Adding an Association

Modules>Membership>Associations>Add Association

To begin managing your Association, create an Association profile including the Membership rules. The initial rules you define for each Member Type in your Association Profile are only guidelines. When you create your Association, the initial values you specify for your Member Type become the default values for each Member Type other users create for this Association. Any user can easily change the default values as needed.

Note that fields in bold in NetForum are required fields. Complete all required fields in order to save your Association.

To add a new Association to NetForum, follow these steps:

  1. Select the Membership module.
  2. On the Group Item menu, select Add Association from the drop-down menu. The Association Setup page displays.

Association Setup and Membership Dates Information

The first section of Association Setup deals with naming your association in the Association Set-Up Information section. Both fields in this section are required fields.

Set up the Association, as follows:

  1. Association Code: Your association code is normally the acronym for your association. This field is required.
  2. Association:This field will contain the full name of your association. This field is required.

Membership Dates Information Section - This section of Association Setup enables you to dictate how a member's join date is handled and what invoice types your association will create for handling membership dues.

  1. Update Dates: When a member joins or updates his/her membership to your association, you need to decide how the membership dates are updated within NetForum. You do this through the value you assign in the update dates dropdown field. Depending upon what value you enter here, the member's join, effective, and expiration membership dates are affected accordingly as described below:
    • First Payment: The member dates are updated when the member makes a payment toward the invoice created for member dues.
    • Percent Paid: The member dates are updated when the member pays the percentage that you specify in the percent paid field toward the invoice created for member dues.
    • Invoice Created: The member dates are updated when the invoice created for member dues is processed (even if not paid).
    • Invoice Batch Closed: The member dates are not updated until the invoice created for member dues is placed into a batch and the batch is closed and posted.
  2. Percent Paid: This field is used in addition with the update dates dropdown when you use percent paid as a value. Use percent paid field to dictate what percent must be paid by the member before the membership dates are updated.
  3. Invoice Type: The invoice type dropdown field is also required and specifies what type of invoices you want your association to generate when dealing with memberships. Specifically:
    • Prepaid: Selecting prepaid means that payment is received with the invoice (immediately).
    • Terms: Selecting terms for your invoice type means that payment must be made within a specified time period such as 30 or 60 days from the date the invoice.
    • Proforma: Selecting proforma means that the invoice will be provided in advance without guarantee of payment. This also means that Accounts Receivables will not be updated immediately since a proforma invoice can only turn into a "hard" invoice and be counted as revenue only after a payment is made. Proforma is generally the default invoice for renewals.
  4. Grace Period: This field enables you to specify a period of time that you would like to give members to pay their dues beyond their expiration date while keeping their membership status set to active. The grace period is the time period after a membership expires and before a payment is made. During this time the member continues to receive benefits. When the grace period is up, if the member has not renewed, the membership will be cancelled after the membership drop membership process has been run.
  5. Set Customer Member Flag Checkbox:Select this checkbox if you would like to set the Member Flag to yes once the update dates terms have been met. This means that the member flag will then be set to yes once met and that the member will receive all member benefits defined in the dues package as a result.

Membership Dues Set-Up

The next section in Association Setup enables you to specify how a member will pay dues. The two options available are based on a member's anniversary date or by calendar year. As mentioned previously, the values entered in this section are only default values for your Association and are added so that they can be referenced 'at a glance'. Once your Association is in place, you will define the concrete Memberships and Member Types that belong to your Association that will vary from type to type and, as such, will take precedence over the information entered here.

Note: For the purposes of revenue recognition, the start date for prorated subscriptions occurs on the first day of the subscription term, not the date of the invoice.

Setting Up Anniversary-Based Dues

Anniversary-based dues begin the month a person joins and end the same month a year later (or if it is a two-year membership, the same month, two years later). Anniversary dues cannot be prorated.

To set up anniversary-based dues:

  1. Clear the calendar year checkbox (if selected).
  2. Sell next month after day: This field is used to designate the cut-off day per month when membership sales should be rolled to the next month. For example, you may decide that after the 15th of every month, all membership sales should be effective on the 1st day of the following month. For this scenario to occur, a 15 is placed in this field. This means that your association would sell next month [memberships] after day 15 of the current month.
  3. Set dates based on payment date checkbox: Select this checkbox if you would like for the new membership term to be based on the date the member paid (instead of when they are invoiced)
  4. Click Save.

Setting Up Calendar-Based Dues

Calendar-based dues are memberships that run for 12 months (e.g., January through December). Calendar-based dues may be prorated.

To set up calendar-based dues:

  1. Select the calendar checkbox.
  2. Start month: Enter a numerical value for the month you want your dues to start. For example, enter 01 for January.
  3. Sell for next year after month: This field is used to designate the cut-off month per year when membership sales should be rolled to the next year. For example, you may decide that after the 10th month of every year (October), all membership sales will be sold for the next year. For this scenario to occur, a 10 is placed in this field. This means that your association would sell next year [memberships] after month 10.
  4. Sell for next year after day: Once you have designated what month your next year's memberships will begin, you can then specify what day to begin as well. Using the example above, entering a 31 (if you want to make sure the entire month of October is completed) will begin the next year's sales exactly on November 1st.
  5. Click Save.

Setting Up a Start Date for Calendar and Anniversary-Based Dues

To set up a start date for either dues type:

  1. Start day: This field selects the day and month to start a new cycle depending upon if you use calendar or anniversary based dues. So, for example, if a 1 is placed here, new membership dates will be the 1st of every month for anniversary-based dues. For calendar-based dues, specify both the day and month numerically for a new cycle by placing a 11, for example, if you want the cycle to begin on January 1st.
  2. Click Save.