Deskie gives you two separate ways to take a member's access away: pausing and disabling. They solve different problems and behave very differently. This article explains what each one does, what a paused member actually experiences, and how Deskie can pause members automatically when they fall behind on payment.
Pause vs. disable: the key difference
The two actions are independent of each other. A member can be paused, disabled, both, or neither.
- Pause is a temporary, reversible hold. The member can still log in, but they land on a dedicated paused screen instead of the app, and Deskie revokes their physical access during the pause and restores it when you lift it. Pause is designed for situations like an unpaid balance or an extended leave, where you expect the member to come back.
- Disable removes the member's access entirely. A disabled member can no longer sign in, make bookings, or use any member-only resources. Their bookings and activity history stay in the system, so disabling is not the same as deleting. Disable is the right choice when someone has left the space for good.
Both actions are found on the member's profile. Pausing offers a dialog with extra options (a reason, a message, and a billing toggle), while disabling shows a confirmation dialog.
What pausing does to access
When you pause a member, Deskie does several things in one step:
- Locks them to the paused screen. The member can still log in, but they are redirected away from the normal app to a paused-account page (covered below).
- Revokes their door and network access. Deskie removes the member from their access groups across any connected access systems, including Kisi, Unifi, and Deskie Access. Before it removes anything, it records a snapshot of exactly what the member had, so it can restore precisely the same access when you unpause. This means a paused member's keycard or door unlocks stop working right away.
- Blocks member actions server-side. Even if a paused member tried to reach a booking, pass, event, or door-unlock action directly, Deskie refuses it. Pause is enforced both at the page level (the member never sees those pages) and inside the underlying actions, so there is no way around it.
- Emails the member. Deskie automatically sends a paused-account email so the member's first sign that something changed is not a keycard that quietly stops working.
While paused, the member is still allowed to reach a short, deliberate set of pages: the paused screen itself, their invoices (so they can pay), and the login and logout flows. Everything else redirects back to the paused screen.
Unpausing
Lifting a pause is a single action from the member's profile. When you unpause:
- Deskie restores the member's door and network access from the snapshot it captured when you paused them, adding them back to exactly the access groups they had before. For Unifi, if the member was already in a deactivated state before the pause, Deskie leaves them deactivated rather than reactivating them.
- The member regains normal access immediately and is no longer held on the paused screen.
- Deskie sends an account-restored email letting the member know their access is back.
If you turned on the billing toggle during the pause (see below), unpausing does not automatically turn it back off. Re-enabling automatic billing is a separate, explicit step from the member's Billing settings, so nobody gets re-charged by accident.
The paused screen
When a paused member visits the workspace, they are taken to a full-page paused screen instead of the app. It is styled like the login page: your workspace background photo with a darkened overlay and your logo in the corner. The screen shows:
- A clear heading, "Your access is paused." shown with a warning icon.
- The message you wrote when you paused them (or a generic fallback if you left it blank, described below).
- A list of their outstanding invoices, when they have any. Each unpaid invoice (anything that is sent or overdue) is listed with its number, amount, and a status badge of either "Due" or "Overdue," along with a View & Pay button. A total-due figure is shown at the bottom of the list.
- A footer showing which workspace they are signed in to, plus a log-out link.
Because invoices are always reachable while paused, a member who was paused for non-payment can settle their balance directly from this screen.
Setting a reason and a message
The pause dialog has two text fields, and they are not the same thing:
- Reason is internal and admin-facing only. Use it as a short label like "Non-payment" or "Extended leave." It is for your team's reference and is not shown to the member.
- Message to the member is customer-facing. Whatever you type here appears on the member's paused screen. If you leave it blank, Deskie shows a generic message: "Your access has been temporarily paused. Please contact us if you have any questions." Either way, outstanding invoices are always listed underneath, so you do not need to mention them in the message yourself.
Both the reason and the message are saved to the pause audit record each time you pause, so the details are kept even though these fields are cleared from the live profile when you unpause. The member's activity timeline shows the reason next to each pause event. Every pause and unpause action, manual or automatic, appears on that timeline, and automatic pauses are labelled as performed by Deskie rather than by an admin.
Pausing and billing
Pausing a member does not stop their billing by default. This is intentional: most pauses are for non-payment, where you want to keep charging the member until they come current.
If you do want to stop billing while a member is paused, the pause dialog includes an "Also stop automatic billing" toggle. Turning it on sets the member's "exempt from automatic and batch billing" flag at the same time as the pause, so they are excluded from automatic charges and batch invoicing. Leave it off for non-payment pauses, where you still want them charged when they return. For more on automatic charging, see billing cycles and auto-charge.
Auto-pause on an unpaid balance
Deskie can pause members for you when they fall far enough behind on payment. This is controlled by a single setting, auto-pause after N days unpaid, in your workspace billing settings. It is off by default; setting it to 0 days turns the feature off entirely, and you can set it to as many as 180 days.
When the setting is on, Deskie's daily billing run checks each workspace and pauses any member whose oldest unpaid invoice is overdue by at least that many days. The sweep is careful about who it touches:
- It only counts invoices that are sent or overdue, so paid, voided, and draft invoices never trigger a pause.
- It skips team-billed invoices, because those are paid by the team rather than the individual member.
- It skips already-disabled members, since they have no access to remove.
- It skips members who are exempt from automatic billing, on the principle that if you opted them out of auto-billing you are managing them by hand.
- It skips members who are already paused, so a member is never paused twice or have their access snapshot overwritten.
An auto-pause runs through exactly the same machinery as the manual button: it revokes door and network access, snapshots the prior state, and emails the member. The member's paused screen shows a past-due message asking them to settle the invoices listed below it, and the action is recorded in their activity history as an automatic pause rather than an admin action. Auto-pause never sets the stop-billing flag, because the goal is to keep billing the member until they pay. There is no automatic unpause: once a member pays and you are ready, you lift the pause yourself.
Choosing between pause and disable
- Use pause when the situation is temporary and you expect the member back: an unpaid balance you want resolved, a leave of absence, or any hold where you want to keep their account and billing intact and restore their exact access later.
- Use disable when the member is gone for good and should no longer be able to sign in at all, while keeping their history on record.
For the day-to-day picture of how a member moves through your space over time, see the member lifecycle and managing members.