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Cancellation & offboarding ​

Cancellation in GCM is soft — you turn off auto-renew, keep using the platform until the date you've already paid for, and then your status flips to expired. We don't delete your data when you cancel. You can come back weeks, months, or years later and pick up where you left off.

Subscription controls

How cancellation works ​

The cancel button is in two places on the billing page:

  • The Current plan card's button row (compact).
  • The red Subscription Controls card at the bottom (full-width with explanation).

Both buttons do the same thing — open a confirmation dialog asking Cancel auto-renew? Turn off auto-renew and let this subscription run until the current billing period ends. You will not be charged again.

When you confirm:

  1. cancel_at_period_end is set to true on your org.
  2. cancel_requested_at records the timestamp.
  3. The current-plan card shows a yellow Auto-renew is off notice.
  4. The date block changes to Access expires on [next renewal date].
  5. You stay on active status (or trialing if you were on a trial) until that date.

You can keep using everything — members, attendance, reports, giving, messaging, the website builder. Nothing locks down.

TIP

This pattern means a church that cancels mid-cycle doesn't lose the days they've already paid for. If you cancel on day 5 of a 30-day cycle, you have 25 more days of full access. Then at the renewal date, the cron job sees cancel_at_period_end = true and flips you to expired instead of charging the card.

Resuming auto-renew ​

Changed your mind during the wind-down period? Easy.

  1. Go to Billing.
  2. In the Current plan card or the Subscription Controls card, click Resume auto-renew.
  3. cancel_at_period_end is set back to false.
  4. The yellow notice disappears.
  5. The next renewal date is unchanged — same date, you're just back on the auto-renew schedule.

No payment runs at resume time. The next charge happens normally at the previously-scheduled renewal date.

After the cancellation date ​

On the renewal date, the cron job sees cancel_at_period_end = true and:

  1. Sets subscription status to expired.
  2. Sets cancel_at_period_end back to false (the flag has done its job).
  3. Sends a Subscription ended email.
  4. Does not delete any data.

From that point on:

  • You can still log in. Your members, history, and settings are all there.
  • Read-only views work. Reports show your historical data.
  • Write paths (creating members, recording donations, sending messages) show a "subscription expired" tooltip and block until you re-subscribe.
  • The website builder keeps your public site online — we don't take down a published site just because your subscription lapsed. There's a 90-day grace period after which the public site goes into archive mode.

WARNING

After 12 months expired, we send a data retention notice giving you 30 days to either re-subscribe or export your data. If you do neither, your org is soft-deleted (not hard-deleted) and goes into a 30-day recovery window. After that 30 days, hard deletion happens. This is the only path that loses data, and it requires 12+ months of silence to trigger.

Re-subscribing after expiration ​

Coming back at any point in the 12-month grace window is straightforward.

  1. Log in at app.geniuschurchmanager.com.
  2. You'll land on the dashboard but with an Expired subscription banner.
  3. Click Reactivate in the banner, or go to Billing directly.
  4. Pick a plan tile and click Subscribe.
  5. Enter a card (or use the previously saved one if the token is still valid).
  6. After payment, status flips back to active, billing cycle starts from today, all features unlock immediately.

The plan you re-subscribe to doesn't have to be the same one you had before — feel free to right-size based on your current member count.

Cancellation with a reason ​

If you cancel through the platform admin console (rare — usually done by support on your behalf), there's a reason field that gets stored as cancel_reason. This shows on the yellow notice as "Reason: [your text]" and is logged in platform_audit_log.

If you have feedback about why you're leaving, drop us a note in the cancel dialog or email support — we read every one of them and it directly shapes the roadmap.

What gets billed during cancellation ​

Zero. Once the cancel-at-period-end flag is set, the cron job will not charge your card again on this subscription. If you re-subscribe, you start a new billing cycle and a fresh charge runs.

No partial refund happens at cancellation either. You're paid up through the renewal date; the subscription just stops at that date instead of renewing.

Force-cancel (immediate cancellation) ​

There's no self-service immediate-cancel button — by design, we want you to keep the days you paid for. If you absolutely need to cut the subscription immediately for some compliance reason (e.g. a board mandate), contact support. We can do it manually with audit trail.

After hard deletion ​

If you've gone past the 12-month grace + 30-day notice + 30-day soft-delete window without re-subscribing, your data is hard-deleted from production. There's no recovery from this point. We log the deletion in platform_deletion_log for compliance but the actual rows are gone.

This is rare — we have many orgs that have been expired for years and we've never deleted their data because they keep responding to retention notices. The hard-delete path only triggers when an org goes completely dark.

Common questions ​

Can I cancel during the trial? The trial expires automatically if you don't pick a plan — no cancellation needed. If you want to wind down the trial early, just don't enter a card.

Will I lose my custom domain if I cancel? The DNS records you configured stay on your DNS provider, but our verification of them lapses 30 days after expiration. Re-subscribing re-verifies automatically. If you delete the DNS records yourself, that's on you.

What about my saved card? After expiration the token is retained for 90 days to make re-subscription friction-free. After 90 days, the token is purged from donor_cards — you'll re-enter card details on next subscribe.

Can I export my data before canceling? Yes — every module supports CSV/JSON export from its respective page. Members, attendance, giving, custom fields — they all have export buttons. There's no single "download everything" button, but if you need one, support can produce a full org dump on request.

Next steps ​