Setting Up Auto-Renewals 


Auto-renewal can be set be set in the Membership Setup tab for any membership page. 

  • Select Enable Auto-Renewal to YES. A box will appear above the registration information to opt-in to auto-renewal.
  • You can customize the label in the Auto-Renewal Comment text box.
  • You can make this the default option with Default Auto-Renewal to YES, then the member would need to "uncheck" the box to opt-out of auto renewal.
  • You can also Require Auto-Renewal. If this is set to YES, you also have the option to Hide Required Auto-Renewal from the page.
  • Auto-renewal requires a credit card for purchase, so pay-later options should not also be activated.


  • By default, the memberships with rolling membership expiration dates will renew into the same membership page and level and no further action is required.
  • You have the option of modifying where the membership will renew if you are changing membership page names or levels. On the bottom of each membership level, you can set the Membership Name (page) and Membership Level to apply to the renewal.
  • For hard expiration date memberships with auto-renewal activated, you must select which membership page and level that will apply to the renewal since a new membership page is required for each year. 
  • This information must be updated for all levels prior to your hard membership expiration date to ensure the renewals will properly process.
  • You can learn more about hard expiration dates in the article "What is a Hard Expiration Date?" 




Auto-Renewal Transactions


The software runs a check each night to determine if any auto-renewal transactions need to be processed. It checks the memberships expiration date (Exp Date field) and checks to see if the Auto-Renew box is checked for the membership. If the expiration date matches today and Auto-Renew is set to “Yes" then the software runs a new transaction.


The transaction is processed using the pledge feature in order to process the payment internally. For any membership set up to auto-renew, once the transaction has been processed you will see three transactions in the Transactions grid:


  • One will be for the membership - type Membership. The amount will be the price of the membership. 
  • Another transaction for this constituent will be Pledge. It will show a Frequency of "Yearly" and the Amount column will show $0.00.
  • The third transaction will be the Pledge Payment where the software "paid" the pledge in the same amount as the price of the membership.

The payments will show as pending until the credit card is charged and the money is deposited into your account. The membership date will be extended to the new expiration date.



Memberships that are set up to auto-renew will continue to renew in this fashion until the membership is edited to remove the auto-renewal. 


If the transaction fails, the same people identified for notifications on the membership page will be notified if a transaction is declined. 


You can also set up an "Expiring Card Auto-Reminder" to ensure you are notifying your members if their card is about to expire. You can learn more about this feature in this article: https://support.associationsphere.com/en/support/solutions/articles/67000736460-how-to-i-setup-notifications-for-expiring-credit-cards-