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Associations

In NetForum, when you add an Association Profile, you are determining the rules for the membership activation date, expiration date, renewal date, payment grace period, and invoice type. You can choose how you want memberships to be activated such as when a customer makes a first payment or when the invoice is created. You can set-up a grace period that will give the customer additional time to make a payment after the membership expiration date. You can even select the type of dues invoice you want created for your association from prepaid to proforma. In NetForum, your Association is completely under your control.

The five standard Group Item Links (Add, Find, List, Run Query, Query Central), are available in the Associations group item. Additionally, you can choose to Copy Package.

Adding an 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 to be referenced at a glance. When you create your Association, the initial values specified for your Member Type are the default values that will be in place for each Member Type created for this Association and are able to be manipulated and changed as needed.

Note that fields in bold in netFORUM are required fields. You will not be able to save your Association until these fields are complete.

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

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

Association and Membership Dates Set-Up

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.

Association Code: Your association code is normally the acronym for your association. This field is required.
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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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:

Clear the calendar year checkbox (if selected).
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.
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)
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:

Select the calendar checkbox.
Start month: Enter a numerical value for the month you want your dues to start. For example, enter 01 for January.
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.
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.
Click Save.

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

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.
Click Save.

Finding an Association

Finding an Association that has been entered into the NetForum database is easily accomplished. The Find function is universal throughout NetForum and detailed on the Find topic.

Finding Associations within the Membership module follows the same format and function. You may search by the following:

Association Code
Association Name

The Advanced View checkbox allows you to conduct boolean searches to broaden and narrow your search as needed. If you are uncertain with what you are looking for, use the NetForum wildcard character, the percent sign (%) to help you with your search.

Searching for Association Members

You are able to search on all the members of your Association by clicking on the Search Members icon in the Association Profile action bar.

This will bring up the Membership Search page pictured below.

Entering specific criteria on the Membership Search field yields better results. Specifically:

Name: Enter the name of the person you want to look up. Name must be entered last name first name for an accurate result.
Association Code: This is the only required field. You must enter the Association Code for the Association you are conducting a member search on.
Membership Type/Status: This box will already be populated depending upon the Association you choose. It lists all Member Types defined for the Association you selected and enables you to search on each one. For example, you may choose to search on all Active Calendar members within your Association or all Inactive Anniversary members or both. If you want to view all members of an Association, choose All. You may also select more than one value from this list by holding down the <CTRL> key and left-clicking on your selections.
Join/Expire Dates: You may enter relevant dates in these fields to search on membership with specific join or expiration dates.

Dues Renewal Process

The Dues Renewal Process icon, located on the Association Profile on the Actions Bar, enables you to create renewal invoices for a group of members whose memberships have expired or are about to expire to encourage them to pay their dues.

You can also schedule the Dues Renewal Process to run at a specific time and date if you have the correct system options enabled (See System Options for the Dues Renewal Process below). The Dues Renewal Process is run from the Association Profile or from the Membership module Overview. It is detailed step-by-step on the Dues Renewal Process topic.

Membership Drop Process

netFORUM has a membership drop process that can be run by Member Type based on the expiration/grace period date as set up for that member type. Any member whose expiration is within the grace period and the "as of date" chosen by the user will automatically be excluded from termination when running the baseline membership drop process.

The membership drop process can be accessed from the Association Profile via the membership drop process icon on the Actions Bar.

Or, the membership drop process can also be accessed from the Overview and Setup link from the Membership Group Items bar.

Both links will take you to the drop membership process which is described in detail on the Drop Membership topic.

Status Change Process

The Mass Membership Status Change Process is used to change the Member Status of members that have not paid for their renewals. The process provides filter criteria so that a subset of memberships could be updated at one time. The process also provides a report that can be reviewed before running the final update to change the status.

Typically, this process is run after the memberships expire, but before mass termination is run. This allows association to stop the benefits for non-paying members, but not necessarily terminate them. If your Association does not utilize the Member Status functionality, this process will not be necessary.

To access the Mass Membership Status Change Process, click the status change process icon on the Association Profile Actions Bar.

The change Membership Status window will appear.

Select which Member Type you want to change and what membership status you want to change. For example, in the screenshot above Sr. Members with current Active Memberships are being checked past expiration dates for current memberships.

The compare date will compare the date you enter with the expiration date of the memberships plus any grace periods you have specified for the member types. If the membership falls outside of that period and is still active (in this example), the records will be pulled. To check the criteria specified above, click the select records button. If any records meet the criteria you define, you will get a message stating how many records meet that criteria. To view those records, click the status change report icon.

A report detailing the member names and expiration dates of each membership will appear so you can decide if you want to make the mass membership status change. Note in the example below that both an organization and two individual records meet the criteria specified.

In this example, it is really not necessary to make a mass status change since all membership records are up to date and have not (yet) expired. The mass status change process is ideally used to change those membership records that have already expired from active to inactive, and have also extended beyond any grace periods defined. However, should you want to make mass changes to the membership records, do so in the status update section of the form, detailed below:

Select which new status you want your records to have by selecting it in the new membership status drop-down. For example, in most cases you will likely change your membership status from Active to Inactive.

The member flag action drop-down is important. It specifies whether or not you want to remove membership benefits from the account or not. The default for the drop-down is to take no action which means that nothing will occur to the account; the member will continue to receive benefits. You may select Clear to turn off membership benefits or, if you are making a mass change to members who have recently paid their benefits, you may select Set to turn them back on.

Finally, the date status changed field is defaulted to the current date to make sure you have a record of when you modified the member status.

When you are certain you have all details in place, click the Run Update button to save your changes.

Add National Dues

The Add National Dues icon, located on the Association Profile on the Actions Bar, enables you to select a business unit and then, based on that business unit, set price attributes for each member type linked to that business unit through the Association. This is advantageous when you prefer to use the price controls that bundle products offer that the baseline functionality packages do not.

For example, the screenshot below shows the Add National Dues form that appears you select the Add National Dues icon. In this example, a Sr. Membership product is being added and the rest are left blank. Notice that you have the ability to add a start and end date for how long you desire the current price you specify to be available. This means that, should your pricing structure fluctuate from year to year, this is now easily manipulated per the price profile that adding memberships to a bundle offers.

Once you complete the Add National Dues form, your new product is added to the national dues products child form similar to when a new membership package is added on the membership packages childform. You can then arrange pricing controls by clicking the green GoTo arrow next to your national dues product. For detailed information on arranging price attributes, see the Price page. and price attributes article.

The advantage of setting-up national dues through the action bar (as opposed through the membership packages child form) is that you then have the option of adding your memberships to bundles. For example, both member and non-member prices will be added to the bundle you create, such as seen below:

The advantage of having both prices in place for bundles is that you'll be able to choose between these prices when you purchase the bundle during Centralized Order Entry for a customer.

For detailed information on adding and selling bundles, view the topics on Adding a Bundle Product and Selling a Bundle Product.

Add Chapter Dues

The Add Chapter Dues icon, located on the Association Profile on the Actions Bar, is very similar to Adding National Dues discussed in the preceding section in functionality and purpose in that it enables you to select a business unit and then, based on that business unit, set price attributes for each Chapter. For the same reason you create national dues through this process, it is advantageous to create chapter dues here in that bundle products offer baseline functionality options that packages do not.

Note: Before you can set-up your chapter dues here, you must first make sure you add your Chapter and set-up the chapter member types that you will offer.

Technical Information

Setting up System Options for Scheduled Dues Renewals

The Dues Renewal Process can be set up so that it is run on a regular schedule. Before you can schedule it, the system administrator (or person with Admin rights) must set up several system options. After the system options are set up, the process will run immediately after clicking either the Get Records or the Run Update button. Running the process also generates a dues renewal report. The system sends the dues renewal report to you in an e-mail.

Note: The renewal process will run on the server; not on your local machine.

To change a system option setting:

Open the Modules Menu and click Admin.
On the Admin Overview page, click System Options.
On the Find System Option page, select Membership from the Category drop-down list.
Enter the name of the system option and click Go.

To set up the Scheduled Dues Renewal Batch Process system option:

Go to the ScheduleDuesRenewalProcess system option page.
Select the current setting checkbox.
Click Save.

To set up the Dues Renewal Executable system option:

Go to the MembershipRenewalsScheduledTaskApplication system option page.
In the current setting text box, enter the path of the server for the netFORUM Messaging Engine and membership renewal executable.
Click Save.

To set up the Get Records E-mail Template system option:

Go to the DuesRenewalGetRecordsEmailTemplateGuid system option page.
In the current setting checkbox, enter the guid for the dues renewal template. (This is the template that will be used to send you an e-mail notifying you that the Get Records process was run and a report of the customers who will be renewed was created.
Click Save. Note: When you create the e-mail template, you must select Dues Renewal Process for the List Type. The e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address of the person running the dues renewal process.

To set up the Dues Renewal Report system option:

Go to the DuesRenewalReportKey system option page.
In the current setting text box, enter the report key (rpt_key) for the dues renewal report that will be generated after you run the Get Records process. (If this field is left blank, the default baseline report will be used.)
Click Save.

To set up the Dues Renewal Update E-Mail Template system option:

Go to the DuesRenewalRunUpdateEmailTemplateGuid system option page.
In the current setting checkbox, enter the primary key (cst_key) for the correspondence template that will be sent to the person running the update process to notify them that the Run Update process has completed and the customer records were updated.
Click Save. Note: When you create the correspondence template, you must select Dues Renewal Process for the List Type. The e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address of the person running the dues renewal process.

To set up the URL for the Dues Renewal Process system option:

Go to the DuesRenewalProfileUrl system option page.
In the current setting text box, enter the URL for the Dues Renewal Process Profile.
Click Save.