Lapsed, renewal overdue and suspended in Wild Apricot

Renewal overdue, Lapsed and Suspended describe different conditions of a member record. If you use them as synonyms, your member count will be wrong. This guide explains each state and how to find it in a member export.

Renewal overdue

Renewal overdue means that the member’s renewal date is in the past. It is not a membership status. Wild Apricot calls it a statistical category on the Member summary. An overdue member can still be Active, or can be Lapsed. The status depends on the member’s situation and on the renewal settings of the level.

Use the Renewal overdue column on the Member summary when you need a list of members whose renewal date is in the past.

Lapsed

Lapsed is a membership status. It applies to a member who lost membership privileges because of unpaid membership fees. The member stays in the membership level. A lapsed member does not get automatic renewal notices, does not appear in member directories and cannot view member-only pages.

Each level has overdue actions at Members > Levels, on the Overdue settings tab. The action Change status to lapsed changes overdue members to Lapsed a set number of days after the renewal date. A lapsed member can restore the membership: the member logs in and renews.

In an export, find this state with these values:

• Membership status = Lapsed
• Membership level is not blank
• Membership enabled is not No

The report tool uses a lapsed member’s Renewal due date as an estimate of the month the member lapsed. This is an estimate from one current snapshot, not a stored history of status changes. To build a follow-up list, read find lapsed members.

Suspended

A suspended member is a former member whose membership was revoked. The person is now a non-member contact. The overdue action Suspend membership removes members from the level. A suspended person who wants to join again must apply for membership like any other contact.

In an export, suspended members have Membership enabled set to No. Their Membership status column keeps the status they had when they were suspended. Thus, do not use the status column to find suspended members. Use Membership enabled.

The Member summary and member list do not include suspended members. To find them in Wild Apricot, use the contact list or an advanced search. In the search, set the Contact properties criteria to Suspended member.

Which number should a board report use?

Define the population first:

• Current active membership: Active, Pending - Renewal and Pending - Level change. Leave out suspended and archived records.
• Renewal work queue: renewal date in the past. Include the active and pending statuses that your process follows up.
• Lost membership: Lapsed records for the period, with a note that the month is estimated from one snapshot.

Keep these as separate rows. One “inactive” row hides the difference between a member who has not paid yet, a member who lapsed and a member whose access was suspended. For the active count over time, read the Membership trends report guide.