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Your first renewal season
Renewal season is the busiest fortnight in a running club's year and the one moment when everybody looks at the membership system at once. Your first one on RunClub HQ is mostly a scheduling exercise: we do the chasing, and your job is to set it up early enough that it can.
This page is the calendar. Each step links to the guide that explains it properly rather than repeating it here.
Who can do this?
Creating seasons and fees needs Club Admin. Running the campaign needs Tenant Admin or Membership Manager. Reconciling the money needs Treasurer or Club Admin. See Roles & Permissions.
The shape of a season
| When | What happens | Read |
|---|---|---|
| 3 months before | Create the new season and set a fee for every membership type | Subscriptions |
| 10 weeks before | Confirm how you are collecting money, and check mandates | Payments |
| 8 weeks before | Create the renewal campaign and review the proposed renewals household by household | Renewals |
| 6 weeks before | Activate the campaign — members are notified and can confirm | Renewals |
| 3 working days before collection | Direct Debit members get their advance notice automatically | Payments |
| Season start | Anyone unpaid moves into the grace period and starts getting reminders | Renewals |
| Grace period ends (30 days by default) | Unpaid members become lapsed, and are reminded again | Renewals |
| Throughout | The treasurer watches the money land | Finances |
The dates are yours to choose. What matters is the order, and that the campaign is activated with enough runway for people to notice it before the season turns over.
Step 1 — Set the season and its fees
Settings → Membership Seasons → Set up next season. Check the new season's start and end dates and its registration period. Each membership type's fee is copied from the current season, so change the ones that are going up. A membership type with no fee for the new season cannot be renewed into.
This is the step to do early. It is the one piece of configuration that everything else depends on, and the one your committee will want to argue about.
Step 2 — Decide the campaign timing
Renewals → Campaigns. A campaign points at two seasons: the one expiring and the one members are renewing into. When you create it you also set the dates that drive everything afterwards, including when auto-scheduled payments are collected.
Two things worth deciding before you create it:
- How much notice members get. Six weeks between activating the campaign and the season turning over is comfortable. Less than three and you will spend the grace period chasing.
- When money is collected. Pick a date that suits your members' pay dates rather than your committee's calendar. Direct Debit members get an advance notice three working days before collection, automatically.
Reminder schedules during the grace and lapsed periods have sensible defaults and are configured with us rather than in the admin panel. Ask if you want them changed.
Step 3 — Review before you activate
A campaign sits in Reviewing until you release it, and that pause is the useful part. Go through the proposed renewals household by household: check the fees, exclude anyone who has already told you they are leaving, and fix the households that look odd. It is far easier to correct a renewal before a member has seen it than afterwards.
Activation is the point of no return in practice, because it emails everybody.
Step 4 — What your members receive and see
Once the campaign is active:
- Every renewing household gets an email, and a renewal prompt appears on their dashboard.
- They can review what has been proposed, change membership type where they are eligible, update their payment method, or cancel.
- Members with a valid Direct Debit mandate are scheduled for automatic payment. They can still make changes right up until the payment is actually submitted.
- Members without a mandate pay when they confirm, or are invoiced to settle however your club collects.
Household members renew together as a unit, so a parent confirming a renewal confirms the children attached to their household. The member app is the page to send a member who asks what they are supposed to be doing.
Step 5 — Through the grace period
When the new season starts, anyone unpaid moves into the grace period rather than being cut off. They keep their access, they get reminders on a schedule, and they can still pay. When the grace period ends they lapse; after the lapsed period they auto-resign, and have to rejoin.
Your work during this phase is small and regular: watch the campaign's numbers, deal with failed payments as they appear, and answer the handful of people who cannot work out what they owe. The Resolve a failed renewal payment and Reinstate a cancelled renewal recipes cover the two questions you will get most.
Step 6 — What the treasurer does
Open the Finances report. It attributes every payment to the season it belongs to rather than the month the cash landed, which is exactly what you need when renewals straddle the season boundary — an early renewal collected in March counts toward a season starting in April.
The treasurer's checklist for a renewal season:
- Watch the collection states as the payment run completes, and chase the failures.
- Check the England Athletics position, if your club affiliates.
- Reconcile the season total against the bank at the end of the grace period, not before — the late payers move the number.
Where to read more
- Subscriptions — seasons, membership types, fees and payment plans
- Renewals — campaign phases in full, household statuses, reminders
- Payments — providers, invoices, failed payments and refunds
- Finances — the treasurer's view of a season's money
- Getting help — if the calendar above does not fit your club