Creating a Membership Product

Membership products are used to convey the benefit of membership over a period of time, and are usually defined to represent membership categories, such as student, regular, retired, or life member. Membership products can also be defined for membership categories within chapters, special interest group (SIG) memberships, and one-time join fees.

Products are defined by a combination of the organization, the organization unit that owns the product, the subsystem of the product, the parent product, and the product code. The parent product for membership products is the member group. The membership product code can support a three-tiered structure, which in Personify is referred to as Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3.

Reporting Membership Statistics

It is important to layout the different membership products and their structure of three levels to ensure that membership statistics can be accurately reported. The grouping of statistics can be at the product code level, as well as at any of the three levels (subcategories) that are defined within the product. Level one is reserved for the four major categories of membership: National/International, Chapter, Special Interest Group (SIG), and Donation Gifts. Although rate codes are defined within the products, the Personify membership count system does not consider these codes.

For example, see the table below:

Member Group	Product Code	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Renew To
NASE Membership	Regular1	National	First Year	One Year	Regular2
NASE Membership	Regular2	National	Second Year	One Year	Regular
NASE Membership	Regular	National	Regular	One Year	Regular
NASE Membership	Student1	National	First Year	One Year	Student2
NASE Membership	Student2	National	Second Year	One Year	Student
NASE Membership	Student	National	Student	One Year	Student

If the association maintains different chapters and chapter membership products, then a subgroup should be setup to represent the membership statistics of each chapter.

Notice in the example above that the regular and student memberships are stepped through the first and second year and renewed to the next year in the sequence.

The Membership Count process (MBR700) will look at the above table and for every unique occurrence of the row above, it will insert a row into the MBR_ACCOUNT table. The report for the month that it is run will show the number of Active, Proforma, New, Renewed, Cancelled, Transferred In, and Transferred Out memberships. This can be viewed on the Member Counts tab of Subgroup Central for the NASE Membership customer. This subgroup customer number is linked to each of these products in the setup.

To set up a membership product:

1. Define the general membership product.

2. Define rates and pricing.

3. Define rate code extensions (subscription benefits).

4. Define basis dues schedule.

5. Define GL accounts.

6. Define Revenue accounts.

7. Define shipping charges.

8. Define cancellation fees.

9. Define components.

10. Define postal mapping (conditional).

11. Validate setup.

If you want to create an membership product similar to the one you already created, you may consider the Copy Product functionality available.

This functionality allows you to select specific parts of a product setup you want to copy over to a new product, rather than entering in all the same information again.

Please refer to Copying a Membership Product for more information.