Troubleshooting

Student locked out after a deadline

A student says the course will not open, and Alva Courses tells them "Your access to this course has ended." That message has one cause: the deadline on their enrolment has passed and your store enforces deadlines. Work down these five checks.

1. Is deadline enforcement switched on for your store?

Enforcement is turned on one store at a time, and is off until Alva Courses turns it on for yours — email courses@alvaapps.com to check. The Expired badge is a label, not a lock: while enforcement is off, a student whose row reads Expired can still open everything.

2. Check the deadline, and where it came from

Open Members, find the student, and look at their course table. The Access deadline column shows a date or Unlimited, and the column beside it reads Active or Expired. The date lands on the row when they enrol, from one of four places:

• The course's Access Limits setting, on an ordinary purchase.
• The billing period of the subscription variant, which overrides that access limit.
• A date you set by hand.
• Nothing — free courses and membership-tag access never get a deadline, and read Unlimited.

3. Does your store's grace period still cover them?

Enforcement comes with a grace period that extends every deadline in the store by a fixed number of days. The countdown students see, the Expired badge and the moment access stops all include it already, so a student a day or two past their date may still be inside the window.

4. Is this a subscriber whose renewal should have extended access?

When a renewal arrives as a Shopify subscription order, Alva Courses pushes the deadline forward by the plan's period, counted from the later of today and the current deadline — so even a long-lapsed subscriber heals on their first renewal. Two cases never heal: a store billing through a third-party subscription app, and a plan whose period cannot be read as weekly, monthly or annual. Set those by hand.

5. Give one student more time

1. In Alva Courses, open Members and search for the student, then open their record.
2. Find the course in their course table and click Edit in the Access deadline column.
3. Choose Limited and pick a later date, or choose Unlimited to remove the deadline entirely.
4. Click Save, then check the Active badge on that row and ask the student to reload.

What an expired student can still reach

The block is scoped, not total. Expiry stops new coursework — lessons, video, quizzes, comments and saved progress — but never takes away work already done. They keep their quiz results, their reflection entries and your feedback, and can still download the certificate for a course they finished. It stays in their list, marked expired rather than hidden.

What students see

On the course: "Your access to this course has ended.", the date it ended, and "Contact the store if you would like to renew your access." In the course list and on their My Learning page, the row is greyed and labelled Subscription Expired.

See also

Set a course deadline, change a student's deadline, or check the tag path in membership tag not granting course access.

Last updated 2026-09-07