Membership Status Rules

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Membership Status Rules Overview

Membership Status Rules allow you to define the different types of status you might give to a member, i.e., New, Current, Lapsed, etc. You can set the status to change when certain events occur, for example when a member joins they can be automatically assigned the status "New".

CiviMember automatically calculates the current status of each contact's membership based on the status names and rules you configure. The status "rule" tells CiviMember what status to assign based on the start and end dates of a given membership.

For example, the default Grace status rule says..."assign Grace status if the membership period ended sometime within the past month."

The default Grace status is defined as starting at the member's expiration date, and ending 1 month later. The rule for this status is:

Start Event = membership end date
End Event = membership end date PLUS an "adjustment" of 1 month

The status rules provided by default may be sufficient for your organization. However, you can easily change the names and/or the rules - so you should review the defaults and then modify as needed for your organization.

Default Status Rules

Status	Starts	Ends
New	On initial joining date	3 months after joining date
Current	On current membership period starting date	On ending date
Grace	On ending date	1 month after ending date
Expired	1 month + 1 day after ending date	n/a

You can also create a status that is for use by administrative staff only - and are not automatically assigned by CiviMember. This can be useful for special cases like "Non-expiring", "Barred", "Expelled", etc.

Membership Status Rules

To manage membership status rules begin at the Administer CiviCRM page.

In the CiviMember section, choose Membership Status Rules.

You will see a list of existing Membership Status Rules. You can create NEW status rules or Edit, Disable or Delete EXISTING status rules using the links to the right of each status rule.

NEW

To create a NEW membership status, choose >>New Membership Status

You will be taken to the New Membership Status page.

Name - Create a name for the membership status. (New, Current, Grace, Expired...).

Start Event - From the drop-down list select either start date, end date or join date. This indicates the date that this status will begin.

The Start and End Event fields are ignored for an Adminstrator Only status. You can set the required Start Event to end date in this case.

Start Event Adjustment - Enter a number and select either day, month or year. You can adjust when the Start Event will trigger this status. For example, for expired memberships you may want to have a "Grace Period" status that lasts for 90 days after the membership end date and before moving to "Lapsed" status. Or the status "Current" could be set to begin 3 months after the start date to allow for a "New" status for the first 3 months.

End Event - From the drop-down list select either start date, end date or join date. This indicates the date that this status will begin.

End Event Adjustment - Enter a number and select either day, month or year. You can adjust when the End Event will trigger this status. For example, for expired memberships you may want to have a "Grace Period" status that ends 90 days after the membership end date. Or the status "New" could be set to end 3 months after the start date before moving the member to "Current" status.

Current Membership? - Check this box if this status should be considered a current membership in good standing. For example, New, Current and Grace could all be considered "current".

Administrator Only? - Check this box if this status is for use by administrative staff only. If checked, this status is never automatically assigned by CiviMember. It is assigned to a contact's Membership by checking the Status Override flag when adding or editing the Membership record. Start and End Event settings are ignored for Administrator statuses. EXAMPLE: This setting can be useful for special case statuses like "Non-expiring", "Barred" or "Expelled", etc.

Weight - Type in the weight to determine where it ranks in a list

Default? - Check this if you want all new memberships to be automatically assigned this status.

Enabled? - Check this to enable this status.

Click Save to save this membership status. If successful you will see the message:

The membership status "Current" has been saved.

EXISTING

For EXISTING membership status rules you can Edit, Disable or Delete each option using the links to the right of each membership status.

EDIT

Select Edit to view the Edit Membership Status page where you can change the values for each option. Here you can also enable/disable the membership status by checking or unchecking the box labeled Enabled? at the bottom of the page.
Click Save to save the membership status.

If successful, you will see the message:

The membership status "Grace Period" has been saved.

DISABLE

Select Disable to temporarily disable an Existing membership status. You will see the warning:

"Are you sure you want to disable this membership status?"

Click OK to continue or Cancel to cancel disabling the membership status.

To re-enable the membership status, simply click on Enable.

DELETE

Select Delete to delete the membership status. You will be given this warning:

WARNING: Deleting this option will result in the loss of all membership records of this status. This may mean the loss of a substantial amount of data, and the action cannot be undone. Do you want to continue?

Click Delete to continue or Cancel to cancel the deletion.