When new members join your organization, you may need certain documents to prove they meet the requirements to become a full member. Membee’s membership approval process allows you to capture their application and guides you through a workflow to approve or reject it. In this video, we’ll cover when to enable the approval process, how the application comes into Membee, and what to do when you’re ready to approve or reject an application.

To start, let’s look at the flexibility of the approval setting. On an overview page detailing different membership types, you can see that not all of them require approval. The student and associate memberships, for example, allow members to join immediately and have a “join now” button. The lawyer and law firm memberships, however, show an “apply” button. These two are applications that require vetting. This is done by configuring a single checkbox setting within the form itself to enable the approval process.

You’ll know if you need to enable the approval process if you need to check credentials or documentation to prove that an applicant meets the membership criteria, and if you truly do reject memberships. If you don’t reject memberships but your board reviews who joins and you just want to stay up to date, you don’t need this process.

Each of these forms can capture different information. The student form, which doesn’t require approval, captures very basic, minimal details. In contrast, the lawyer sign-up form captures much more and requires approval. This form gathers custom information and has a specific section for legal background. The ability to have different information per form allows you to ask for exactly what matters for that specific membership type. This lawyer form also has a certification section that requires the applicant to submit a document to verify their certification. This custom section allows you to gather the specific information you need to accurately vet and either approve or reject their application.

When a lawyer fills out this form, Membee can set up a directory listing for them. However, it will not display them in the public directory yet because they are not a full member. Once you approve their membership, they will automatically appear in the directory. If you reject them, they won’t appear at all. This saves you the step of manually creating a directory listing later on.

The form also requires applicants to agree to terms and conditions by linking to a page on your website. Once they agree, Membee makes a note in the backend of who agreed and on what date and time. It also allows for payment method selection at the time of application. While the applicant isn’t a full member yet, we recommend capturing payment for the membership at this stage. This is a handy way to ensure they are paid as a member immediately upon approval, and you don’t have to follow up. If you need to reject their application, the workflow will prompt you to refund their payment, so you don’t have to worry about holding onto funds from rejected applicants.

Once the application is submitted, Membee sends an email to the applicant letting them know they are under pending approval. A separate email is sent to you and your team to notify you of the new sign-up. Like all Membee emails, these templates can be customized. A third email is also part of the approval process—a reminder for any pending approvals that Membee will send you at a frequency of your choice (e.g., every four, twelve, or twenty-four hours, or even every one or two weeks). This helps you stay on top of your pending list.

After the application is submitted, you can begin your internal review. All the information and documents gathered through the sign-up will be in the backend for you to review and verify before you decide to approve or reject. When you’re ready, the membership setup panel is where you’ll take your next step.

When you want to reject a membership, you just click the reject button. If a payment was made, the rejection process will ask if you want to refund that payment. Membee will automatically change the applicant’s status (you can configure the name, for example, “Application Rejected”) so you can easily identify them later. You also have three options for notifying the rejected applicant: you can review and customize the email before it’s sent, automatically send the email without reviewing it, or not send any email at all. Even though they are rejected, all of their history and data remain in the system for future reference.

For those you want to accept and activate, you select the “accept and activate” option. It will ask you to confirm the member’s status (e.g., “Lawyer”). As part of this workflow, you can activate their login and send an email so they can set up their password and start using member benefits. If you didn’t receive payment during the application, Membee will give you the option to email an invoice to the new member.

Now that they are approved, a few things have changed in their profile. The membership setup panel becomes the membership dues panel and is activated, showing the membership type and cost. You can also see the payment information stored in the transactions panel. The member’s status at the top of the page will update, and the notes panel will log the membership activation and any emails sent. Lastly, if they had a directory listing created during sign-up, they will now automatically appear in the directory.

The approval process is made simple with Membee, allowing you to focus on reviewing the application while Membee handles the rest. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’ll be happy to help.