Membership’s overview figures — including Active Members - Principal, Dropped Members, and the Members by Type chart — usually count only people who hold their own membership. Some associations also want those figures to include people covered by an employer or another organization whose membership flows down to them. This article explains what that choice changes, where the setting lives, and what to check if figures stop working after it is turned on.
What This Controls
This choice controls whether Membership’s dashboard and overview figures include flowdown members, who are covered through an organization’s membership, or only members who hold a membership in their own name.
When the choice is off, these figures generally follow the same baseline used by Membership’s other dashboard figures: they count principal memberships and leave out flowdown memberships and other sub-memberships, except for the “Tier” package convention described in Read a Membership Count or Breakdown. That convention has not been confirmed for every affected figure, so use it as guidance rather than a guarantee when you compare totals.
This choice also does not add a view of a company’s own active membership on the organization’s management pages. If a company’s membership does not flow down to any of its people, you may not have a visible overview of that active membership outside the organization’s own membership record.
Where to Find It
You will not find this setting on a Console page or in Membership Setup. Rhythm turns it on for your account by request.
Warning
Turning this choice on is known to break some of the figures it is meant to improve instead of making them count correctly. Ask Rhythm Support before you request the change, and be ready for the effects described below.
The Setting
| Setting | Options | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Count flowdown memberships in figures | On, off | Off | When off, the overview figures count only members who hold a membership directly. When on, some figures fail outright instead of recalculating correctly because of how they are built. See below. |
Dependencies and Precedence
When this choice is turned on, it affects four figures on the Membership overview:
- Active Members - Principal
- Dropped Members
- Figures that count members in a particular status
- Members by Type
With the choice on, these four figures use invalid queries, so they fail at the database instead of returning a number. A fifth group of figures ignores the choice entirely. Even if this feature worked correctly, your dashboard would still count members two different ways on the same page: some figures would include flowdown members, and others would not.
Change Impact and How to Revert
- Turning the choice on does not change any membership record. It changes only how the overview statistics are calculated.
- If your figures stop loading, show an error, or show numbers you do not expect after this was turned on, ask Rhythm Support to turn it back off.
- Because there is no Console control, you cannot revert this yourself. Contact Support to request the change in either direction.
Permissions
You only need ordinary access to your Rhythm account and the Membership dashboard to view the affected figures. No separate permission is tied to this choice because there is no control for it.
Validation and Errors
If your Active Members - Principal, Dropped Members, or Members by Type figures fail to load after this choice is turned on, or a status-based figure shows an error, that is the expected effect described above. Contact Rhythm Support and mention that flowdown counting in figures is enabled. Do not assume the underlying membership records have a data problem.
If you need an accurate count of members covered through an organization’s membership while this issue exists, design a query against memberships directly instead of relying on the affected overview figures.
Related
- See the Membership Dashboard at a Glance
- Read a Membership Count or Breakdown
- Membership Types
- Design and Run a Query