A billing run handles renewal work in Rhythm. It can ask members to renew, remind them, charge stored cards, and drop members who do not renew.
When to Use This
Use this article when you need to set up a renewal billing run. A run can bill members who are nearing expiration, remind auto-renewal members before their cards are charged, send follow-up reminders to members who have not renewed, charge stored cards, or drop members who never renewed. For bulk membership renewals, use a billing run. For a batch of new applicants, use a group membership application. Exporting or printing invoices in bulk does not replace the renewal notices and reminders that a run sends.
You cannot process an auto-renewal manually from an individual account record. If you need to charge someone’s stored card outside the regular schedule, create a one-time billing run instead of waiting for the next recurring run. If you only need to renew one membership early, use the Renew action under Organization Options on that membership record instead of building a run for one person.
If you already have a run and need to review or adjust its planned members before it runs, see Review and Refresh a Billing Run's Plan. To schedule a saved run, run it immediately, or monitor its progress, see Schedule, Run, and Monitor a Billing Run.
Prerequisites
- Permission to create billing runs.
- At least one active billing template, if you want to start from one. You can also build a run from scratch.
- A billing notice for each action that should email members, if you want the run to send messages.
Tip
If you only need memberships to stay active without going through renewal billing again, a billing run may not be the right tool. Mass updating the membership expiration date, and optionally the renewal date, is often faster than sending the same renewal period through a billing run a second time.
Warning
If you manually advance a membership's expiration date and later process a renewal order for that same period, Rhythm advances the membership again from the expiration date stored at that time. Processing the same renewal period twice this way can push the membership further out than you intended.
Start a New Billing Run
- Go to Billing, then select Create Billing Run.
- Choose one of your active billing templates, or select Create a Billing Run from Scratch, then select Next.
- Choose at least one action for this run: Generate Renewal Orders, Process Credit Cards for Auto-Renewal Members, Generate Renewal Notices, Send Renewal Reminders, Send Reminders to Auto-Renewal Members, Send Expiring Credit Card Reminders, and Drop/Terminate Expired Members. Then select Next.
- Enter the run's Name: and Notification Email:. Rhythm sends the run's pre-processing, success, and failure reports to this address.
- Choose whether to process the run immediately or on a future date, then select Next.
- For each action you turned on, set the expiration date range, choose the billing notice it should send, if any, and set any membership type, package, or sub-status reason restrictions that appear.
- Review the summary, then select Schedule Billing Run.
Generate Renewal Orders and Process Credit Cards for Auto-Renewal Members automatically target different groups. Generate Renewal Orders includes only members who have not opted into auto-renewal, while Process Credit Cards for Auto-Renewal Members handles opted-in members, so you can process each group on its own schedule. Turn on Send Renewal Reminders when you want reminders to continue after a member has started renewing, because the renewal is not complete until payment is received. For auto-renewal reminders and expiring-card warnings, use the billing run’s actions instead of manually searching for cards about to expire. The run already targets members by membership expiration.
Result
Rhythm saves the run and opens its page. Based on the schedule you chose, Rhythm plans who the run applies to before anything is sent. Saving a run does not bill, charge, or drop anyone by itself. Building or scheduling a billing template does not do that either; you still need to build a run from it and execute that run. The same is true for a scheduled auto-renewal pre-process. Pre-processing only builds and refreshes the plan, and someone still needs to open the run and confirm it before anything is billed, emailed, or dropped. For that reason, membership renewal billing is not fully automated from start to finish. See Review and Refresh a Billing Run's Plan for what happens next.
Tip
If you turn on a filter checkbox such as Include only certain membership types, choose at least one item in its list. Rhythm lets you save an action with an empty list under an active filter, but the run fails when Rhythm tries to plan it.
Tip
After you save a reminder-only run, review its planned members. On the Actions tab described in Review and Refresh a Billing Run's Plan, exclude anyone who also appears in a separate renewal reminder or notice run for the same cycle.
Warning
Turning an action off does not clear the values you entered for it. Rhythm keeps those values in case you turn the action back on, but it does not use them while the action is off.
Warning
If a reminder-only run also has Generate Renewal Orders turned on, running it creates another renewal order and invoice in addition to the reminder. Check the template or run action list carefully before you schedule a reminder-only run.
Tip
Organizations often run an auto-renewal billing run for stored-card renewals, a pro forma billing run for members who pay by other methods, or both. Use whichever option fits your renewal and payment process. Neither run is required just because the other exists.
What Each Action Needs
Every action except the reminder actions needs an expiration date range. Generate Renewal Orders creates a pro forma or ordinary renewal order and invoice, and it can send a billing notice with an invoice link. It does not let you choose which renewal package gets created, because packages renew according to each package’s own renewal behavior. This action also offers Generate pro forma orders & invoices for these members so that they do not register as revenue until paid, which is on by default for a new run. Uncheck it if you do not want pro forma invoices. After a run is complete, you cannot go back and bulk email invoices from it. If you need to email invoices in bulk, cancel the run and schedule a new one with a billing notice that includes the invoice download link. If staff need a renewal invoice or order for manual follow-up, such as sending a payment link after a failed auto-renewal, use Generate Renewal Orders instead of the auto-charge action. It creates the order and invoice, and you can include a public payment link in the billing notice so the member can pay on their own. If you need to remove pro forma invoices created by a run, you can delete them in bulk with a bulk transaction instead of deleting each invoice individually.
Drop/Terminate Expired Members also offers Expire associated committee memberships and Deactivate associated certifications, which are both off by default. This action can assign a termination date, but it cannot assign a lapse date by itself. To populate only lapse dates, use a mass update instead.
Every reminder action uses a table where you add one or more numbered reminders. This includes renewal reminders, auto-renewal reminders, and expiring credit card reminders. Each reminder has its own date range and notice. Add Reminder stays disabled while any existing reminder row is incomplete. If you reconfigure reminders after earlier reminders have already been processed, move the later reminders’ date ranges forward. Members already covered by Reminder 2 should move to Reminder 3, Reminder 2 should take the range Reminder 1 previously used, and so on. This avoids overlapping with members that a previous reminder already covered. For an auto-renewal reminder or an expiring-card warning, choose a range that ends early enough to give members notice before the charge. For example, a reminder window starting around six weeks after the billing run date can still give at least two weeks' notice when the charge covers expirations up to one month after the run date. How much further out the range should start is up to your organization’s advance-notice policy.
Every action panel has the same three optional restrictions: certain membership types, certain membership packages, or certain sub-status reasons. You set these restrictions separately for each action, so one action in the same run can target a narrower group than another. You cannot create a billing run directly for one chapter. If you need to target one chapter, assign a membership status reason to the members in that chapter, then restrict the run to that status reason. These restrictions are also useful when you want to test a new pricing or billing setup safely. Turn it on for one package and a small set of contacts first, then confirm the results before you use it more broadly.
Billing-run settings apply across your Rhythm account, and they are not meant to force every membership in the run into one currency. A single run can include memberships in different currencies, so set currency on each membership instead of at the run level.
Renewal notice and reminder actions do not create orders or transactions, so a run with only those actions generally should not create a Finance and Billing batch. That has not always held true in practice; a notices-or-reminders-only run has been seen to leave behind an empty batch with the run’s name. If you see one, you can safely close it because no transactions belong in it. Any batch a billing run creates for actual orders or charges, such as from Generate Renewal Orders or Process Credit Cards for Auto-Renewal Members, does not close automatically. Automatic closing applies only to the Daily Batch or the portal recurring batch in Finance when they contain transactions, so close a billing run’s batch manually when you are done with it.
The invoice template used for membership billing comes from Membership › Setup › Other Settings, not from the run itself. If you choose a specific template there for a one-off special billing run, every membership order created while that template is selected uses it. Remember to switch the setting back afterward.
Tip
If an organization needs a different membership package for its next term before an auto-renewal billing run processes it, have the organization go through a change-affiliations application to change the package first, rather than waiting for the billing run. Changing a package this way charges the organization for the new package right away, but its membership expiration date does not move until a billing run later processes the renewal.
Tip
If your members' expiration dates cluster in the middle or at the end of a month, a narrow renewal-notice date range can miss some of them. Consider a wider range on the notice or reminder, such as 13 days after the run date to 32 days after the run date, so the range better matches when your members actually expire.
Tip
For Send Reminders to Auto-Renewal Members, choose a date range that gives members real notice before their card is charged, not just before the run date. For example, if Process Credit Cards for Auto-Renewal Members charges cards for memberships expiring up to one month after the run date, a reminder range starting around six weeks after the run date gives members at least two weeks' notice before the earliest of those charges. How far the range extends beyond that is up to you, based on how much advance notice you want to give.
Editing a Draft
You can freely change a run that has not started planning yet, which is called a draft. That includes its name, notification address, schedule, and all action options. After a run moves past draft, most fields are locked. See Review and Refresh a Billing Run's Plan for what you can still change in that state.
Clone a Billing Run
If you want to create a run that is close to one you already have, clone the existing run instead of starting over.
- Open the billing run you want to copy.
- Select Clone.
- Step through the wizard from step 2 onward, adjust anything you need to change, and select Schedule Billing Run.
Result
Rhythm saves the clone as a brand-new scheduled run. The clone does not inherit the original run's execution time; you set that while you finish the clone.
Warning
A clone carries over more of the original run than you might expect, including recorded statistics from a completed run. Review every action’s options and date ranges carefully before you schedule a clone of a run that already ran.
Tip
Cloning may not be the most reliable way to recover from a failed auto-renewal processing run. If a run's auto-renewal processing errored out, consider building a new run from scratch instead of cloning the failed one.
Related Reading
For how a saved run becomes a set of planned actions you can review before anything is sent, see Review and Refresh a Billing Run's Plan. For running it immediately, scheduling it, or watching its progress, see Schedule, Run, and Monitor a Billing Run. To find a run you've already created, or to cancel one, see Find and Cancel a Billing Run.