Membership billing, contracts, and renewals

Membership billing begins with the member's initial join or purchase. One-time memberships have at most one membership charge; with deferred payment, that charge is collected after the member joins. Recurring memberships continue at each billing boundary until the agreement ends.

This guide covers normal billing. For free or discounted stages, see Membership pricing and trials. For skipped charges, see Membership pauses.

Initial join or purchase

The customer-facing action depends on the product:

• A free one-time or recurring membership can be joined without a positive charge.
• A positively priced product uses checkout.
• A free trial still creates a real zero-value membership purchase and payment history.
• A deferred one-time membership creates the member before payment becomes due.

Billing details are required for customer purchases. On successful activation, Thril stores the member's active dates, normal price, recurring cadence, and contract terms and grants initial credits or session cards.

One-time payment lifecycle

A one-time membership has no automatic renewal. The payment and the validity are related but separate:

• normal checkout activates the member after the purchase succeeds;
• a free membership activates without an external charge;
• deferred payment activates the member with Pending payment status before payment is due.

For deferred memberships, staff can later mark payments due. This applies the product's current price to active members and changes their administrative payment status to Due. Customers can then complete the deferred checkout.

Recurring billing boundaries

A recurring membership advances by its billing cycle. You set that cycle in calendar months or in days. Thril processes renewals at the period boundary in the venue's time zone.

A month cycle keeps the same day of the month:

Activation: 10 January
Billing cycle: every 1 month
Next renewal boundary: 10 February
Following boundary: 10 March

A day cycle counts days, so its boundary moves earlier in the calendar over time:

Activation: 10 January
Billing cycle: every 30 days
Next renewal boundary: 9 February
Following boundary: 11 March

Choose months when the commercial promise is monthly. Twelve monthly periods make one year and twelve payments. Twelve 30-day periods make 360 days, so a 30-day membership charges 13 times in some calendar years.

Months at the end of a short month

When a member's billing day does not exist in a month, the charge falls on the last day of that month. The next long month goes back to the original day.

Billing day: the 31st
Charges: 31 January, 28 February, 31 March, 30 April, 31 May

The billing day comes from the start of the member's first period: their join date, or their trial end date when the membership has a trial. It has no setting of its own.

Changing a membership's billing cycle

Editing the billing cycle on a membership that already has members changes the dates those members pay on. Nobody moves at the moment you save. Each member moves at their next charge, and the form warns you before you save.

• A member's period in progress completes as sold. The change applies from their next charge onward.
• Only the cycle follows the product. Each member keeps the price and the contract terms they agreed to.
• A member paused on billing periods keeps their old cycle until their pause is over, so the end of their pause does not move.
• The count of periods a member still owes does not change. A 12-period contract moved from 30 days to one month runs about five days longer per remaining period.

Tell your members before you make the change. Thril does not notify them.

Changing the next payment date

Venue admins and clerks can change a recurring member's next payment date from the manage-member drawer: open the member's details and use the edit action next to the next charge.

• The new date is a venue-local calendar date, and the charge runs around noon on that date.
• The date must be after today. There is no upper limit, so the next charge can be pushed far into the future.
• Every later renewal moves with it, one billing cycle at a time from the new date. On a month cycle, the new date's day of the month becomes the member's billing day.
• If the member has an unused trial, the trial simply lasts until the new date.
• Earlier unpaid renewals stay unchanged and must still be resolved separately.
• The date cannot be changed for terminated or expired memberships, or while a pause that affects payments is active or scheduled.

Thril does not notify the member about the change — communicating a new payment date is the venue's responsibility.

Billing history

The manage-member drawer shows a recurring member's billing history: every billing period with its dates, outcome (charged, paused, waived, or ended), the effective amount and where the price came from (normal, trial, introductory, or discounted), and how the period was settled — paid in Thril, settled outside Thril, awaiting payment, voided, or written off.

Fixed contracts

Fixed contract period count makes a number of recurring periods binding. Without a trial, the initial paid purchase is period 1.

Fixed contract: 6 periods
Join: period 1
Renewal 1: period 2
...
Renewal 5: period 6
Membership ends after period 6

With a trial, contract counting begins at the first post-trial renewal instead. The trial is not one of the fixed paid periods.

Free or discounted introductory and Goodwill periods still count. They change the amount charged, not the commitment.

When the fixed contract period ends decides what happens after the last period:

• End the membership — the membership ends once the customer has paid for the last period. The customer cannot cancel while committed periods remain.
• Continue without an end date — the periods are a minimum commitment. The customer must pay for all of them, and the membership continues after them until they cancel.

Minimum commitment

A member on a minimum commitment can cancel at any time. The cancellation takes effect once the rest of the commitment and any termination periods have been paid for.

• Cancelling fixes what is owed: the commitment count is cleared, so the end date stops moving forward with each renewal.
• A member who cancels during a trial that no charge has consumed owes neither the commitment nor the termination periods. Their membership ends when the trial ends.
• A member whose trial has ended but whose first post-trial charge has not run yet owes the whole commitment.
• A period pause with periods still to skip defers every later billing boundary, and with them the commitment's end date.

Minimum commitment left and Minimum commitment ends are shown in the manage member drawer, on the members table, and on the customer's detail page. Members see the same in their own app and on the web, together with the date their membership ends if they cancel.

To change one member's counts, use Change contract terms in the manage member drawer. See Manage membership holders.

Open-ended memberships and termination periods

An open-ended membership renews until cancellation.

• Without a termination period, cancellation ends the membership after the current period.
• With a termination period, cancellation starts the configured number of additional billable periods.

Example:

Billing cycle: every 1 month
Notice period: 1
Member cancels during the current paid period
Result: one further renewal, then the membership ends

The termination period count is set in Notice period. It applies only while the member can still cancel, so it is available on an open-ended membership and on one whose fixed periods are a minimum commitment. A membership that ends after its fixed periods has none.

The termination count does nothing until cancellation. It is not a minimum fixed term. On a membership with a minimum commitment, the termination periods are billed after the rest of the commitment.

Renewal price order

At renewal, Thril resolves the price in this order:

1. the oldest active introductory or Goodwill pricing entry in the member's Pricing order;
2. the member's normal recurring price.

The member's normal price was captured when they joined or when staff last changed it. Editing the product price does not automatically reprice existing members.

For detailed promotional-price behavior, see Membership pricing and trials.

Renewal payment and recurring benefits

At the billing boundary, Thril creates the renewal charge, resolves and consumes any temporary price, advances the next due date, and updates the remaining fixed or termination period count. The next renewal is scheduled while another period remains. These steps also occur when the new payment requires customer action.

Thril attempts a positive charge using the customer's stored payment method. A free renewal is recorded as a completed zero-value payment. After payment succeeds:

• the payment is marked completed; and
• recurring credit or session-card benefits are granted when the member is eligible.

A payment-pausing date pause or a period-based pause creates no renewal charge and no recurring grant. A benefit-only date pause can continue billing, but recurring grants are not issued while the benefit pause is active.

When payment requires customer action

If the stored method cannot complete the renewal automatically, the payment can remain awaiting customer action. Thril notifies the customer so they can complete it.

The created payment keeps the amount resolved for that renewal. If an introductory or Goodwill period supplied the price, that period is considered used even when payment is completed later.

When a renewal remains unpaid

After an unresolved renewal has remained unpaid for seven days, behavior depends on whether the member still owes periods:

• A member who owes nothing further expires.
• A member who still owes periods — remaining contract periods, a running minimum commitment, or termination periods — remains recorded. The period is flagged and stays collectable, new reservation creation is blocked, and membership-based physical access is removed while the unpaid payment is blocking use.

Fixed, commitment, and termination counts continue to advance when their renewal charges are created, so the membership can still reach its scheduled end while a debt remains outstanding. The member's record and payment history remain available to staff. Inspect the payment rather than manually marking it Paid unless payment was genuinely handled outside Thril; changing the administrative status does not collect money.

Changing prices for current members

Changing the membership product price affects future members. For existing members, select the relevant rows in Members and use the price update action, or update an individual member where appropriate.

Use different tools for different intentions: