What's the status of a fix for the multi-year membership level renewal problem? I'm unable to find any mention in the product roadmap and, for my organization, renewal due dates continue to be updated incorrectly when processing renewals.

This problem was first reported in 2010 and in 2012 it was on the design team's to-do list. Have some changes been made? Are more planned? Do we need to start a new thread on this subject?

Changing a membership level is something we currently offer to our members, and is handled at renewal time. At the moment, we use this as a way for members who would like to support the cause to donate a higher amount of money at their renewal date. We are just starting to use the Wild Apricot system and invoices have been sent out.

Based on my research, I expected that members would be able to select a level of membership during the renewal process. This is very important to us. The road map document is large and cumbersome. Could WA staff provide an update on this issue?

See our Roadmap - http://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/8827717-roadmap-2015-plans-releases-expected-dates

This is also a huge problem for us. I see this has been dragging on for years with no action.

This leads me to assume that there are no plans to fix this flaw anytime soon (or ever)!

I understand that all systems have issues of one type or another. But it's not good to see that it's been a know issue for 4 years and customers are being told in 2012 "this is a frequent request and something our product design team plans to work on this year." IN 2012!

Come on guys. Either fix it or be honest and say it's something that we just have to live with.

This is also a problem for us. Members change their Level at Renewal time yet the system doesn't record them as having renewed.

I see this has been an oustanding flaw in the system for 2 1/2 years!

Do I assume then that there are no plans to fix this anytime soon (if at all)?

Hi - no, no progress so far. I see no workaround as of now on that as this change involves modification to internal code responsible for finances.

This feature is in our Roadmap for this year, but it may not fit after all.

Hi...any update on this post from the WA Team?

We've been using WA for 2 years now and having to manually handle member level changes vs renewal is becoming more and more of an issue for our admin team. It's confusing for our membership to see two buttons on their profiles: one for Change Level and another for Renew.

Most click the Change Level button thinking that they'll be paying for next year at the new level, only to discover that they've just paid for THIS year twice. Either our admin team has be on the look out for these random events, our members have to know to check the "Renewal due on" date that they rarely ever notice, or when it's time to tally our member counts for voting rights, our admin team discovers the mistake. As you can imagine, the member records are not clean and that is highly problematic for a Sorority.

Has a solution been implemented or is there a way for us to manage this using some custom scripting?

I am actually shocked that you can not do this - either manually or self-service. It is enough for us to consider moving to another system altogether.

In the meantime, if you do want to change the member level - it seems if youare entering manualy and EDIT the level BEFORE you generate the invoice you might actually be renewed as well.

But seriously - it should not be so hard to do this.

In January, 2012 I requested, like others have, that something be done about the problem of members changing their membership level, paying the fee, and believing they are renewing for the following year. We are now coming up to our 2013 renewal period (our fixed renewal date is Jan. 1) and this problem hasn't been addressed. I know we will have students changing their membership level from student to regular and they will be thinking they are renewing until 2015. When they start getting overdue renewal notices, we will receive queries from them that they already renewed.

Please address this issue. As he previous post said, it is a very important for effective membership management.

Many thanks,

Bob

Just putting my vote in,,,,really important to effective membership mgmt.

[quote user="Chief_Apricot"]Currently, changing levels is not connected to the renewal at all, As this thread shows, this is a frequent request and something our product design team plans to work on this year. [/quote]

I run into this frequently with my Wild Apricot clients. Typically, they have a fixed annual renewal date, say July 1 every year, which is the same for all levels. A member receives a renewal notification email, and on, say, 6/25 goes to the WA site to "renew" but they actually do a level change (in their mind it's a renewal and level change). [Side note: Some common reasons for changing levels are student->regular member, regular member->retired, silver->gold to get higher level of benefits. It's very common.] So they change levels and are charged the full fee for the new level on 6/25 (6 days prior to the annual renewal date of July 1). However, their renewal date is unchanged even though they just paid -- still 7/1 (six days from now) and they continue to get renewal reminder emails even though they just paid their annual fee when they changed levels.

It's very confusing for both members and admins alike. Hard to train people on how to do it because it's counter-intuitive. The bigger the organization, the bigger the hassle for the admins.

Any idea when/if this logic will be changed?

Thanks,

Kim

This thread and suggestion was started 3 years ago and everyone acknowleges it is highly desireable. Can someone at Wild Apricots comments on the current implementation status and future plans? This is important to our current client.

What we'd like is for Wild Apricot to handle a range of membership dollars. Currently, we have levels of membership at fixed dollar amounts. So if someone is a $500 member, the website automatically prompts that person to renew at the $500 level. But, some people donate in between the levels, say $750 a year. We want to treat that donor as a $500 member and prompt renewal at the $750 level which is in the range of $500 to $1000 membership level rather than $500.

If that is not possible, could we dismantle the automatic prompts for membership renewal for those persons who donate more than the actual membership dollar amount?

Thanks Jan

I'm not sure I understand "We would like to set the membership level change based on their renewal date and not the date of the level change.". Can you please elaborate a little bit more? May be, an example?

I noticed it's been a couple years of discussion but I would like to add another scenario for the usefulness of being able to change a member level during renewal.

In our organizations we have college students become members, which makes them eligible for the student member rate. Once they graduate they are no longer eligible for the student rate, and need to change their member level to the professional level at the higher rate. We would like to set the membership level change based on their renewal date and not the date of the level change.

We too would love a way to do this.

What we'd like:

If a member were to change levels, it's treated like a renewal. For example: someone has a "regular membership" that expires Dec 31 2013. On November 30th 2013, they want to renew and get the "student membership". Currently, they won't get the renewal emails (but the uncustomizable "membership level change" email). Their new expiration date will be Nov 30th, 2014 (they "lose" a month of membership).

What we want is for their actions to be treated as a renewal (or at least be able to customize the "membership level change" email), and, importantly, have their new expiration date be Dec 21, 2014. Right now we have to do these adjustments manually.

Thanks for all the hard work!

" At this point, the software has just bumped the renewal date forward by 1 year BUT it doesn't give the option to generate an invoice"

Actually, it's a little bit different. If new level policy is defined as "Join date" (not specific date), then when you edit member records and change a level, system updates renewal date field - not when you save it, but right after you changed a level in the dropdown. Also, if you change status to "Pending - Level change" and save it like that, system will suggest to generate invoice.

So, as a workaround for now (it's going to be a while until we make a change here) I would suggest the following:
* Admin clicks "Edit" and gets to contact editing screen
* changes level to another one (do not click Save yet), renewal date field automatically updated to new one
* checks renewal date and sets it to required one (if needed)
* changes status to "Pending - Level change"
* clicks Save
* System opens contact details screen with yellow box containing "Generate invoice" field
* Admin clicks the button, new invoice screen is open
* enter all required details (if needed - amount and other details are already filled in)
* check "Payment received in full" in the bottom right corner
* click Save
* Invoice is created and it's marked as paid.
* If you need to email receipt to a member, click on "Settlement details" in the invoice, payment details are open
* Click "Email" and follow the workflowIt's not that bad if you try ))

Thanks, Larry.

Evgeny:

As far as I am concerned, you all do a wonderful job of taking into consideration all of the wants/needs/desires that we post and prioritize them for future upgrades. I'm sure everyone wishes their request is answered first, but keep up the good work!

With every upgrade that has come out in the year that I've been using wild apricot, each one has brought at least one functionality that has made a difference to how I maintain our database/website.

Please keep in mind that we change our plans all the time depending on the situation. Currently, we are working on a very big change into our content management module and it takes a lot of efforts from us. There are chances that we will have to bring more development resources to complete the change in this year and this would mean that other planned features can be postponed.

[quote user="Chief_Apricot"]As this thread shows, this is a frequent request and something our product design team plans to work on this year. [/quote]

This is a great thing to hear! I hope that this request comes to fruition. We sign members up initially as 'New Regular' or 'New Certified' so that we can easily track all of the new members. A year later when they renew we would like to move them (automatically) to 'Regular' or 'Certified' level. It's all the same price. It's just a matter of breaking out levels for easier tracking. Unfortunately right now we have to manually move them from one level to the next when they renew. Having some option to have this switch take place automatically would be a huge time saver for us!