What’s New in AC MemberSmart? Discover the Latest Product Updates 

What a productive year the AC team had! As it draws to a close, we couldn’t help but share our latest product update – the improved AC MemberSmart! This version is all about a streamlined membership payment process, enhanced subscription management, and more flexibility.   

Get ready for the scoop on some major AC MemberSmart changes made. Besides, we’ve listed minor yet meaningful updates your business should experience straight away. 

Major New Functionalities AC MemberSmart Offers 

1. Unified Checkout Integration

AC MemberSmart now comes with a unified checkout integration, ensuring a more streamlined and consistent payment experience. Whether your members are paying for tickets, swag, different membership tiers, or community-wide events, they will see their order in a single cart at the checkout. No need to jump between the tabs! This means fewer headaches for you and your members.

Moreover, we’ve optimized payment processing for both Native and Unified Checkout systems. That results in faster and more accurate payment processing supports bulk payment support, and makes troubleshooting easier. 

2. Free Membership Subscriptions

Sometimes you may want to offer free memberships as part of promotional activities, trials, or other community-building efforts. With a new free membership subscription feature, admins can assign specific membership products as free. This allows community users to subscribe without payment and internal admins to assign free memberships via the internal wizard. Free products remain free for good, cover the entire membership period, and do not use installments.

3. The ‘Finalize Payment’ Button for Seamless Transactions

This release of AC MemberSmart comes with a “Finalize Payment” button that lets community users complete interrupted subscription payments or pay balances directly from their member account. 

With this new functionality, users can complete interrupted subscription payments, provide payment for the subscription if they selected “Payment by invoice” in the first place, and make payments for future installments. 

The important improvement here is that you can see only unpaid installments that are not in In-Progress or Close Collected status and take care of them with the button. It makes the process more intuitive, quick, and less prone to errors. 

4. Improved Subscription and Member Record Management

Always wanted to manage subscriptions stress-free? Our improved AC MemberSmart version lets you do just that! We’ve made a few tweaks so that you can take more control over your memberships:

• Membership Custom Statuses: you can now create custom membership statuses for more tailored subscription management. Track renewals, cancellations, or other membership stages—with custom statuses, you receive granular control every step of the way.
• Admin Control over Expired Membership Renewals: it’s often the case that expired memberships need to be renewed manually or under certain conditions. Admins can control whether members are allowed to renew expired memberships. This approach provides you with greater flexibility in how you manage your renewal process. Besides, there is a new setting in the MemberSmart Settings that allows you to recalculate and update the Membership Duration and Membership Activation Date based on the active subscription period.
• Specific Subscription Start Dates: you can create subscriptions by setting specific start dates. This ensures accurate alignment of the subscription term and improves data accuracy in your member records.

5. Flexible Payment Methods and Subscription Flows

As your business grows, you may diversify payment options. Now, your members can experience flexible payments, which makes it easier for you to meet their preferences. We’ve added the opportunity to choose Invoice, Card, or Bank transfer options on the registration flow when a member chooses their membership plan. 

Additionally, this version of AC MemberSmart has an improved payment flow in the subscription and installment Payment Period. Thus, the Payment Period on membership and product objects is synced with the Grace Period value during package installation. It leaves you with more accurate subscription timelines and a smoother membership experience.

Speaking of the Grace Period, we’ve added an informative help text to explain the Grace Period for calendar-based subscriptions to take the guesswork out of it.

6. User-Friendly Updates for Community and Admin Users

The renewed AC MemberSmart is equipped with an email duplication check during the membership registration process. This way, when guest users become members, the system will automatically use existing Contact and Account records, which prevents redundancy and keeps your member data clean. 

Now, members can cancel auto-renewals and change their payment methods on their own via the Membership Details component. As an Admin, you can manage who can access these features via permission sets. On the one hand, you end up with more flexibility and control over member access. On the other hand, you provide autonomy to your users over their subscription management. 

Plus, we’ve improved the Success screens across both community and internal environments, making the user experience smoother and establishing clear feedback for your members. 

Minor Features You Shouldn’t Miss Out On 

Streamlined Installment and Grace Period Logic 

The subscription status logic is completely rethought. From now on, memberships are considered active based on both the Grace Period and payment dates. Plus, the calculation of an installment’s date is now more precise thanks to the new fields added. 

Another improvement deals with installment due dates. When members renew their subscriptions, the first installment due date is now automatically aligned with the Subscription Term’s start date. This way, consistency and accuracy with billing are ensured. 

Enhanced Pending Status Logic 

We’ve updated the logic for the “Pending” status in memberships to cover scenarios when a member waits for payment completion and future start dates for renewed subscriptions.

More Accurate Subscription Cancellations with Automatic Member Status Updates

When a member cancels their subscription, their status and all the relevant fields are updated automatically. This ensures accurate and consistent data.

Membership Plan Flow for Registration and Renewals

We’ve made improvements to the Membership Plan component for both registration and renewal flows. Now, payment frequency options are displayed more intelligently—shorter payment frequencies will be hidden based on the grace period and payment settings, making the process smoother and more intuitive for your members.

Organisational Member Status Logic Updated 

The Organisational Member Status on Accounts will now automatically update to “Active Member” when at least one Contact under the Account has a Member Status of “Active.”

Final Instalment Amount Adjustment for Recurring Payments 

The final installment amount for recurring payments will now be adjusted to the Account for any rounded-up amounts, ensuring accurate payment totals.