Member Management offers two types of membership structures: individual memberships and group memberships.

• An organization can have both individual and group memberships, or only use one membership structure.
• However, a user can only have one membership (i.e., a user cannot have an individual membership and a group membership).

This article focuses on individual memberships; you'll learn how to:

• Manually approve account requests
• Manually give users an individual membership
• Email users about their individual membership
• View a user's membership history
• Cancel individual memberships
• Find memberships by searching and filtering the list
• Export status-based membership lists

To learn about group memberships, see Member Management - Manage Group Memberships.

Before we begin...

NOTE: It's important to understand the difference between the terms users and memberships.

- Users are the individuals who have accounts in your Thrive Community. This account grants users a profile, as well as the ability to interact with other users and consume/contribute content. User records are managed on the Admin > Users > List page.
- Memberships refer to the paid (or free) memberships that users have purchased which grant them additional benefits on your Thrive Community. Think of a membership as a layer on top of a user account. Memberships are managed on the Admin > Membership > Individual/Group Memberships pages.

Approve account requests

• All users must have an account in your Thrive Community before they can receive the benefits of a membership. This means that users who purchase or are given an individual membership before having a community account have to create an account before they'll receive their member benefits. In the meantime, they'll be able to engage with any public content in your Thrive Community.
• With this in mind, when you license Member Management, new-account approval is automatically enabled in your account. However, by design, a Super Admin has to approve all new account requests.

To review and approve/reject account requests:

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Users > List. You are on the Users: Enabled list page.

3. Click the down arrow to the right of the page title and select Pending Approval.

The list displays all users who have requested an account.

4. Select a user record and click Approve.

The user record now displays (and can be managed) on the Users: Enabled list page. Also, the user can now gain membership in your community.

TIP: If you reject an account request, the user record is moved to the Users: Rejected list page and can be managed there.

To learn about the other options and managing users in your site, see Manage Users.

Access the Individual Memberships list

1. In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

2. Navigate to Membership > Individual Memberships.

You are on the Individual Memberships: Active list page.

TIP: Refer to View users by status below for information on the Pending and Expired/Failed lists, which are accessible from the dropdown shown below.

TIP: On list pages, click a column header to sort on that column; click again to reverse the sort order. Click the columns count below the list to add and remove columns in the current view.

Manually create an individual membership

When you create an individual membership, what you're doing is giving an existing user one of the individual Membership Types that your organization offers.

IMPORTANT: Typically, users obtain a membership by purchasing it themselves. However, there may be instances when a Super Admin wants to use this process to: fix or edit a user's membership record; help a user who's having trouble purchasing a membership; or grant a membership for free.

To grant an individual membership to a user:

NOTE: This can be done on the Active list only, and the new membership will immediately display in the list.

1. Click the (+) to the right of the page title.
2. Click the Select a User dropdown and start typing the user's name; click to select it when it displays.

3. Next, select the Membership Type to give them. You can choose from any of the Individual Membership Types you've created. Doing so will display several additional fields, described below.

• Did this member make a payment for this membership - Toggle to Yes or No, as appropriate. If yes, you'll be able to indicate how much they paid in the Price Paid field.
• Price Paid - Displays only when the "payment" question is toggled to Yes. This value is used only in the member's record for record-keeping purposes.
• Start Date - Click the calendar icon to select the date on which the membership started or will start.

NOTE: If you manually type a date into the field, it must match the required format: Sat, Feb 18, 2022.

• End Date - This is determined by the Membership Type that was selected; it cannot be changed.
• Notes - Provide any necessary/helpful notes about this membership in this text field. These are internal-only notes meant for record-keeping. Refer to the View membership history section below for more information.

4. Click Save at the bottom of the dialog.

Repeat these steps to add give memberships to additional users.

View members by status

The Individual Memberships page lists user memberships by their current status: Active, Pending, and Expired/Failed. To access each list, click the dropdown to the right of the page title, as shown below.

Grouping users by their membership status makes it easy to understand where in the membership cycle each user's membership resides, which in turn makes it easier for your organization to manage them.

Statuses overview

• Active - Lists users with currently active memberships (i.e., not pending or expired). If a member's renewal fails but their current membership is still active, the member will remain in this list until the current membership period expires.
• Pending - Lists users whose membership payments are processing (initial purchase, renewals, and auto-renewals).
• Expired/Failed - Lists members with an expired or lapsed membership (i.e., members who failed to complete a payment before their membership period expired).

Email members

The Member Management system will automatically send emails to members for several key reasons, such as confirming their initial purchase or renewal or to remind them of an upcoming renewal deadline.

However, in cases where a member may not have received one of these automatic emails or lost track of it, you can manually send these messages as well. This makes it easy to contact members who have lapsed memberships or pending renewals.

To do so:

1. Select a member in the appropriate list.
2. Click the Email button.
3. Select one of the available templates from the dropdown at the top. This will auto-populate the dialog with the associated subject and message text. While the subject is not editable, you're free to make any desired changes to the message.
4. Click Send to send the message to the selected member. It will be delivered to both their profile inbox and their personal email address in a matter of minutes.

TIP: You can send an email to multiple users at once by first selecting multiple users in the list. The button used to multi-select rows is device-dependent:

- To select more than one row, hold the Ctrl (Windows) or command (Mac) key and select each of the other rows you want to manage.
- To select a continuous list on PC and Mac, click one row, then hold the Shift key and click the last row.

View membership history

At any time, you can view a snapshot of someone's membership history by selecting them, followed by More > View History.

The resulting dialog will show:

• A timestamped breakdown of each Membership Type, including the date of initial purchase and any subsequent edits to them.
• The admin associated with any actions is also listed.
• The Print Invoice button to give Admins the ability to print an invoice right from this page.

See Member Management - Profile Membership Page to learn how to view someone's membership history from their profile, including payment invoices.

Cancel a membership

In time, there may be instances where you need to cancel someone's membership (e.g., they purchased the wrong membership, someone requests a refund, etc.). 

To do so:

1. Select the member and click More > Cancel Membership.

2. In the resulting dialog, provide a note explaining why their membership is being cancelled. This note is stored in the member's membership history for record-keeping purposes. Refer to the View membership history section below for more information.
3. If a refund was processed through the payment provider, set the toggle to Yes and then enter the refund amount in the Amount Refunded field. This is also stored in the member's membership history for record-keeping purposes only; the actual refund needs to be processed via the payment provider.

View member profiles

With a member selected in the list, the More menu allows you to:

• Click View Profile to jump to a member's profile page in the front end of your community.
• Click View Membership Page to jump directly to their profile membership page, which lists their current and past memberships.

Search & filter

At the top right, you can use the search and filter options to quickly find user records.

• Click the magnifying glass icon to expand a search field, allowing you to find members based on values in the Individual, Email, and Membership Type columns. The list will automatically update with each typed character and display all records (visible and hidden) that contain a match. Click the X to clear the search field to restore the original list.
• Click the filter icon to open the Filter dialog and refine the list by Membership Types, Start Date, End Date, and/or Has Renewed values. If the filter icon is solid orange (i.e., filled in), the list is refined by an active filter. Click the filter icon and click Clear Filter > Apply to restore the original list.

Export the memberships lists

You can export a list of the membership records for each of the Memberships List pages: Active, Pending, and Expired/Failed. Note that each export action creates an individual spreadsheet file of just that list.

TIP: You can use the spreadsheet-based options (such as Microsoft Excel's copy and move options) to then consolidate multiple lists into one file for easier reference and management.

• Click the export icon at the top right to export the list of your member records to a CSV file.

Export file notes

• The export file contains all of the list columns for the list, including columns that are hidden when the export occurs.
  • EXAMPLE: The Discount code column, which is hidden by default, will be included the export file even if it is hidden on the List page.
• The export file reflects all active search criteria and all active filtering.
• Higher Logic recommends giving each exported file a unique name to distinguish it from others because each export file is given the same default name.
  • TIP: Append the export date to the file name. The export does append sequential numbering — (1), (2), (3), etc. — to each subsequent export file name, if a file with the default file name is in the save-to location.

Related articles

• Member Management - Membership Types
• Member Management - Profile Membership Page
• Member Management - Membership Renewals