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 configured number of days. Thril processes renewals at the period boundary in the venue's time zone.

Example:

Activation: 10 January
Period length: 30 days
Next renewal boundary: 9 February
Following boundary: 11 March

A 30-day period is not a calendar month. If the commercial promise is monthly, explain that the product renews every 30 days.

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.
• The change reanchors all future billing: following renewals happen one period length after the new date, then another period length after that, and so on.
• 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

A fixed contract ends after its configured number of periods. 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.

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:

Period length: 30 days
Termination period count: 1
Member cancels during the current paid period
Result: one further renewal, then the membership ends

The termination count does nothing until cancellation. It is not a minimum fixed term.

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 the membership's configured contract fields:

• A membership configured with neither fixed contract periods nor termination periods expires.
• A membership configured with either fixed contract periods or termination periods remains recorded, but new reservation creation is blocked and membership-based physical access is removed while the unpaid payment is blocking use.

Fixed 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: