Managing Your Subscription

Everything about your membership payment — when it renews, which card it comes off, and how to stop it — is in one place: your account page.

This guide shows you where to look and what each thing means.

It takes about four minutes to read, and you probably only need it twice a year.

Sign in and go to My Account.

The dark band at the top tells you the important part at a glance: whether your membership is Active, and the date it next renews (or, if it won’t renew by itself, the date it’s paid up to).

If that’s all you wanted to know, you’re done — no need to go further.

For anything more, look at the Membership card on the right-hand side of the page.

It names your membership and shows its status, your member number and your billing details, with a Manage billing link underneath.

These two rows sit together and they are not the same:

• Renews (or Paid up to) — the date your current membership runs to.
• Auto-renewal — whether you’ll be charged again on that date.

Auto-renewal On means you don’t need to do anything; you’ll be charged and your membership continues.

Auto-renewal Off means your membership simply ends on that date. Nothing will be taken from your card.

Not every member pays by card through the website, and that’s completely normal.

If you joined before we moved to online billing, or you paid another way, you may see no auto-renewal row and no Manage billing link — just the date you’re paid up to, or nothing at all.

That doesn’t mean something is broken or that your membership is at risk. It means there’s no card on file for us to manage, and renewal is handled directly.

If you’re not sure which applies to you, email info@yarravalleywaterwheel.org and we’ll tell you where your membership stands. It’s a quick answer.

Click Manage billing and you’ll be taken to a secure page run by Stripe, our payment provider.

It shows your current membership and price, your next billing date, the card you’re paying with, and every invoice you’ve been sent.

We never see or store your card number — Stripe holds it, which is why this part happens on their page rather than ours.

Invoice history at the bottom lists every payment you’ve made, with the date and amount.

You can open any of them for a proper receipt — useful at tax time, or if your accountant asks what the Waterwheel charge on your statement was.

Add payment method lets you put a new card on file, and tick it as your default so future payments come off it.

Worth doing before your renewal date if your card is about to expire — the portal shows the expiry date of the card you have saved, so you can check at the same time.

If a payment fails, we’ll email you rather than quietly cancelling your membership.

Cancel subscription turns off auto-renewal. You’ll be asked to confirm, and optionally to say why you’re leaving — the reason is optional, and Go back leaves everything as it was.

The page behind the dialog says something people often miss:

Your membership stays active until the end of the period you’ve already paid for. Cancelling doesn’t cut you off today, and it doesn’t refund the current period.

So if you cancel the day after renewing, you keep a full year of membership — you just won’t be charged again at the end of it.

You can also do this from your account page: End my membership at renewal, in the Your membership section. It does the same thing.

Back on your account page, the auto-renewal row changes to Off, and tells you the date your membership ends.

That’s the confirmation worth checking. If it still says On, the cancellation didn’t go through — go back and try again rather than assuming.

Changing your mind is easy. Any time before that end date, click Turn renewal back on in the Your membership section, or restart the subscription in the billing portal.

Your account page updates when Stripe tells our site what changed, which is usually instant but occasionally takes a minute.

If you’ve just made a change and the page still shows the old state, wait a moment and reload before doing anything else. Cancelling twice, or adding a second card because the first didn’t seem to appear, makes things harder to untangle.

If it still looks wrong after a few minutes, email us rather than trying again.

Can I change my email address? Not from your account page — email info@yarravalleywaterwheel.org and we’ll update it. Your membership and billing are tied to it, so we change it carefully rather than letting it drift.

Can I switch to a different membership? Yes, from your account page, and please don’t cancel first. In the Your membership section, Change moves you to another paid membership on the same subscription, and Add another membership adds one. The page tells you what it costs before you confirm: a dearer one is charged part-way now, a cheaper one applies from your next renewal. Monthly versus yearly we’d rather talk through with you, so email us for that.

I’ve been charged and I didn’t expect it. Check the invoice history in the billing portal first — it shows exactly what was charged and when. If it still looks wrong, tell us and we’ll sort it out.

Something’s wrong and this guide doesn’t cover it. Reply to any email from us, or use the contact form. A volunteer reads them.