The idea
A clock that only runs when the diary is empty.
A member list grows and never shrinks on its own: people move away, change jobs, book the hall once for a party. Active membership is the rule that tidies them away for you. It is off unless the owner turns it on, it never touches anyone with a booking ahead, and everything it does it announces first. A member it pauses can be woken with one tap, and their history stays.
The clock starts when the future is empty
The owner switches active membership on and names a threshold in months. The clock for a member starts only when they have no booking in the future, and any new booking, even one, stops it and puts it back to the beginning. A member who books every few months never hears about it. The default threshold is 6 months, and you can set anything from one month to a year.
For example
Threshold 6 months. A drama group books the hall every Tuesday and never sees the clock, because there is always a Tuesday ahead. The party hirer's one booking passes in June; nothing follows; in December the clock runs out.
Leave it alone if
You are happy to tidy the list by hand. Leave the rule off and nobody is ever paused.
A warning, then a pause
15 days before a member would be paused I tell them, inside Doris, that their membership is about to become inactive and how to stay active. When the threshold passes they are paused: an Inactive badge on the list and on their page, no new bookings, and another note to say so. They can still sign in and see their history and their statements. I tell the member, not the admins; the badge is how an admin finds out, and nothing needs doing.
For example
15 days before her clock runs out, the flower show organiser gets a note inside Doris: make a booking or contact an admin to stay active. She does neither. When it runs out she shows an Inactive badge on the Members page and a booking she tries is refused with a note to contact an admin; her past bookings and her statements are exactly where they were.
Leave it alone if
Everyone you have books at least every 6 months. The rule is on and does nothing, which is the point.
Wake up, and keep always active
Wake up is a button on the paused member’s page. It restores them at once and cancels the countdown to removal, with nothing lost. It does not give them a booking, and the clock only stops with a booking ahead, so a woken member with an empty diary is paused again at the next nightly check: give them a booking the same day, or use the switch. Keep always active is a switch on a member’s page, while the rule is on, that takes them out of it altogether: they are never paused however long they go without booking. Someone added as an admin starts with it on, so the people running the diary are not locked out of it; a member you promote to admin later keeps whatever their switch said, so glance at it when you promote them.
For example
The cricket club books May to September and goes quiet all winter. Rather than wake the secretary each April and book the first match the same day, the admin marks her Keep always active. The parish clerk, who books nothing but needs to see the diary, is marked the same.
Leave it alone if
Nobody in your list is a permanent fixture who rarely books. Then Wake up is all you need, and only now and then.
Removal
A paused member is removed 30 days after the pause, with a final note 7 days before. Removed means removed from your organisation: they lose their place in your member list, their contact record goes with them, and their sign-in, their other organisations and their booking history are untouched. The wait is fixed, not a setting; it exists so that a Wake up during those weeks costs nothing.
For example
30 days after the party hirer was paused, nobody having woken her, she is removed from the organisation. She can still sign in to the other hall she belongs to. If she comes back next summer, the admin adds her again and her old bookings are still in the diary under her name.
Leave it alone if
You would rather paused members sat in the list for ever. They cannot; the removal is fixed. Keep always active is the way to keep someone.
What I never do
- I never pause a member who has a booking ahead. The clock runs only on an empty diary.
- I never pause anyone while the rule is off, or anyone marked Keep always active.
- I never remove a member without telling them first, inside Doris, at every step.
- I never delete a booking or a statement when a member is removed. The history of the building stays.
- I never email anyone about this. The notices are inside Doris, where the member can act on them.
Where it lives
Settings, then Organisation, carries the switch and the threshold, for the owner. The Members page shows the Inactive badge; a member’s own page has Wake up while they are paused and Keep always active under Access. What is deleted at removal, and what stays, is on Member records and privacy (bookwithdoris.com/guides/member-records-and-privacy). A member put on hold is a different thing with a different word: the Booking access switch on their page, and its automatic version for unpaid statements on Settings, then Payments.