Run a Call's membership data model includes recurring-billing fields (billing_cycle, stripe_subscription_id) and a background autopay engine. Whether autopay is operational for your account is the question — confirm with your Run a Call success contact before promising customers automatic renewals.
The model on paper
Each membership template has:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Billing cycle | Typically monthly or annually. |
| Amount | Charged per cycle. |
| Stripe Connect customer + vaulted payment method | What the autopay engine charges. |
When autopay is enabled and configured for your account, the engine fires an off-session Stripe charge on each renewal date.
Today's reality for most shops
Most shops collect membership payments manually:
- Enroll the customer (see Enrolling customers in a membership).
- Send a payment link for the current cycle.
- At the next renewal, send another link.
This is workable for small member bases. As your member list grows, manual collection gets painful — that's when autopay becomes worth turning on. Talk to your Run a Call success contact about enabling autopay on your account.
What autopay does when it's running
The autopay engine:
- Fires an off-session Stripe charge against the vaulted card on the renewal date.
- Uses Stripe's idempotency key tied to the invoice ID, so duplicate runs (e.g. a cron retry) hit the same key and don't double-charge.
- On a decline, the invoice stays unpaid and falls into the standard AR escalation cadence — it's treated like any other unpaid invoice from that point forward.
What's NOT supported today
- No custom retry schedule. A failed charge isn't retried by the autopay engine; it's escalated through AR like any unpaid invoice.
- No customer-facing "pause" button. If a customer wants to skip a month, the office handles it manually today.
- No partial / pro-rated mid-cycle charges out of the box. The cycle-end charge is the full amount.
Reconciliation with QuickBooks
When a recurring charge clears (whether via autopay or by the customer paying a link), the resulting payment syncs to QBO like any other invoice payment. See How payments sync to QuickBooks Online.
Reporting
- Memberships report — active members, MRR (based on contractually-owed amount, regardless of how it gets collected), churn.
- Payments report — every collected payment, with source if you've tagged the invoices.