5.7 Expiring User Access to Protected Content

Before understanding how to expire a user's access to your site's protected content, you need to understand how MemberPress grants access to your users. 

This may seem overly simple, but it is important to understand! 

MemberPress grants your users access to your protected content based on them having a completed, active (meaning non-expired) transaction for the correct Membership. 

Now, with that basic understanding, below you will find instructions on how to expire or revoke access to MemberPress' two types of subscriptions. Note: these instructions are for permanently revoking access for the desired subscription, but the user will still be able to sign up again to the same or another membership. 

Important Note: The instructions below will NOT work if the user's subscription is still within it's first 24 hours. If that is the case and you want to revoke access, you need to simply delete the user's subscription and associated transactions as applicable. 

Automatically Recurring Subscriptions

To expire or revoke access to an automatically recurring subscription, please follow these steps  (Note: cancelling a subscription, or editing or refunding the transaction both separately will not permanently revoke access.):

Step 1: Cancelling the Subscription

To cancel the user's subscription, simply follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the WordPress Dashboard > MemberPress > Subscriptions page.
2. Make sure that you are in the 'Recurring' tab (Non-Recurring subscriptions cannot be cancelled).
3. Search for the Subscription using the Search tool on the page, or by browsing. 
4. Hover over the unique Subscription ID for the Subscription in the 'Subscription' column.
5. Verify that you are cancelling the correct Subscription (this process is irreversible).
6. Click the 'Cancel' Link.
7. Click 'OK' on the Pop-up after verifying you are cancelling the correct subscription.

Helpful hint: if you would like to refund the user's latest transaction AND cancel their subscription at the same time, please checkout the steps outlined here in the 'Through the Subscriptions Page' subsection (click the 'Refund & Cancel' link in step 5 instead of clicking the 'Refund' link - doing this will mean not needing to follow the refund process explained below on this page).

Step 2: Refunding or Editing the User's Latest Transaction

If in the process of revoking access, you would also like to refund their latest transaction, please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the WordPress Dashboard > MemberPress > Subscriptions page.
2. Again, make sure that you are in the 'Recurring' tab 
3. Search for the Subscription using the Search tool on the page, or by browsing. 
4. Hover over the unique Subscription ID for the Subscription in the 'Subscription' column.
5. Verify that you have found the correct Subscription.
6. Click the 'View Txns' Link.
7. Hover over the unique Transaction ID for the Transaction you would like to refund in the 'Transaction' column.
8. Click the 'Refund' Link.
9. Click 'OK' on the Pop-up after verifying you are refunding the correct subscription.

If you don't want to offer a refund, then please simply follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the WordPress Dashboard > MemberPress > Subscriptions page.
2. Again, make sure that you are in the 'Recurring' tab 
3. Search for the Subscription using the Search tool on the page, or by browsing. 
4. Hover over the unique Subscription ID for the Subscription in the 'Subscription' column.
5. Verify that you have found the correct Subscription.
6. Click the 'View Txns' Link.
7. Hover over the unique Transaction ID for the Transaction in the 'Transaction' column.
8. Click the 'Edit' Link.
9. On the Edit page, scroll down until you find the 'Expiration Date (UTC/GMT)' option, and here, make the expiration date any date in the past.
10. Finally, click the 'Update' button to save these changes. 

Non-Recurring (One-Time Payment) Subscriptions

To expire or revoke access to an automatically recurring subscription, please follow these steps  (Note: if you have given a user access manually, then you'll simply need to follow the steps above in the "If you don't want to offer a refund ..." subsection above):

1. Navigate to the WordPress Dashboard > MemberPress > Subscriptions page.
2. Make sure that you are in the 'Non-Recurring' tab 
3. Search for the Subscription using the Search tool on the page, or by browsing. 
4. Hover over the unique Subscription ID for the Subscription in the 'Subscription' column.
5. Verify that you have found the correct Subscription.
6. Click the 'View Txns' Link.
7. Hover over the unique Transaction ID for the Transaction in the 'Transaction' column.
8. Click the 'Edit' Link.
9. On the Edit page, scroll down until you find the 'Expiration Date (UTC/GMT)' option, and here, make the expiration date any date in the past.
10. Finally, click the 'Update' button to save these changes. 

Verifying

To verify that you have correctly expired or revoked access for a user's subscription, simply go to your WordPress Dashboard > MemberPress > Subscriptions > search for the user's subscription > then make sure that you see a red 'No' under the 'Active' column like shown here: