Give a member free access

A comp membership. Nobody is charged, no card is involved, and it does not renew or expire unless you give it an end date.

You'll need

The member's email address. If they are not in FMS yet, add them first.

You also need the Support, Membership manager or Owner role.

1. Open the member's page and scroll to Grant a subscription.

   

   

   Click anywhere, or press Esc, to close.

2. Open Plan and choose what they should get.

   

   

   Click anywhere, or press Esc, to close.

3. Open How they pay and choose Free — internal / comp. This is what makes it free.

   

   

   Click anywhere, or press Esc, to close.

4. Optionally set Starts on (1) to backdate the record and Access ends on (2) to time-box it. Write a Note (3) saying why. Press Grant access (4). If the button is greyed out, the line under it says what is still missing — a team name, or the amount received in bank on a paid-outside-Stripe grant.

   

   

   Click anywhere, or press Esc, to close.

Check it worked

• A new row appears under Subscriptions with the source comp
• Your note appears in the notes log at the bottom of the page
• The member can open a members-only article on the website

The two date fields

Starts on only changes the "member since" date on the record. Access begins immediately either way. Use it when you are entering something that really happened last month.

Access ends on is the useful one for partner lists and trials. When the date passes the membership drops to free Community automatically. Nobody has to remember to switch it off.

With the membership emails switched on, FMS emails the member before that date and on the day it passes.

Renewing one for another year

Free and bank-paid memberships do not renew themselves — there is no card to charge. Press ⋯ at the end of the subscription row and choose Renew. The member's row in the list has Renew too.

1. Press Renew. The panel shows the current end date and what it will become: one more year, or one more month for a monthly plan.
2. If money arrived for this term, tick Record the payment and fill in what was charged and what reached the bank — once ticked, both amounts are needed, and the panel says which one is missing. Leave it unticked if the transfer has not landed yet — you can record it later.
3. Press Renew.

The new end date is counted from the current end date, so renewing early never costs the member days they have already paid for. If the date has already passed, it counts from today instead, so they get a full term.

Renew before the end date passes

Once the end date passes, the nightly sweep moves the membership down to free Community — and then there is no paid tier left to renew. Grant a new membership instead. Renew is also refused for card subscriptions (Stripe renews those itself), for memberships that have already been stopped, and for open-ended grants, which have no end date to extend.

Moving a free membership to another plan

Press ⋯ at the end of the subscription row and choose Change plan to move a free or paid-outside-Stripe membership up or down. Nothing is charged. See Change a member's plan.

Moving a free member to paying

Press ⋯ at the end of the subscription row and choose Move to Stripe billing. FMS emails the member an invoice, and Stripe invoices them every period from then on. Nothing changes until the first invoice is paid. See Move a member to Stripe billing by invoice.

If it did not work

The member can sign in but still cannot read. Their website session may be holding an old answer for a few minutes. Ask them to sign out and back in. If it persists, check Health.