This article covers three related setup tasks: setting up membership status reasons, creating membership ID card templates, and previewing an email, certificate, or ID card before it goes out.
Membership Status Reasons
A membership status tells you whether someone is active, inactive, suspended, or active without benefits. Rhythm counts someone as inactive only when the membership status is Inactive and the membership has a termination date. Members who are inactive or otherwise not current do not receive member benefits and cannot receive member pricing during event registration. If a record looks inactive, the membership may simply have expired; that does not mean the record is a duplicate or linked to the wrong contact.
The status under an organization's name on the organization record is the organization's own status, not its membership status. Marking the organization record inactive does not change the membership, so use the membership status field when you need to change the membership.
A status reason is your label for why a membership has a status, such as "Lack of Payment" for an inactive member. Status reasons are manual and descriptive. Staff choose a reason when they manually change a membership's status, and they can search for members by that reason.
Rhythm does not assign or clear status reasons automatically. For example, a renewal does not clear or replace a reason from an earlier status, so a renewed active member can still show a prior "Dropped" reason in Membership 360 and in query results until someone clears it. Rhythm also does not automatically assign a status reason when someone joins a chapter. If you need a reason applied consistently at that point, add the Status Reason field to the membership application form so applicants provide it, or plan to update members' reasons in bulk afterward. If you use status reasons for a distinction that would otherwise require a separate membership category, such as segmenting members for a billing run, they can be a simpler option.
An Inactive Status Reason Can Still Be Selected on an Existing Membership
In some accounts, a status reason marked Inactive in Setup still appears in the status reason dropdown when staff edit an existing membership record, even though it no longer appears for new selections elsewhere. Treat an inactive reason as retired for new use, and do not rely only on the edit-form dropdown to confirm that a reason has been fully removed from circulation.
If you add Status Reason to a membership application form for billing segmentation, label the field clearly with the exact value you need. Otherwise, applicants can enter inconsistent values, which means you may need to select multiple status reasons when filtering a billing run or correct the values later with a mass update.
Manually setting a membership to Active Without Benefits removes access to any benefit that depends on active membership, including a benefit granted by mistake. Use this status when you need to remove an incorrectly granted benefit without fully inactivating the membership.
A membership can also reach this status automatically. A membership package has its own checkbox for selling an active membership without the usual member benefits. When someone buys that package, Rhythm assigns the alternate, no-benefits status while processing the order, instead of requiring a manual status change afterward.
Active Without Benefits Comes from the Package
Whether a purchase makes a membership active or active without benefits is controlled by a checkbox on the membership package itself, not by anything you set on an application process or form. Check the package's own setting if members end up in the status you did not expect. Its on-screen description can read as the opposite of what it actually does, so verify the resulting status rather than relying on the wording alone.
Where to Find It
Go to Membership & Committees › Setup › Membership › Status Reasons to see every status reason defined for your Rhythm account, and to create, edit, clone, or delete one.
- Go to Setup › Membership › Status Reasons and select Create Status Reason, or open an existing reason to edit it.
- Enter a Name. Rhythm suggests an ID from the name; you can change it while you create the reason, but not after you save it.
- Choose To which status is this reason applicable?: Active, Inactive, Suspended, or Active Without Benefits.
- Select Save Changes.
Changing a Reason's Status Changes Its Meaning Everywhere It Is Already Used
The membership form shows only the reasons that apply to the status being set, and staff can search for members by reason. If you move an existing reason from one status to another, such as from Inactive to Active, every membership already using that reason effectively takes on the new meaning. Rhythm does not warn you when you save this change.
You can delete a status reason only when no membership is using it.
Each status reason has a display Name and a separate, permanent ID. Because those two values can differ, do not assume the text you see on a membership record is the value a data operation expects. A membership mass update needs the underlying status reason ID, not the displayed name, and matching is case-sensitive. A value that differs from the Console ID only by capitalization can pass preview and still fail during the update. Query results and the membership record continue to show the reason's label, not its ID, even right after a mass update, so it can look like the ID was never applied.
Some memberships also show a pending or informational banner tied to a field called Date Status. This field does not appear on the membership form itself and can only be inspected on Rhythm's side of your account, so it is easy to miss during troubleshooting. Date Status updates automatically after a membership application order finishes processing successfully. If a banner remains after the related order is gone, with no open invoice or order outstanding, build a query on Date Status and mass-update it to a corrected value. Clearing or correcting Date Status removes the banner and re-enables any blocked actions, but it does not change the membership record by itself.
ID Card Templates
An ID card template is an HTML page with placeholders that Rhythm fills with a member's details when a card is printed or previewed. Those details can include the member's name, organization, membership type, and expiration date. Your Rhythm account can store several templates. Membership settings name the default template, and each membership type can name its own template. When someone prints a card, Rhythm uses the membership type's template if it has one; otherwise, it uses the default.
Where to Find It
Go to Setup › Membership › ID Card Templates to see your Rhythm account's templates, and to create, edit, clone, or delete one. You can still edit a template after you create it; Rhythm does not lock templates while they are in use.
Some Edits to an Existing Template May Not Save
Some administrators have reported that changes to an existing template, including a duplicated copy, did not save. If edits to a template will not stick, create a new template instead and point your membership types or default settings to it. You should not normally need to recreate a template each time, so use this as a fallback rather than the expected process.
When you need to update a template for a new year, such as adding a new card design, you do not have to rebuild it from scratch. Upload the new card image as an asset, then update the background image URL in the template so it points to the new image. If an updated card design still shows the old image after you save, check which image asset the template's HTML references. The update may have been saved somewhere other than the location the template points to.
- Go to Setup › Membership › ID Card Templates and select Create Membership ID Card Template, or open an existing template to edit it.
- Enter a Name. Rhythm suggests an ID from the name; you can change it while you create the template, but not after you save it.
- Build the card in the HTML editor under ID Card Template. A new template starts from a built-in default design instead of a blank editor.
- Use the merge-field selector to find a placeholder. When you choose a field, Rhythm copies its placeholder to your clipboard; it does not insert it into the editor automatically, so paste it where you want it.
- Select Preview to check the design against a real member before saving. See Preview an ID Card below.
- Select Save Changes.
The merge-field selector groups placeholders by the record they come from: Contact, Organization, Parent Organization, Membership, Chapter, and Membership Type, plus a group for system fields. Custom fields on those records appear in their group. If the selector does not offer a field you want on the card, such as an organization's company name in some accounts, Rhythm cannot populate it on the generated ID card. You can use only the fields the selector offers.
Membership ID card templates support conditional rendering with Handlebars, unlike the syntax used in directory entry templates. Use Handlebars conditionals when you want content to appear only when a field or status condition is met. Use {{membership.id}} for the internal membership record identifier, and {{membership.number}} for the member-facing membership number that also appears on a Portal membership ID card. These are different fields and print different values.
Some Merge Fields Do Not Render as Expected
Placeholders from the Chapter group always render empty on a printed or previewed card. A member's chapter names are not available to an ID card template as a single chapter reference, so avoid this group when you build a template.
Package name placeholders can also come up blank when you preview a template, even though the merge-field selector offers them. If a card design depends on the package name, verify it on an actual printed card rather than trusting the preview alone.
Some Merge Fields Render Blank in Preview
Beyond the Chapter group, a few other merge fields are known to render blank when you preview a template, even though the template editor offers them: the membership package name fields, and a formatted current-date field. If a package name does not appear in preview, this is a known limitation rather than a configuration mistake. If you need today's date to appear reliably, use one of the other date merge fields instead of a formatted current-date field.
ID Card Template Settings
| Setting | Options | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Free text | — | Required. Appears on the templates list and when you choose a template for a membership type. |
| ID | Generated from the name; editable only while creating | Generated | The permanent identifier that other settings point to. You cannot change it after saving. |
| Status | Active / Inactive | Active | Deactivating a template does not stop it from being used to print cards. |
| ID Card Template | HTML editor with merge fields | The built-in default design | The card's layout. Rhythm refuses to save an empty template. |
Preview Tools
Before an email, certificate, or ID card goes out to members, Rhythm gives you a way to check how it will look.
Preview an ID Card
From the ID card template form, select Preview beside the merge-field selector to open Preview Membership ID Card. Choose whether you are previewing for a contact or an organization, pick the specific member, and select Preview Template. Rhythm renders the HTML currently in the editor, whether or not you have saved it, with that member's real data, then opens the result in a new browser tab. Previewing an individual contact's card does not require that contact to be linked to an organization; you can preview a person's own membership ID card by itself.
Tip
You do not need to save the template before previewing, and preview works regardless of your Rhythm account's ID card settings. If you leave the editor empty and preview anyway, Rhythm renders the member's actual card instead: the template named by their membership type, or your Rhythm account's default. That fallback works only if ID cards are switched on for your Rhythm account.
If previewing an individual contact's card ever shows an error naming Organization as an invalid value, that is not expected. An earlier issue like this was reported and addressed, so if you still see it, contact Support rather than treating it as a required setup step.
Preview a Membership or Group Email
You can preview membership and application-group emails by sending them to an address you choose before you finish setup. This includes a membership activation email preview, which you can send as either an individual or an organization recipient.
A Preview Is a Real Email
Previewing a membership or group email sends a real, live email to the address you enter, merged with a real member's data. It is not a safe simulation, so double-check the address before you preview and treat it the same way you would treat sending the email itself.
The merge field for a membership package's notes or description in these emails is {{membershipPackage.notes}}. If you need email wording that changes by membership type and no merge field covers that variation, the simplest option is to write the type name directly into the email content instead of relying on a dynamic field.
Preview a Certificate
You can preview a certificate template against a real member's data before you finish setting it up. Use this from the membership settings and membership type screens where certificate templates are configured. Previewing does not check the membership's status or your Rhythm account's Portal printing settings the way an actual certificate print would.
Choose an existing member before you preview. The certificate preview uses that member's own data, and the preview is not available until you select someone. The certificate's membership-number merge field always pulls the individual member's own membership number from their membership record. There is currently no way to make it use an associated organization's membership number instead. If your certificate template's background does not update after you upload a new file, try an image file such as JPG; some other file types have not reliably applied to the template.
The merge fields available on an automatic membership certificate template are limited to standard membership fields. Accreditation date and accreditation expiration date are not among them, so a certificate generated automatically cannot display those two dates.
Calculate an Expiration Date
Elsewhere in Membership setup, Rhythm can calculate the expiration date that a set of expiration options would produce for a chosen date, without saving anything. Use this wherever you configure a membership type or package's expiration options, so you can check your renewal settings before you commit to them.
Permissions
You need permission to manage membership status reasons and ID card templates. The preview tools described here are on the same screens as the related setup, so the permission that lets you open those screens also lets you use their preview buttons.
Related
- Application Processes, Forms, and Status Reasons
- Membership Types
- Membership Settings: How Saving and Setup Work
- Search, View, and Print a Membership