Introduction

If you need to Pause a Membership and delay billing and/or payment for a certain period of time, please read Pausing a Membership in Operate for an overview of the procedures you might consider.

This guide explains the payment related situations you might encounter with customers who have had their membership paused.

Please also keep in mind that the steps below may involve editing and staff will need to have the security access to raise Credit Notes and/or access Accounts Receivable. 

If a customer has not been billed yet, then you can adjust their billing schedule as shown in Pausing a Membership in Operate, sections #1 or #2. 

If they have been billed, and you use Operate for collections, then their payment will go through if there is an outstanding balance on the invoice when you run collections. You can pause their billing starting with the next invoice, grant a refund or offset part or all of their deposit (which can be re-charged later).

You can grant refunds by creating a Credit Note and allocating it to the invoice you need to refund. 

It is also possible to use a customer's deposit/retainer to adjust the balance and reduce the amount owed on outstanding invoices. You only need to offset the deposit, then create a journal credit for the same amount to allocate it to an invoice. This process is explained in detail here. 

The Deposit Movement Report in Operate will show offset retainer amounts and help you keep track of which customers you used this for. To run it, go to Reports, find 'Deposit Movement Report', then click Run.  

You can re-charge for the deposit/retainer using the Point of Sale. Among your Products, there should be a 'Deposit' or 'Retainer' product, which you can simply charge for within the PoS. (Please keep in mind that your organization may name such a product differently, or you might have a Product Group that only includes Deposits.) Here you are free to charge according to your organization's practices;. 

You can edit the product and update the price by clicking the pencil icon next to it. 

This will create a Charge Sheet which will be included on the customers' monthly invoice during the Bill Run. If you prefer to add a Charge Sheet instead of the PoS, you can do that too. You can also use Batch Sheets to bill multiple accounts. You can edit these records as you require, including updating pricing for the deposit product. Charge Sheets or Batch Sheets will also be invoiced during the Bill Run. 

If you need to create a Product record for this particular situation, please see How to Add a Retainer Product for further information.