Effective every April 1 (by Pacific Time midnight), a 25% late fee should be charged to all members who let their membership lapse. However, the system currently allows lapsed members to log in to their profiles and renew without paying the late fee.

Additional Issue – Self-Service Renewal for Lapsed Members

Members > Levels > Renewal policy > Disable self-service for members renewal:

• This setting prevents members from renewing their membership themselves online; only admins can process renewals.

• For active members in good standing, this cannot apply because they should be able to renew themselves between January 1 and March 31.

• However, for lapsed members, we should not allow self-service renewal without paying a late fee.

If “Disable self-service for members renewal” is unchecked:

• Both active and lapsed members can see the red Renew button in their profile.

• Lapsed members could restore their membership by paying the renewal fee from their profile—this is exactly what we do not want.

Key principle: Lapsed members should not have the same privileges as active members in good standing. Specifically, lapsed members should:

• Not renew automatically without paying a late fee
• Not access website resources
• Not participate in meetings with voting rights
• Not receive mass emails through the organization’s email distribution
• Not appear in the public directory

To prevent lapsed members from renewing themselves, I have to manually remove their email addresses. When they contact me to reinstate their membership, I must create an invoice with the late fee manually: under Finances, click Add Invoice, then click the + button to add an itemized line to the invoice form.

Some lapsed members who have already paid their renewal late receive a separate invoice specifically for the late fee, but some resist paying it, which makes this process even more challenging.

Due to this website design limitation, it seems the only solution is for me to work at 3 am Eastern Time (my time) to remove the email addresses of all lapsed members so they can contact me to reinstate their membership and receive the invoice with the late fee. I certainly don’t think this is convenient or sustainable. Last week, I had to remove the email addresses of over 100 lapsed members individually, and I will have to repeat this process every year on April 1. It is very time-consuming.

For example, the website is set to Pacific Time. Below are five members who paid their membership dues without being charged a late fee (all times in PT, with our local time in parentheses):

• Member #1 (Alberta), invoice 5171, at 2:49 am PT (5:49 am our time)
• Member #2 (Manitoba), invoice 5172, at 5:25 am PT (8:25 am our time)
• Member #3 (Manitoba), invoice 5174, at 6:15 am PT (9:15 am our time)
• Member #4 (Ontario), invoice 5175, at 6:33 am PT (9:33 am our time)
• Member #5 (British Columbia), invoice 5176, at 7:25 am PT (10:25 am our time)

That is why I am asking if there is a better solution to handle this situation.

I have contacted Wild Apricot Support via Live Chat several times, and their response remains the same:

“This is currently by design. There is no built-in way to automatically apply or enforce late fees, as they must be added manually to invoices.”

We use the 'limit renewal to within X months/days' for 2 purposes:
1. allow early renewals, 2 months before the annual expiry date of 1 Jan
2. allow renewals up until membership benefits lapse, 3 months after expiry date (i.e. members lapse automatically at 31 Mar

We need two limit fields to handle this, not just 1! As it is, we need to go in and change this field from 3 to 2 months on 31 Mar for all of our 20+ levels.

Moreover, within the early renewal period, existing members who change levels should be treated as renewals, not as new members (i.e. their renewal date does not currently update update correctly if they change levels as they are charged for the current year as well as requiring payment for the renewal year!)

Yes, please! And add the email function (with message section like invoice) for account statements! After 30 days, we charge a 1% late fee, and in addition to being tedious, editing an invoice that has been issued is not good accounting practice. If we add new manual invoices for late fees, then we cannot really use resending the invoice as an incentive for payment. The account statement cannot be emailed from the system, making the entire process cumbersome, regardless of which work-around we choose.

We are going deal with late membership renewals fees by adding a mandatory custom membership form field on the day that the late fees come in effect (for each type of membership). We will then have to manually deactivate these fields (change the membership type to an admin field at the end of the membership year so members can renew during the on-time renewal period without the late fee). Tedious.

YES! This is needed with all my clients! We are having to manually go in after a certain date and add a line to each invoice to add the late fee and then resend out!

Generating automatic late fees as a part of the renewal process.

Having the ability to add a late fee and create the interval (30, 60, 90 day) would be helpful otherwise there is no incentive to renewing on time creating more housekeeping on the backend.

Yes yes yes. This feature is very needed for all the reasons others have given.

Yes, we need this feature!

Hey! Any update on this? It's been in demand for a few yrs now.

This would be a FABULOUS addition to the platform. Would love to see this soon.

PLEASE add this feature! We NEED this for our association. We lose a lot of money because we don't have this feature!

A late fee option would be very helpful if possible. We have around 2500 members if they are not paid by January 7th a $25 late fee needs added, and if not paid by March 31st, I archive them. As of now I have to go in and automatically add the late fee when they send a check the problem then comes in that members can log on and pay and if it is after the 7th they are not being charged a late fee. Please add a late fee option where we are able to put the amount and the dates the late fee needs to be attached to all pending renewals.

PLEASE, please, please!! I need an early bird, regular, and late fee option.

We have an Early payment discount also so it would be great if this functionality was implemented for either side of the renewal date.

Add $___ after __ days before renewal for ___. <- Freeform text to be included as Invoice line item note.

I agree this is needed.

When accounts are overdue, it would be great to have the ability to charge interest monthly.

This is a critical collection and business process very common in association memberships. What is the status of this important feature?

Add $___ after __ days from renewal date membership type for unpaid balance. Allow __ days grace period for late fee.

Bonus:
Add %___ after __ days from renewal date membership type for unpaid balance. Allow __ days grace period for late fee.

I agree with the concept, but would much prefer to handle it as follows: If a membership lapses the next renewal date is set to one period from the date the membership lapsed. (not the date that the membership is reactivated)

In our case what happens at the moment is that some people wait until after their membership lapses and then renew. If this takes a while when they finally go and reactivate their membership, the new renewal date is one year from the date they reactivated not one year from the renewal date. This effectively gives them a holiday and there is an incentive to pay late and renew only when there is some exciting event coming up. We won't want to discourage them by asking for a late fee, after all, many of our members are freelancers and could be having a bad patch. But they they should pay their back dues, and this would be a way of doing that without making a big deal of it.

I vote for this too. Our membership chair just asked me if I could set this up and I'll have to tell her no, not at this time.