Updating Member Dues
TRANSCRIPT
If we accept new member registrations or dues payments at the local level, we’ll occasionally need to update those dues rates. Today’s video will show you how. The dues rates are under Membership, in the Dues Manager. In our list of dues, we have the dues title, the amount, the paid-through date, whether it uses a specific date or a number of months, and what kinds of members the dues rate applies to. Finally, the rate may be published or unpublished.
The Applies To option connects with a group set up under Group Manager. Typically this is the membership type. At the top, we’ll add a new dues rate. If our dues run by calendar or fiscal year, we should include that year in the name of the rate. Our rate should be published, and we should have some detailed information in the description. If our organization has associates and affiliates, for example, or if we have a very clear policy on what makes you a student or not, we’ll want to have that information in the description box.
Our regular members are those who don’t fit within another category, those that aren’t students or retired or affiliates. Your description, of course, will vary. On the next screen, we’ll enter in the amount and choose who the dues rate applies to. This is for our regular members, so that’s what I’ve selected. We can also choose to tie this to any other subgroup that’s been set up under Group Manager within our member types. The paid-through date in this case would probably be a fixed end date. Generally speaking, though, it’s better to offer a fixed end date with proration. Our dues would normally run January 1st to December 31st. The proration can be calculated either daily or monthly, and we always want the proration to start based on the member’s expiration date. For new members, whether we choose expiration or purchase makes no difference: the proration begins on the day that they fill out the application and apply to become a member. But for current members who are renewing, prorating based on their expiration date ensures that they’re paying for any time that was spent within the grace period. If a member expires in January, for example, and they don’t renew for another sixty days, they shouldn’t receive a two-month discount off their renewal fee. This option is what ensures that they pay for that time.
If we have an early discount or a late fee, we’ll enter the amounts and associated dates here. The other option is for anniversary renewal. With fixed monthly rates, we’ll enter in the number of months. Someone who purchases this rate gets twelve more months added to their membership. In that case, we’ll have a different rate name. Having the year in the rate name when we’ll be using it year after year doesn’t make sense.
A slightly different option is to offer a fixed monthly rate with a forced start date. With the regular fixed monthly rate, if I apply on the 16th, my renewal date will be the 16th in 12 months. With the forced start date, we ensure that the member is due for renewal on the first of a month, moving either backwards if they are before the selected break day, or forwards if they purchase after that break day. The number of months would be entered in just as it was before.
I’m sticking with my prorated dues, and on the next step I get a recap of what we’ve done, along with a toggle to publish or unpublish this rate. In a real scenario, we’d want to set up a dues rate for every dollar amount that we offer. Then we’d also need to update our member application form. That’s under Content > Page Manager > Form Builder.
We may have a lot of forms, so we can either search for it, or use the type filter here to find just the member applications. When editing our member application, we have options for what dues rates to include. When editing that, we can choose from the appropriate rates, checking the boxes for the one we want, and hiding the rest. It’s possible to have several different member applications. Students, for example, may be required to enter more information about their institution, and for those we would offer only the student rates. On the other forms, we’d have the boxes checked except for the student rates.
Now that the updates have been made to our member application form, there’s one more spot where we may want to make edits. Under Membership, in the Settings, we have some options for this dues. This option, to allow renewing members to choose any dues rate, changes the behavior of what’s shown to renewing members. If the box is checked, a member who’s renewing will see all of the available member dues rates, even those that are associated with a different membership type. After they purchase the rate, they will automatically go into the associated membership type. This may not make sense for all setups. If I’m a student and I’m renewing my membership and I just graduated, I might choose the professional rate and automatically move into the professional group. That’s perfectly valid. But if I’m already a professional, and I plan to be sneaky by calling myself a student, this may not be so desirable. So it’s up to your organization to determine whether you want members to freely change their type.
The paid-through date option should always be set to update when the dues order is paid. This is the default. This means that someone who renews but decides to skip the payment option and pay later by check isn’t really counted as renewed until they actually pay. The other option allows the dues rates to be shown under the tickets during the registration process. While this can come in handy, it generally doesn’t; expired members usually shouldn’t be allowed to register for meetings. Under the member expiry settings, we recommend adding a grace period, during which expired members can log in but only access the dues payment screen.
And that’s it for updating the dues. For more membership resources, please check out the StarChapter blog.
