filtered offering when a member joins or renews. You configure sections and define their dues products from Setup. For how staff start and manage the applications where this offering appears, see Create and Manage Applications in the Console.