We only have a free account but see that to make an account active, in addition to approving them we also have to complete the subscription? How can we bypass that need to manually complete the subscription so that the new registrant gets the 'welcome' email immediately after we approve them? We don't want to require any type of payment, not even the $0 payment that's listed on their accounts after we complete them.
You should use amember CP -> Setup -> Advanced -> Manually Approve New Members instead of amember CP -> Setup -> Free -> Require admin approval for new payments