Cycles Overview

Fulfillment cycles let you batch member orders together so you can process them as a group. Instead of handling each member's order one at a time, you create a cycle, assign members to it, and move everyone through fulfillment together. For details on individual order statuses and inventory holds, see:

• Order Lifecycle - Every order status, what it means, and how orders transition between them
• Inventory Holds and Blocking Issues - How inventory is held during fulfillment and what blocks an order from moving forward

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What Is a Fulfillment Cycle?

A fulfillment cycle is a batch of member orders that are processed together. Cycles are used by subscription clubs that use Cycle-Based fulfillment mode. When you create a cycle, every eligible member gets a order (their individual order) within that cycle, and you move the entire group through preparation, packing, and delivery as one coordinated effort.

Cycles can be location-specific (applying only to members at one location) or group-wide (covering all members across your business).

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Club Schedule (Zero-Date Model)

Club setup no longer asks for cutoffs, offset days, or defer flags. You configure a few concrete facts; everything else happens at cycle time.

Program settings

Billing is fully decoupled from fulfillment: each plan (tier) sets when members are charged (its billing day and, for quarterly/annual plans, the first billing month). The club settings below only control the fulfillment schedule.

Setting	What it means
Fulfillment frequency	How often orders go out: weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, quarterly, etc. Weekly and every-2-weeks programs run on a shared Monday-to-Sunday week (see Weekly and Every-2-Weeks Programs)
First cycle month	For quarterly+ clubs, which month the shared rotation starts in
Shared vs individual	Everyone on the same calendar, or each member on their own join schedule
Anchor day	Day of month the shared cycle starts (default the 1st; supports last day of month). Not billing - billing lives on the plan
Manual or autopilot	Manual: you click Start Fulfillment (or open the cycle from the Orders page Needs-action panel) when ready. Autopilot: fulfillment starts N days after the cycle's start day; on a weekly or every-2-weeks program you pick the weekday instead (Wednesday at the earliest)
Late joiners	If someone joins after fulfillment has started, include them in the current shipment or roll them to the next one

Individual (per-member) clubs use the same autopilot and late joiner settings; only the shared anchor day and first cycle month do not apply, since each member's cycle is anchored to their own join date.

What happens when fulfillment starts

Whether you click Start Fulfillment or autopilot fires:

1. Selections close for the cycle
2. If autopilot is configured to, orders are generated from each plan's default template
3. If autopilot is configured to, "your shipment is being prepared" emails go out
4. Late-join policy applies from that moment forward

Mid-cycle joiners

• Before fulfillment starts - included in the current cycle and charged at join
• After fulfillment starts, late joiners off - assigned to the next cycle; the first charge follows the plan's billing schedule
• After fulfillment starts, late joiners on - stay in the current cycle, charged at join, order auto-generated (flagged as added after start)

You can always pull a specific member into the current shipment case-by-case.

First charge for new members

Programs on one shared schedule that ship or hand over physical goods have one more setting: When should a new member's first charge happen? You find it in the program wizard's schedule step and on the program's Settings page.

Option	What happens
When they sign up (default)	Members pay for their first period at signup, even if their first cycle is weeks away. This is how every program worked before the setting existed.
When their first cycle bills	Someone who joins too late for the current billing period pays no plan price today. They are charged with everyone else when the billing period that holds their first cycle starts. Signup fees, and any items bought at signup, are still charged at signup.

Things to know:

• It only changes anything for members whose first cycle falls in a billing period that hasn't started yet. A member who joins inside the running billing period owes for it today either way.
• If that billing period starts within about two days, the first period is charged at signup anyway (Stripe needs at least 48 hours of notice to schedule a later charge).
• A member's first order ships only after their first period has been invoiced.
• The setting applies to members who join from now on, so you can change it while a program has members. It isn't offered for release programs, membership-only programs, or programs where each member runs on their own dates.
• A promo code on a first period that is billed later discounts that later charge, not today's.

Wherever a first charge is coming, MemberZone says so and when: the checkout total and join success page, the card link page, the Add Member sidebar's billing options, the member's membership details ("(first charge)" next to the date), and the switch, restart and pause sidebars. When you add a member by hand, Defer first charge to next cycle bills them this way for that one member, and Defer fulfillment to next cycle charges them today, whatever the program's setting.

Per-cycle dates

Each cycle can have:

• Target fulfillment date - optional planning/communication date (prefills from the previous cycle or autopilot day)
• Selection deadline - when customer-choice picks close for this cycle
• Fulfillment started - stamped when you start (or autopilot starts)

Member-facing copy shows the real target date when set, otherwise "with the {March} shipment."

Natural frequency defaults

Frequency	Natural cycle months
Weekly	Every week, Monday to Sunday
Every 2 Weeks	Every other week, Monday to Sunday, on one rotation
Monthly	Every calendar month
Every Other Month	Alternating months (Jan, Mar, May, …)
Quarterly	Jan, Apr, Jul, Oct (or your first shipment month)
Semi-Annually	Jan and Jul (or your first shipment month)
Annually	Your first shipment month

The anchor day controls the day-of-month those periods start.

Cycles follow your business's time zone

A cycle runs from midnight to midnight in your business's time zone, so a cycle starting on the 1st starts at 12:00 AM on the 1st where you are. Autopilot's "N days after the cycle starts", the late-join cutoff, and the cycle dates in emails, dashboards and exports all count your local days. Billing dates are your business's dates too.

Cycle periods, runs, a member's cycles and their current cycle show the period's first and last day as your business lived them, for example "Oct 1 - Oct 31, 2026" (weekly and every-2-weeks cycles are named by the Monday they start, for example "Week of Oct 5, 2026"), rather than a midnight that could read as the day before somewhere else. A selection deadline shows its time and zone, for example "Oct 15, 11:59 PM PT" in the selection email.

If you change your business's time zone, cycles that haven't started yet move to the new zone; cycles already under way keep their dates. Cycles from before time zones were added stay as they were. See Time Zones.

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How to Access Fulfillment

1. Click Orders in the left sidebar navigation.
2. Filter by Club (and tier or period) to focus on the club you want to manage.
3. If a past or current period has no cycle open yet, the Needs-action panel at the top lets you open it - Open creates the cycle, Open + create orders also generates the orders. Autopilot clubs open and start cycles automatically.
4. Select the resulting orders to process them, or click a row to open its fulfillment sidebar.

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Cycle Statuses

Cycles move through a simple lifecycle as you process the batch. Open cycles accept new eligible members (subject to late-join rules once fulfillment has started). Fulfillment then moves a cycle from OPEN to FULFILLING, and once every order is terminal it closes automatically (CLOSED).

See the fulfillment UI guide for the day-to-day processing walkthrough.