Stopping a Membership vs. Inactivating a Membership

You may stop a membership by entering an end date for the membership. However, depending on how events are created for your membership, stopping the membership may not prevent new events from being created. For example:

• If you stop a frequent flier membership on May 15th and a bill is subsequently created for the period May 1st through June 1st, your business rules may dictate that frequent flier miles should be accumulated for this bill because the membership was active for part of the period covered by the bill.
• For a capital credits membership, capital credit allocations are calculated for the prior year. If a membership stopped in the middle of the previous year, the membership should still get capital credits for the part of the year that the membership was still in effect.
• Capital credit retirements are calculated based on capital credit allocations accumulated in the past. If a membership has been expired, the members are still eligible for retirement amounts for the accumulated capital credit allocations. These retirements may continue for many years after a membership is stopped.

You may have some circumstances where you do not want new events to accumulate after a membership is stopped. To prevent new events from being created, you must change the status of the membership to inactive.

If a customer moves away or otherwise stops service with your company, your business rules dictate whether or not the membership should be stopped or changed to inactive. The following issues must be considered:

• Will service credit events still get created for these memberships? If so, is that acceptable?
  • For frequent flier memberships, the miles are calculated based on new bill amounts for the membership's service agreements. If the SAs that contribute to the membership are expired, no new bills are generated so no new miles are accumulated.

• For capital credits, after a customer moves away, the capital credit allocation for the final year of the customer's service may still need to be calculated. In addition, this customer is eligible for the capital credit retirement amounts, even though they are no longer a customer.
• What happens if the customer returns to your company and signs on for service again? Assuming that the same account number is used, is it ok for the membership to be automatically reinstated? Or should the customer reapply? If the customer should reapply, you may consider updating the membership with a stop date when the customer originally stopped service.