I agree with this. I don't want prospective new members to be charged (or sent an invoice) until and unless we approve them.

Our organization is a newcomers group with strict residency requirements for joining. It is a large and popular group with multiple applications for membership every month. It takes some time after someone applies to vet the applicant and grant the approval. They not only must reside within our county but have lived here less than a certain number of years. We have been using Wild Apricot for about 10 years now but were forced to create our own membership application steps using webpages, forms, email confirmations, etc. Under no circumstances would we want someone to make application and be sent an invoice prior to approval. I was excited about the membership updates with the hope that membership applications would become more flexible. Not all groups are trying to grow. It feels like WA is geared for groups advertising "come one, come all". I set up WA for our group and have been part of the tech group active in maintaining it over the years. It has been a great system for much of what goes on with our organization but the lack of flexibility in the membership application piece has caused us a lot of work. I would really like to know why the developers cannot consider all of these ideas and comments and build a path for groups who do not wish to have an applicant see an invoice before approval without us having to create fake levels and workarounds. Having an invoice generated but not sent would work for us. It seems like a step could be inserted in the process. Maybe a process like this: Application submission/ acknowledgement email/ (vetting period)/approval email with invoice payment link triggered by admin/activation email upon payment. A rejection would stop the process prior to the approval email. I'm not suggesting we blow up the current options but add this path to the list of boxes to be checked or not. Thank you for any consideration!

Again, I have made this suggestions multiple times over the years. When you all recently updated the membership forms I was hopeful that you finally addressed this issue, but you did not. Seriously, this cannot be that difficult. And I have to believe that this would help many, many organizations. Please elevate this on your list.

This is a simple fix by WA...but no movement on their part. We have members not understanding the membership levels and pick one, sometimes the wrong one, and then pay....the wrong amount. We need a way of intercepting (heads-up) when a member applies and we can fix the problem(s). Accounting wise (and extra transaction fees for the club) to have them re-pay the difference for their mistake. Accurately described as "a pain...for volunteer (member) administrators". Of which I am one.

Two organizations I work with require new members to be approved. Dues are significant, as are requirements for membership. Currently, if a new member is entered in Wild Apricot they are automatically sent an invoice. This is a problem, since it takes some time to review new member requests. Suggest an option if you choose 'Approval Required' then add a sub-option to 'invoice immediately' or 'Invoice after approval'. We currently 'work-around' this with an 'Applicant' level and then change level if they are approved. This is a pain, especially with volunteer (member) administrators.

Given the convoluted return of payment via AffiniPay for a new member, why hasn’t a fix been issued in so many years? We want to capture details for a new applicant to put on a wait list.

I am somewhat concerned that such a feature was requested FOURTEEN years ago and not progressed. We also approve members for membership - all I want/suggest is that if the 'Membership applications must be approved by administrator' is checked then an option to 'send invoice when membership is approved' or a manual option when an Admin does change status to approved.

No progress here so far.
As of now, I would suggest asking new applicants to issue an invoice, but not pay it until application is approved.
This will require a bit more manual work for communicating with new members, but otherwise will do the job

WA can we please get an update on this needed improvement?

We are new to Wild Apricot. When we saw the checkboxes for requiring approval prior to accepting a membership, we expected the payment to not be invoiced until we accepted the membership. So we were surprised when the opposite happened.

We are a volunteer organization, We would like to be able to collect new applicants' credit card at the time that they fill out the application form, and authorize it, but not collect the actual payment until they have been accepted.

We would even accept to be able to collect new applicants' information and send an invoice payable by credit card once they were accepted

I work for a software development company, this is not a difficult fix. Instead of triggering the credit card approval process upon the submittal of the membership application, trigger it upon admin approval of the application.

Please revisit this request

I don't think that would work, as the membership level fees are used for renewal period to generate invoices. It wouldn't help at all if they were set to free.

We are currently using the workaround described by Evgeny. Unfortunately, this causes quite a bit of confusion. People think that when their applicant level membership is "accepted" they have been approved for our club - and the acceptance email clearly states how it works.

I agree with Kyle and i've started looking for other options for membership management.

The amount of finagling I am going through to make WA work for our organization without this feature (fee after approval) is substantial. If there is another membership software that provides this functionality then I will migrate.

Nathan, I could suggest one option.

If you don't want to generate invoices now, during online application, and do this later, you can define the membership fee is free and select 'Approval required' option for new applications in the 'Membership application review' settings. When everything will be ready on your side, define the fee and generate invoices for members. And update the 'Membership application review' settings based on your usual policy.

More information about membership level settings regarding new applicants you can find here https://gethelp.wildapricot.com/en/articles/132#new

Let me know does it work for you or not?

Our organization vets New Members. We would like them to be able to apply online but not pay any dues until we do our background and approve them for membership and then generate the invoice. This needs to be an option.

We need to review and approve applications and therefore it would be useful for the invoice to be sent AFTER confirmation. It is confusing and we have people paying before they have been accepted, which we then end up refunded.

Just adding I agree with the need for this. My group has been on Big Tent for 10 years where they easily allow you to have a prospective member fill out an application, you click a button to approve, then the invoice is auto-generated and sent. Unfortunately last year Big Tent stopped processing online payments so I am here checking out Wild Apricot for a possible platform move. Why is WA so unwilling to fix this function?

In an all volunteer organization we have a hard enough time getting someone to take on the board position of membership. Because of the type of organization we need to make a phone call to speak to the applicant prior to accepting their application. I loved the idea of collecting their payment information with their application but not processing it until approval. In a previous program it automatically invoiced them once approved. They paid and then had access.
Either of these options works for us but the current situation involves so many extra steps on the part of the Membership chair it becomes a problem. In addition if we have to refund annual dues after making a phone call this complicates it further including adding the treasurer in the mix as well.

The free level and then invoice negates the automatic nature of the program as they have to be manually approved after payment.

We vote for a correction of this feature.

We would like to be able to collect new applicants credit card at the time that they fill out the application form, and authorize it, but not collect the actual payment until they have been accepted.

Regarding Admins Free Level advice: this what we were advised as well and we started with it. This workflow had multiple issues:
- Discounts don't work when admin changes a level
- Extra charge items are not pulled
- No prorating
Basically, you need to type the whole invoice, as opposed to generating it.

We would like a membership waitlist function similar to the event waitlist. There should also be a "delay billing until <condition> is met" feature.