Members who are in arrears can't register for events? Since when? How inconvenient is this?
I don't know of a single association that doesn't have members in arrears past their renewal date that are kept on the books. Someone had the bright idea to automatically keep members out of events if they're past their registration date. In theory, I understand why this was a requested change, though I can't remember seeing the request. But a toggle should be made either in the setup on the backend or for each event to allow pending members register for an event. I mean, common sense, people! You have no idea how insanely inconvenient this is for us, our office staff and our members!
Ed Spader
shared this idea
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Hi, I understand your concern and your situation.
Now, we are not considering the adding of a specific setting in the event details, as soon as it works for many clients.
But I will discuss with the developers whether it is possible to turn off this behaviour for your specific account. I'll let you know as soon as it is known. -
Scot McConnachie
commented
Is there any progress on this matter?
With most of our members on monthly memberships and limited staff, many are routinely technically in arrears. One we way we get members in arrears to pay is to get them to keep participating in events. Now I have people who believe that they are members who can't sign up as members. The other alternative is that the system tells them that they have renewed, even though they have not paid the dues, which further adds to the confusion.
Seriously, this is a disaster that might force us to stop using Wild Apricot.
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Scot McConnachie
commented
I appreciate that the current (apparently new revised procedure) works for many organizations.
Here is another life example. We have limited staff and 40% of our members mostly pay on time by check. However we don't process the checks until the second Saturday of the month, partly as a grace period, partly to simplify the the accounting to once a month, and partly to allow the mail to arrive at our PO Box mailing address. We don't have someone to process checks on a daily basis. Under the current system we either have to live with activating all members, regardless of their underlying financial status, or deal with complaints by members that they paid but cannot register for events.
There should be an administrative level toggle to turn this feature on or off. I don't care if the default is on so long as we can turn it off.
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Lynn Richardson
commented
This is one of my favorite features because it makes them renew more quickly in our experience!
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Q-Admin
commented
Our members get 5 email notices before their membership is cancelled. How much more do they need? If they have a problem paying, they need to contact the organization. Otherwise, they get archived. This is life folks.
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Scot McConnachie
commented
We ran into this recently as well, as we have been starting to use the events system more.
Furthermore our accounting meeting for the month is after the first so, for non-electronic payments, the records are not updated at the beginning of the month. The system will show an account that is in arrears even though we have received payment. That means that 40% of our membership could be in this state for as long as two weeks.
It is not reasonable to expect our staff to update the records manually to active every month.
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Ed Spader
commented
Is there a way for the system to facilitate this when renewal invoices are generated, or is the only way for me to handle it to export my member list, change all members to active and re-import?
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In your situation I recommend keeping members in Active status then, but with past renewal date.
