After you start an application group, add one application for each person. When the group is ready, you can pay for all applications in one checkout order.
Prerequisites
- You need an application group that is still being filled in.
Add a Person to the Group
- Open your group.
- Choose the option to register a new applicant.
- Choose the person you are applying for. You can choose from the people your Portal lets you manage, which usually includes people in your organization or people who named you as their Portal delegate.
- Complete that person’s membership application form, including the membership type or package and any chapters, sections, or add-ons offered during the process.
- Save the application.
Result
The person’s application is saved to the group as an unpaid draft. Nothing is charged at this point — you pay for the full group later, during checkout.
If the Person Already Has an Application in the Group
If you choose someone who already has an application in this group, Rhythm warns you before you save a second application for them. Use the group to check out several different people’s applications together, not to buy more than one membership for the same person.
Warning
A person who already holds an active membership may not be available to add to a group. If someone you expect to register does not appear as an option, confirm their current membership status with your association before assuming something is wrong with the group.
The person picker may include a contact record that your association’s process does not expect for this kind of group application. If someone you added behaves unexpectedly later, confirm with your association that you chose the correct kind of record for what this group is meant to register.
Remove Someone from the Group
- Open the group.
- Find the person’s application in the list.
- Choose the option to remove it.
Result
The unsubmitted application is deleted from the group.
Warning
You can remove an application from a group only before it has been submitted. After the group has been checked out and paid for, you can no longer remove an application this way; contact your association if a submitted application needs to change. Canceling one person’s registration after the group has been paid for also depends on your association having set up a cancellation fee product for that process, even when the intended fee is zero. Without it, staff cannot process the cancellation.
One Order, Several Applications
Paying for a group creates one order, but each person’s application remains its own application record. Your association can still see and work with each person’s application separately after the group has been paid for.
Pay for the Whole Group
Use a group when one person or organization is paying for several individuals’ memberships at once. It is the intended way to cover multiple people with a single payment, rather than trying to split one payment across separate individual applications.
- Open the group you are ready to pay for.
- Choose the option to complete your group application purchase.
- Review the order, which combines every unpaid application in the group into one order billed to you as the group’s owner.
- Enter a coupon code if you have one, then complete payment.
Result
One order is placed for every application in the group. See Redeem a Coupon at Checkout to learn how a coupon code affects your total. Because the order is billed to you as the group’s owner, the resulting invoice can belong to an individual contact rather than to an organization; confirm who the invoice belongs to before applying a payment to it.
Warning
A group must include at least one unsubmitted application before you can check out. If the group has none, such as when every application has already been removed, checkout cannot proceed. Even when the order totals $0.00, you still need to complete checkout to create the resulting membership and application records; a zero-total group is not automatically finished.
Tip
Confirmation emails for any add-on products in the group’s order go to you, as the purchaser, rather than to each individual member. If you suppress your own confirmation email to avoid an unwanted message, that also stops any member welcome emails that would otherwise go out with it. Leave your confirmation email on, or send member notifications yourself outside checkout, if you need those messages to go out.
If you are enrolling a very large number of people at once, an application group is one option. Your association’s staff may also be able to use bulk data tools, such as a mass update for people who already have contact records or a data import for new ones. Bulk tools take more setup, but they can be faster than a group for very large enrollments; ask your association which approach fits your situation.
If Checkout Fails
- A generic "Error during order preparation" message appears, especially with a coupon applied. This has been observed most often on larger groups. Try removing the coupon and checking out again. If payment for the group was collected outside Rhythm, contact your association about recording it once the order goes through.
- Very large groups can fail during checkout, particularly when paying by invoice. There is no fixed, published limit on how many applications a group can hold, and reports of a hard limit have not held up consistently. Very large groups are simply more likely to run into a processing failure. If a large group fails, try checking out a smaller portion of it, or ask your association to check whether the group needs to be split.
- The order shows as fully paid, but some people in the group are still not submitted. This has been observed as a rare, isolated failure during group processing rather than a routine limitation. If it happens to your group, contact your association. They can check which applications the fulfillment step actually completed and finish the remaining ones.
- You corrected incompatible membership data after creating the group, but the group still behaves as if the conflict exists. A group can keep the compatibility result it had when it was created. If you fix the underlying data, such as removing a conflicting add-on, start a new group rather than continuing with the one you already created.
- After canceling a paid group order, some of its members show a pending-order status and cannot be added to a new group. This has been reported and addressed by product changes. If you still see it, contact your association. Clearing the affected members’ pending-order status is a staff action that unblocks adding them to a new group.