What do the Member and Membership status fields mean?
In this article, we'll cover the definitions of the various status types for Members and Memberships.
Both Members and Memberships have three possible statuses: Active, Inactive, and Candidate.
Member Status
Let's start with Members. The Member status field is very important. Only Active Members can check in to your Club, so generally if a Member should be allows to check in, then they need to be Active.
The Inactive and Candidate status work similarly to each other, but have a difference use for you. Use Inactive for Members that were previously Active but are not longer, for example at the end of a season. It's helpful to keep these Inactive Members in SpeedIn, in case they register again. Use Candidate for Members that just signed up but are awaiting approval or payment. If you use the Member Portal and enable the setting to approve Memberships, then Members who register for a Membership through the portal will automatically get the Candidate status.
Membership Status
As noted earlier, Membership's have the same status type. So what is the difference? A Membership is an optional feature that includes both a Membership Type that is for the whole Club (e.g., "Family Membership 1") and a Family (e.g., the "Jones" family). Families can have multiple Memberships, for example if you need to control benefits by an area (like "Tennis" vs "Swimming").
The Membership status field tells you if a particular Membership is Active or not for family. So for example, the "Jones" family may have had "Tennis" last year, but signed up for "Swimming" this year. The Tennis Membership would be "Inactive" and the "Swimming" membership would be Active. The Membership status type is intended to control the status of the Membership for the whole Family or Group, but it does not control your ability to check-in individual Members. Memberships also provide you with a way to group your members so that you can filter them quickly during an event or check-in. And Memberships provide a way to quickly set a Family to Active or Inactive. As with before, Candidate Memberships are those where a Family has registered but is awaiting your approval or where you are awaiting payment.