Skip to main content
A member’s account status decides what they can reach: member-only pages and events, the member directory, and any admin permissions they hold. Everything else about a member — their profile, their dues, their attendance history — stays with the record whatever the status is. GroupFlow moves members between statuses on its own as their dues come due, so most groups never set a status by hand.

​
The statuses

Open a member from Members & Users and choose the Dues tab. The Account status section there has four choices: Two of the four aren’t always available. Non-member can only be chosen for an account that is already a non-member, so a member can’t be demoted to one. Active Member is unavailable while the membership end date is in the past; see Renewing. The Edit details tab shows the status too, as a badge, but you can’t change it there — it points you back to the Dues tab.
An inactive member isn’t deleted and isn’t a non-member. Use Inactive Member when someone’s membership has ended.
Two more labels appear in the Account Status filter on the Members & Users list without being statuses of their own. Both describe active members: a Trial Member is an active member who still has a trial end date, and a Full Member is any active member who isn’t on a trial. Neither filter tells you whether dues were actually paid — a dues-exempt member and a member an admin activated by hand both count as Full Member.

​
When a membership expires

A paid membership and a trial each have an end date, shown under Membership Period on the Dues tab as Membership end date and Trial end date. GroupFlow checks every hour for memberships that have passed their end date and sets those members to Inactive Member, so the status changes shortly after the end date passes rather than at some point in the next day. One thing stops it: a member marked Dues exempt on their Dues tab is never expired, however old their end date. This is how honorary and life members are handled.
A lifetime plan does not stop it. Ticking Is lifetime term? on a membership plan hides the term length from the plan form, but a member who pays on that plan still gets a Membership end date, and the hourly check still expires them when it passes. Mark life members Dues exempt as well. This is a bug, tracked as gf-root#817.
If your group syncs with Meetup, a member who no longer appears in your Meetup group is also set to Inactive Member on the same hourly check.

​
Reminders before and after

GroupFlow emails members as their dues come due and after they lapse, from the six Dues Reminder Letters. You choose which ones go out and when. The letters, and how to edit them, are in Setting Up Member Dues.

​
Renewing

A member becomes active again by paying their dues, whether they pay before their term ends or long after. Paying sets their status back to Active Member and gives them a new term, which runs for the Term length in months on their membership plan. Where that term starts depends on what they’re coming from: The last two rows are the same rule: a trial counts toward the first paid term, so a member who takes a 30-day trial on a 12-month plan gets 11 months of paid membership, whether they pay during the trial or after it. Paying also clears the trial end date, so the member is a Full Member from then on. A member who has turned on Dues auto-renew is charged automatically when the term ends, and never becomes inactive as long as the charge succeeds. Auto-renew is the member’s own setting; an admin can see it but not change it.
You can’t put an expired member back to Active Member by hand — the choice is disabled, and the screen says “The membership end date has passed. Update the membership dates to enable Active status.” To give someone more time, change their Membership end date under Membership Period on the same tab, which re-enables the choice. For a member who should never be billed again, use Dues exempt instead.

Setting Up Member Dues

Plans, term lengths, trials, and the reminder letters

Admin Permissions

Why permissions stop working when a member goes inactive