Configure auto-renewal, reminders, and catch-up

This guide shows you how to set your organization’s payment retry settings, configure when reminder emails go out before renewal dates, and send a one-time catch-up reminder to members who are past their renewal date.

Who can do this: Admins who can manage renewal settings.

Before you start

Renewal reminders apply to every level until that level’s own reminders are saved. See Per-level reminder override at the bottom of this article.
Lifetime levels never receive renewal reminders, regardless of this setting.

Steps

Set your payment retry settings

Go to Memberships > Settings > Auto-renewal in the admin sidebar.
Under Dunning & retry posture, choose how failed payments will be retried:
- Turn Retry failed renewal charges automatically on or off.
- In Maximum retry attempts, enter how many times to retry (1 to 8).
- In Retry window, enter the number of days the retries will be spread over (1 to 60). You can’t choose the day of each individual retry.
Not available yet: automatic retries. MapleGather saves these retry settings, but it doesn’t yet run any automatic retries of a failed renewal charge — the renewal-charge and retry engine isn’t built at this release (see How auto-renewal and the renewal lifecycle work). The values you save here take effect once retries ship. Until then, members renew from their My membership page when reminded.

Set your renewal reminder cadence

Scroll to the Org-default reminder cadence section. This list shows how many days before each member’s renewal date the reminder emails go out.
To add a reminder offset, select + Add reminder offset. In Days before renewal, enter a number from 0 to 365 (0 sends it on the renewal date), then select Add. Reminders after the renewal date can’t be set.
To remove a reminder offset, select the remove icon (×) on that row.

MapleGather sends these reminders automatically, in its daily membership run. Each member gets at most one reminder per run — the closest one that’s due — and never the same reminder twice for the same renewal date. A reminder set at 0 goes out in the last daily run before the renewal date, the same run as a 1-day reminder, so a cadence with both 1 and 0 sends one reminder in the final day. Reminders go to active members, including those with auto-renew on, and say the membership is due for renewal on its date, with a link to renew. They don’t mention an automatic charge or an amount. Only the billing member of a household gets a reminder; linked household members and archived members don’t. Members who turned off marketing email still get them. A member who unsubscribed from renewal reminders doesn’t get them while the level respects member preferences (the default). Every reminder ends with a line saying renewal reminders are part of the membership and are sent while it’s active, with a link to the member’s email preferences for their other email. If a member’s renewal date moves by less than 7 days (for example, an admin correction), it counts as the same renewal date, so a reminder already sent for it isn’t sent again. You can set up to 12 reminders.

The organization default has no separate email template for each offset, and no screen chooses a reminder template: reminders use built-in wording.

Save your settings

Select Save at the bottom of the page.

The catch-up reminder send (below) is a separate action and does not require you to save first.

Send catch-up reminders

Scroll to the Catch-up past-due reminders section. If members are past their renewal date, you’ll see how many can get a catch-up reminder and how many will be skipped (members who opted out of email (or of marketing email), unsubscribed from renewal reminders, have no email address, or got a catch-up reminder in the last 30 days).
Select Preview catch-up list to see a sample of up to 5 of those members, with how many days past due each one is.
Select Send catch-up reminders. A confirmation dialog appears. Select Send {N} reminders to confirm. Catch-up reminders count against your organization’s email sending capacity like other email: if a send would go over it, the batch finishes as Partial and only part of it goes out — see Email reached sending capacity.

If every past-due member would be skipped, the section says no one can get a catch-up reminder right now and there’s no send button. You can still reach out to those members directly using the organization’s contact list.

Verify

You’ll know it worked when you see a “Settings saved” confirmation message. For the catch-up reminders, a message confirms how many members the reminders are on their way to — sending is queued, so emails go out shortly after. The number of skipped members is the one shown in the section before you sent.

If something goes wrong

“Add your organization’s postal address to send marketing email” — catch-up reminders are marketing email, and US law requires your organization’s postal address in every marketing email. Nothing was sent. Select Add postal address, save the address, then send the catch-up reminders again. See Add your organization’s postal address.
“Enter 1 to 8 attempts.” or “Enter 1 to 60 days.” — a retry value is out of range. Enter a whole number within the range shown.
“Duplicate offset” — you already have a reminder at that interval. Each offset must be unique.
Too many reminders — a schedule holds at most 12 reminders. Remove one before adding another.
Save shows a permission error — ask your org owner to give you permission to manage renewal settings.

Per-level reminder override

You can set a different reminder schedule for a specific level. From the level detail page, select Renewal reminders in the sub-configuration section and enter a custom schedule for that level only: reminders 1 to 365 days before renewal, plus a switch to turn that level’s reminders off. The page has no email-template choice: a level’s reminders use built-in wording. (A level can name a template for each reminder only through the API; a named template is used only if it’s active and transactional.)

Until you save reminders for a level, it sends your organization’s default cadence, and the page says so: “This level sends your organization’s default reminder cadence until you save reminders here. Saving makes the cadence below this level’s own, even if you change nothing.” When you select Save with the level’s reminders turned on, the message goes away and the level uses the schedule shown on the page as its own from then on — even if you didn’t change it. Saving with the level’s reminders turned off doesn’t end inheriting (unless you also changed the reminder days or emails); the message comes back when you turn the reminders on again. To switch a level back, select Use the organization’s default cadence; the message comes back. The message isn’t shown for a level whose reminders are turned off, an archived level, or a Lifetime or One-time level, because those send no reminders.