📋 Overview

When you place a membership on hold, billing is paused and the customer's payments are automatically adjusted to reflect only the time their membership is active. During the hold, any scheduled payments are skipped, class access is suspended, and existing bookings are removed.

When the hold ends, the system generates a recalculated prorated payment for the period beginning on the reactivation date.

After this payment is processed, billing continues on the customer's original billing cycle as normal.

💡 Looking for step-by-step instructions on setting up a hold? Check our relevant guides here:

⏸️ How Holds Affect Billing

When a hold is active on a customer's membership, all billing for that period is paused and class access is suspended. This section explains exactly what changes when a hold is applied and where you can monitor the impact.

Click the arrow to find out more about how holds affect billing

When you apply a hold to a membership, the following changes take effect immediately:

Billing is paused	Payments that fall within the hold period are automatically skipped. The customer is not charged for any time their membership is inactive.
Class access is suspended	The customer's membership is not valid for class bookings for the duration of the hold.
Existing class bookings are removed	Any classes the customer was already booked into that fall within the hold period are automatically cancelled.
Recurring reservations are preserved	If the customer had recurring class bookings, these are automatically restored once the hold ends and the membership becomes active again.

Skipped payments remain visible to you in the Upcoming Payments tab on the customer's membership detail page, giving you a clear view of everything that has been paused.

Click here to see a detailed example

In the example below, the Upcoming Payments tab shows the scheduled payments that fall within the hold period.

The payments due on the 1st of April, May and June are marked “on hold” (🟢 green arrow). These payments will not be collected because the membership is inactive for those full billing periods. Since the customer will not have access during these months, the system automatically skips those charges.

You’ll also notice that the hold ends midway through July. Because the billing cycle runs from the 1st of the month, the system calculates a prorated payment for the remainder of July (🔵 blue arrow).

This prorated amount reflects only the portion of the billing period during which the membership is active again. The system takes into account the customer’s previous payment and adjusts the charge accordingly.

After this prorated payment is collected, regular payments resume on the normal billing date (the 1st of each month), at the standard membership rate.

💡 You can view skipped payments by going to Customers ➔ Customer List ➔ search for the customer ➔ click the Memberships tab ➔ click the relevant membership ➔ select Skipped Payments.

If you have skipped future payments, you can unskip them before the billing date.

⚠️ Skipped payments for dates that have already passed cannot be unskipped automatically. If a payment was skipped and its due date has passed, you will need to re-add it manually as an ad-hoc payment.

⏳ How Payment Rescheduling Works

When a hold ends and a customer's membership reactivates, the system automatically reschedules the next payment to the reactivation date and adjusts the amount to reflect only the active portion of the billing period. This section explains how that rescheduled payment is calculated and where to find it.

Click the arrow to find out more about how payment rescheduling works

When a customer's membership reactivates after a hold, the system automatically:

Creates a prorated payment starting on the reactivation date and schedules it for the day the membership becomes active again.
Calculates the prorated amount to cover only the active portion of the billing period. Taxes and fees are included in this calculation.
Displays the rescheduled payment in the Upcoming Payments tab on the customer's membership detail page, so you can see exactly what is due and when.

After the rescheduled reactivation payment is processed, billing continues on the customer's original billing cycle as normal.

💡 When setting up the hold, the system shows you the calculated reactivation amount before you finalise it, giving you a chance to review the figure, and override it if needed, before the hold is created.

Overriding the rescheduled payment amount

If you need to adjust the amount due on reactivation, for example, to offer a goodwill discount or waive the payment entirely, you can override the system-calculated figure when setting up the hold.

Tick 'Override the prorate amount due upon reactivation' and enter the amount you'd like to charge instead. This can be set to £0 if you'd prefer not to charge anything on reactivation.

🧮 Partial Month (Pro-Rated) Hold Calculations

When a hold starts or ends part-way through a billing period, the system automatically calculates a prorated amount so the customer is only charged for the time their membership was active. This section explains how those calculations work for different membership types.

Click the arrow to find out more about partial month hold calculations

1️⃣ Unlimited memberships: time-based proration

For memberships with unlimited class access, proration is calculated based on the number of days the customer was inactive during the billing period.

🧠 Example:

A customer pays £120 on 1 August.
They go on hold from 6 August to 31 August and reactivate on 1 September.

The system calculates the proportion of the billing period during which the membership was inactive and uses this to determine the prorated reactivation payment.

2️⃣ Memberships with usage limits: class-based proration

For memberships that include a set number of classes per period, proration is calculated based on the proportion of classes the customer was unable to use during the hold. The system follows a priority order to determine which usage limit to apply:

Billing cycle limit (takes priority if one is set)
Yearly limit
Monthly limit
Weekly limit

The first applicable limit in this order is used for the calculation.

🧠 Example 1: billing cycle limit: A membership allows 6 classes per month, billed on the 1st at £60.

The customer goes on hold from 21–30 September. During the hold period, the system determines how many classes from the billing allowance were unavailable due to the hold.

The remaining 4 classes (valued at £40) become the reactivation payment due on 1 October.

🧠 Example 2: yearly limit: A membership allows 48 classes per year, billed monthly at £60.

The customer goes on hold from 21–30 September.

The system determines the customer overpaid by £5 for the unused portion of September. Upon reactivation on 1 October, they are charged £55 instead of £60.

3️⃣ When the customer is owed a credit

If a hold falls within a billing period the customer has already paid for in full, they may be owed a credit. In this case, an account credit is issued when the hold is created, so the customer does not need to wait until the membership reactivates.

You can adjust the credit amount in Advanced options when setting the hold. You can also tick 'Do not prorate classes...' if you'd prefer to skip class usage proration for this particular hold.

⚠️ When using the bulk hold tool, you'll see the option to 'Disable all proration behavior as a result of these holds'.

Only select this option if you intentionally want to bypass all automated proration calculations for every membership in the batch.

🔄 When Does Billing Resume?

Once a hold ends, billing and class access resume automatically. This section explains exactly when that happens, what to expect on the billing side, and some important things to be aware of when editing or removing holds.

Click the arrow to find out more about when billing resumes

Holds with a pre-set end date reactivate automatically on the date you specified, and no manual action is needed.

Open-ended holds remain active indefinitely until you edit the hold to add an end date. Prorated payment calculations are not generated until an end date is set. This is useful when a customer's return date isn't yet known, for example, if they are recovering from an injury.

1️⃣ What happens to billing on reactivation

On the reactivation date:

The rescheduled payment at the prorated amount is charged or becomes due.
Normal billing resumes from the next billing cycle onward.
The customer's Usage tab updates to reflect any prorated class allowances for the partial period.

💡 To view prorated usage: Go to Customers ➔ Customer List ➔ search for the customer ➔ click the Memberships tab ➔ click the relevant membership ➔ select the Usage tab.

2️⃣ Editing vs. deleting a hold

How you end or modify a hold has a direct impact on whether billing adjustments are made:

Editing a hold (updating the end date) preserves all proration calculations. This is the recommended approach whenever you need to adjust a hold's dates.
Deleting a hold removes it without triggering any proration on payments or class usage. Only use this option if no billing adjustments are needed.
Ending holds in bulk via the bulk hold tool does not trigger proration. If you end holds in bulk, any necessary payment adjustments must be applied manually as ad-hoc payments.

⚠️ If you need to change the end date of an existing hold, always use the Edit option rather than deleting and re-creating the hold. Deleting bypasses all automated proration and may result in billing discrepancies that need to be corrected manually.

3️⃣ Extending expiration dates

When creating a hold, you can enable 'Extend expiration dates' in Advanced options. When this is switched on:

Packs and prepaid plans have their expiration extended by the total number of days the hold lasted.
Recurring plans have their expiration date and any commitment period extended by the number of billing periods the hold spans.

📊 Reporting

The All Membership Holds report gives you a complete view of all holds across your business, including their billing impact, current status, and proration outcomes. This section explains how to access and use it.

Click the arrow to find out more about tracking holds in Reports

To access the All Membership Holds report:

Go to Reports.
Click the toggle in the top left corner to enable new reports.
Under Membership Holds, click 'All Membership Holds'.

1️⃣ What the report shows

The report dashboard includes at-a-glance widgets displaying:

Active holds (the total number of memberships currently on hold)
Average hold length
Membership with the most holds
Holds ending within the next 30 days

2️⃣ Filtering the report

You can narrow down the report using the following filters:

Customer
Membership
Membership type (pack, recurring plan, or prepaid plan)
Status (active, upcoming, or ended)
Creation date, start date, or end date
Payment calculation (no payment or credit / credit owed to customer / credit due to customer)
Whether class usage was prorated (yes / no)

💡 The Payment Calculation filter is particularly useful for identifying any holds where a payment is due on reactivation or where a credit is owed to the customer.

Click the ⓘ icon next to any hold's payment calculation to see a full breakdown of how the prorate and credit amounts were worked out.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)