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Group plans are a great solution for companies, groups, or schools that have a single point of contact but are purchasing access for multiple people. You may have a large group that requests to pay for their subscription through external means (wire transfer, paper cheque, etc.) instead of using a credit card via the Memberful purchase form. In these cases, you can mark the group subscription as having been paid externally. External payments that you record within Memberful are not subject to any transaction fee. However, there is a $0.20 monthly fee for each externally paid seat that is in use. In this article, we’ll cover how to record external payments to a group subscription, manage externally paid subscriptions, enable email notifications for renewals, and export a list of externally paid subscriptions.

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How do external payments differ from regular payments?

If the subscription is paid externally, Memberful will not attempt to charge a credit card when the renewal date comes. Instead, you must manually record individual payments to renew the subscription, add member seats, etc.

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Add an external payment for a new subscription

Add the group manager to the dashboard as a member, and then add the group subscription to their profile.
Add a new subscription
Since you’re not charging them by credit card, it will appear as if you’re giving them the subscription for free (at first). This is expected! Navigate to their subscription page and Enable external payments.
Enable external payments
Once the payment is received, click Add external payment.
Add an external payment
Uncheck Renew the subscription with this payment.
Do not renew with payment
You can also add an optional note along with each payment to indicate what it was for or to associate it with an external invoicing ID number. Once you’re ready, click Add external payment.

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Add an external payment to renew a subscription

Follow the steps in the previous section, but keep Renew the subscription with this payment checked.
Renew with payment

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Add an external payment to cover additional seats

To log an external payment for additional seats, follow the steps in this section: Add an external payment for a new subscription. Once you arrange payment, navigate to the group manager’s profile in the Memberful dashboard and click the subscription link.
Subscription link
From there you can adjust the number of additional member seats available to their group. This is the number of members included with their subscription in addition to the base number of member seats included with the plan.
Add additional members manually

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Cancel an externally paid subscription

Once external payments are enabled for a particular subscription, you, as the admin, need to cancel it and disable the Enable external payments toggle to end the group subscription.
Disable external payments
If the external payment isn’t canceled, the $0.20 monthly fee per seat will continue to be charged for all active and inactive group members subscribed to that plan.
This will deactivate the group subscription on the current renewal date. If you’d like to deactivate the subscription at an earlier date, you can change the subscription renewal date.

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What happens if an externally paid subscription becomes past due?

Externally paid group subscriptions that haven’t been cancelled will remain active even after their renewal date has passed—regardless of whether or not they’ve made a payment. The subscription will still appear active in the group manager’s account:
Group plan auto-renew external payment on
If you cancel the subscription, the subscription status will be removed from the group manager’s account but the subscription will remain active:
Group plan auto-renew external payment off
To stop paying the $0.20 monthly external payment seat fee, you need to also disable the external payment setting.

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Enable email notifications

Memberful will send you an email 30 days before an externally paid subscription is set to renew and the day after the renewal date if it becomes past due. You can turn these notification emails on or off via the Settings tab in your Memberful dashboard.
External payment details

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Export a list of externally paid subscriptions

To compile a list of subscriptions that are being paid externally, export either the Members CSV file from the Members tab or a plan-specific CSV file from Members → Subscriptions, and filter the External payments column by Yes.
Filter external payments
Related help docs:
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