Membership Information

Introduction

The membership system stores members' information securely and provides the ability for people to join and existing members to renew their membership with the payment of their membership fees. It is designed to be reasonably automatic to save work by club officers. It works best when it has an email address for the member as then membership renewals can be fully automatic when payment is made by credit or debit card.

Joining the Club

You can access the New Member form to apply for membership. The link to this is provided from a website page describing membership and how to apply.
/files/membershipJoin.html. You simply enter your details in the form and click on the "Join" button. If you have selected to pay by credit card then you will be taken through the card payment process. Otherwise you will be given information on how to pay by bank transfer, cheque or standing order. An email will be sent to you with membership info and payment instructions.
The club membership secretary will send you some club information once you have joined.

On the new membership form there is a tick box which if enabled will add a website login for you and email you an initial password. The website login will allow you to renew on-line, access the members only web pages, the GPX rides database and also access other website features such as automatically entering your details into event booking forms.

The system links a website user with their membership record by matching the website login email address with the membership databases email address. So it is important that both of these are updated if someone changes their email address. It is best for someone to contact admin@tandem-club.org.uk if their email or postal address changes.

The membership form has the ability to have two email addresses, an extra one for the first joint member. So the main and first joint members can have website login accounts with membership privileges if they like. However the joint member will need to add a website account manually using the "User/New Account" function to do this with their matching email address.

Existing members

Existing members will be sent an email 7 days before their renewal date, assuming they have provided an email in their membership details. This email contains a website link that allows them to renew. The website link will present the membership details allowing them to edit them and to pay by one of the accepted means. Renewal emails will be sent once a week until they either renew or leave the Club.

If members have not provided an email address, then a paper renewal notice/form will be sent out with the journal proceeding their renewal date. Renewal forms are thus sent out up to 70 days in advance. They can either renew online using the details provided on the paper renewal form or they can email or post details of the renewal together with payment to the renewal secretary.

There is also the option of manually renewing using a website form. With this the member will have to enter all of their details online and a new membership record, without membership numbers will be created with the status "renewForm". The Renewal secretary will have to tie this against the existing record for the member. /files/membershipRenew.html.

The system links a website user with their membership record by matching the website login email address with the membership databases email address. So it is important that both of these are updated if someone changes their email address. It is best for someone to contact admin@tandem-club.org.uk if their email or postal address changes.
 

Forgotten Password

If you have forgotten or don't know your password the "User/Forgotten Password" function can be used from the main top bar menu.

Administration Introduction

This provides a secure database of club members. The system attempts to automate most of the work. It provides the following features:
  • Storage of members information.
  • New members application form and automatic entry into database. (Adds a new entry. Membership admin will activate the member later).
  • Renewal members form and automatic update into database. (Edits existing entry which becomes active once the Membership admin activates it).
  • Integrated payment system using card, bacs, cheques, standing order. (card is fully automatic, bacs/cheques/standing order needs payments admin (Treasurer) to mark them as paid).
  • Admin access to "activate" new and renewing members' information in the database as well as manage payments.
  • Admin access to add and/or edit membership details.
  • Archive of old member information (added to on each change).
  • Automatic renewal emails with link to filled in renewal form so users can easily renew.
  • Journal admin access to download list of addresses for journal sending. CSV format.
  • Journal list of new members for including within journal. CSV format.
  • Journal print of renewal notices. PDF and CSV format.
  • RO list of, per regional group, email and postal addresses (accessed from RO's login). CSV format.
  • RO list of email and postal addresses for their group and for a distance outside (accessed from RO's login). CSV format.
  • RO ability to email all of their region's members online via website.
  • RO list of recent membership changes.
  • Ability to email all or a selection of members.
  • Member website access login automatically generated for website access by users (membership only pages, easy booking forms, renewals, eventually forums etc) ?
  • Membership renewal secretary can print off reminder forms in PDF format.

Regional Groups

New members will be allocated to a regional group based on their postcode. The information in the Groups database is used for this. When regional groups are updated it is possible to automatically reallocate members to the group postcodes within the Groups module.

Membership View

Club Officers, regional organisers and the journal editors can be given the viewMembership role. They can view a selected list of membership entries and an individual's entry in full. The selection system allows them to select by various parameters, including a region (group).
Given a selection they can download the list in a CSV (spreadsheet) format. There are also links in the left hand menu to download particular selections directly.

The system also provides a method to send a blanket email, optionally with attachments, to a selected list of members. This can be used by RO's to contact their group.

Membership Administrators

The membership secretaries are given the adminMembership role and possibly the adminPayments role as well. These people can do all that those with the viewMembership role can as well as edit members' entries, renew members and delete members. Whenever some administration action is required, the pending flag will be set on a record. This allows the administration user to go through all of the pending work needed easily.
Work needed:

New Members

  • When a new member joins the club, a new membership record will be added with a status of "new" an email will be sent to the administrators configured in the "Administration email addresses for new members" list.
  • If the member has paid by card the paymentAmountPaid will be set. If the card payment failed or they will pay by BACS, cheque or Standing Order the paymentAmountPaid field will not be set.
  • The admin person should send the new member the welcome pack.
  • The "New member pack sent" button should then be used. When this is done the record is set to the status "member" and the pending flag cleared if they have paid or set to "awaitingPayment" if not.
  • If needed the "Change to BACS" or "change to Cheque" buttons can be used if you need to change the payment type.

Member Renewals

  • Existing members will be sent a renewal link by email 10 days before their renewal date. When they click on this link they will be take to a web browser form containing their membership record. They can edit this if needed and click on the "Renew" or "Leave the Club" buttons. Assuming the renew they will be given the opportunity to pay by card and taken through the card payments system.
  • Members will also be sent a paper slip with the next journal containing a type it in link to renew. The Journal editor will get a set of postal slips from the system just before a journal is printed. This system will print slips for any member that will need to renew now or up to 1 month into the future. Members with and without email addresses will get these.
  • If their payment is complete their record will change status to "member" and the pending flag cleared, so there is no admin work to do.
  • If their card payment failed or they are paying by BACS or cheque then their record changes status to "awaitingPayment".
  • If their card payment failed, the "Send renewal Email" button can be used to send them a link to the form again to change things or just pay.
  • At this point their paymentType can be changed to BACS or cheque using the "Change to BACS" or "Change to Cheque" buttons.
  • When in the awaitingPayment state the state can be moved to "member" and pending cleared either by the treasurer marking the payment record as paid or by the membership admin using the "Paid" button.
Members can also renew online manually using the "Member Renew Form" button. Ideally this system should not be used. They can contact membership admin to use the "Send Renew Email" button to resend the user the link to renew perhaps after updating their email address. If the member does use this manual renewal form, the admin person can use the "Renewal Form Process" button which will attempt to match this with their original membership record and update that with any new information.

Other Membership Admin

  • Lapsed members need to be marked as lapsed and then deleted. (Will be saved in the archive database). The "Leave the club" button will do all of this.
  • Can edit membership records as needed.
  • Can manually add a new member or renew an existing member possibly taking a credit card payment over the phone or by sending a renewal link by email to the member to pay by credit card.
  • If the member didn't have an email address and has filled in a web renewal form, then some manual work needs to be performed. The renew record will have the status "renewForm". The membership secretary will need to search for the member's existing record, by name/postcode/address. From the old record the membership numbers and renew date will need to be copied into the new record and the old record deleted.
  • If the member posted in a renewal form then the admin officer will need to lookup the members record and edit as needed.
  • Reminder forms can be generated in PDF format using the: Reminder Forms link. Reminder forms are generated for those membership records with a renewalDate that is earlier than or equal to the current date. The reminder PDF's are generated in batches of 50.
  • A complimentary membership can be added by using the "New Member" link and setting the membershipType to "Complimentary". This will set a renewalDate of 1 year in the future.

Treasurer/Payment administrator

For each join or renewal a payment needs to be made. This is made via the payments system where an entry for the source "membership" will be made. Web users with adminPayments role (Treasurer/Payment administartor) can edit these entries in the payments system.
  • The Payments administrator will get an email when payments are made/need to be made.
  • For card payments the system will automatically mark the payment record as paid and also update the membership record as paid.
  • For other payment types the payments admin person needs to mark the payment record as paid by setting the payment records status field to "paid" and setting the paid flag once they can see this has been paid in the bank account. The Payments "Mark as Paid" button will do this when editing a payment. Setting the paid flag will also automatically update the membership record or events record as paid and mark that membership record as status "member" and clear its pending flag.
For more info on the payments system see: /modules/payments/info.html

Journal Editor

The journal editor will use the system as follows:
  • Download the new members list in CSV format using the: JO: New members link.
  • Download the list of members addresses in CSV format to send journals using the JO: Addresses link.
  • Download the renewal forms to post in PDF format (multiple PDF files) with the journals using the: JO: Renewal Forms link. This provides download forms in PDF format for all those renewals due. The renewal form PDF's are generated in batches of 50.
The functions available are:
  • JO: Renewal Postal: CSV list of all postal only renewals.
  • JO: Renewal All: CSV list of all renewals.
  • JO: Renewal Forms: PDF's of all renewals.
  • JO: New members: CSV list of new members.
Renewals are those membership records with a renewalDate that is earlier than the current date +30 days.

Regional Organisers

All RO's should have a website login and be given the "viewMembership" role. That allows them to view the membership details.
The ways to access it are:
  1. Normally each region has its own group page on the website. From  this page the RO can admin various things (like edit their groups pages, add whats-on entries etc). One of these is a link to the membership system. When they use this link the default regional group is configured.
  2. In the membership system the RO can then:
    • Click on "RO: Groups Members" in the left hand menus. This will download their regions members in CSV from.
    • Click on "RO: Recent Changes" this will download the most recent member changes in their region.
    • Click on "RO: Email group" to send an email to all members of their group.
  3. Alternatively the RO can use the normal membership Select system.
    • Set the "Group" to their or another group. Set "Pending" to "don't care""
    • Click on "Search" to view all the members records.
    • The "Email this Selection" button can then be used to send an email from the Tandem Club (admin@tandem-club.org.uk) to the selection..
    • The "Email from me" button will start your email application with the list of people's email addresses so you can send an email from your own email account.
    • The "Download CSV ..." buttons can be used to download a spreadsheet compatible file.
The RO's will get an email when a new member joins and if someone leaves.

Emails Sent

The system will send administration emails to the member and to the administrators. There is a configurable list of administration email addresses.
  • Member: When a user joins, renews or leaves an email will be sent to them.
  • Member: When a renewal is due an email will be sent to them. This will be sent every week until they renew or decline renewal.
  • Member: The MembershipAdmin can manually send a renew email to the member from the edit form page ("Send Renewal Email").
  • MembershipAdmin: When a user joins, renews or leaves an email will be sent to the Membership admin. This will contain a link to the members record.
  • PaymentsAdmin: On all payments an email will be sent to the treasurer from the payments system.
  • The Nochex system will also send emails to the member and treasurer.

Postal Renewals

Those members with email addresses configured will be sent an email with a link allowing them to renew online and a paper renewal notice/form with the Journal.
Those members without email addresses configured will only be sent a paper renewal notice/form with the Journal. The member can then renew in one of the following ways:
  1. In the paper renewal notice/form we print a link which contains a password to allow them to renew on the Internet as per those receiving an email link.
  2. They can fill in and submit the paper form.
  3. They can fill in a renewal form on the Internet. The MembershipAdmin officers will need to look at the existing records and merge these two records manually.

Reminders

There is a "Reminder Forms" link that will produce a  list of multi-page PDF paper forms that can be posted to those members who have not renewed to date.

How to Do Things

  • If the full member dies or leave the club and the first joint member wishes to continue membership, then the full members Delete checkbox can be ticked in the edit form. This will delete the full members record (archives it) and promote the first joint member to be a full member. If no contact info (address,email etc) was listed in the joint members record these will be filled in from the full members details.
  • A complimentary membership can be added by using the "New Member" link and setting the membershipType to "Complimentary". This will set a renewalDate of 1 year in the future.

Reinstate an Archived Member

If a member has been deleted as they have been deemed to have left, their record and that of their joint members can be reinstated. To do this:
  1. On the membership list page select an archived full member ("Archive set" and any other required selector fields).
  2. On the list of archived members click on the "V" link on the actual record you want to reinstate.
  3. At the bottom of the view page there is the "Reinstate Member" button.

Membership Records

The main membership view list page allows a selection of the membership database to be viewed. The page has a set of selection criteria at the top and a paged list of records below.
Records that match all of the selection criteria are listed. The check boxes are tristate. That is they have three states: off, on and don't care. The don't care setting looks like a horizontal bar. If text fields have no text, this means don't care/any values.
The Page selection entry defines a set of records to be displayed from the total number available. You can move between pages of information using the Next/Prev buttons.
Once you have set the selection criteria, the Update button can be used to fetch the information or the various Download buttons can be used to download this set of data in CSV format for spreadsheet type access.
In the list of record entries the first column defines some actions that can be performed on a record. These are:
V: View the record.
E: Edit the record (Has ability to renew or send renewal email).
D: Deletes the record. You will be prompted to make sure. The record is actually moved to the membership archive rather than actually deleted.

Most of the membership records fields are self explanatory. For the others here is some information.
Field Description
id This is the internal record id
status This is the status of the member.
new: When a person applies for membership. They may or may not have paid at this stage. The PaymentAmountPaid field indicates how much they have actually paid.
member: When they are made a member
renew: When they are due for renewal.
renewForm: A separate renewal form. This will need to be matched against an existing entry and the two merged into one.
awaitingPayment: When people have renewed or been renewed or are new members but not yet paid.
lapsed: When they have not renewed
leave: When they have left the club
The system will generally set the status as needed. Once the membership secretary has reviewed the join,renewal,lasped or leave status they can then edit the record and either set the status to be a member or delete the record.
membershipType "1 year": Normal 1 year membership. Renewal date will be incremented by a year on joining/renewal.
"5 year": Normal 5 year membership. Renewal date will be incremented by 5 years on joining/renewal.
"Complimentary": Membership record set to free for 1 year. On renewal date the user will be sent a renewal notice as normal.
"Special": Special entry. Set the renewalDate as wanted. This could be 2999-12-31 so that no renewal notices are sent.
"Honorary": No renewal notices or payments.
fullId Full members and Joint members records are in the same database table. The "fullId" field is set to the full members record id if the entry is for a joint member or 0 if a full member.
renewalDate This date defines the date when a member should renew. When they renew this will be automatically updated by a year or 5 years as appropriate.Honorory and Special members should have their renewalDate set to a long time in the future. We recommend 2999-12-31.
paymentAmountPaid This will indicate that the user has paid for the membership
 
  • Whenever an edit or deletion is made then a copy of the membership record is made in the archive (membershipOld) database.

Membership numbers

New members are given a new membership number based on the one in the configuration setting "Next membership number". This number is incremented on each new member being added. Full members have the character "F" prepended to the number and joint members have the character "J" prepended.

Special Members

Honorary and Special members should have their renewalDate set to a long time in the future. We recommend 2999-12-31.

Configuration

The configuration page allows some configuration parameters to be setup. These are:
  • Next membership number: The next allocated membership number. This is automatically incremented when new members join.
  • Administration email addresses: A list of email address for admin users. These will be sent info on members joining and renewing etc.
  • New Member Administration email addresses: A list of email address for admin users. These will be sent info on members joining only etc.
  • Cheque address Joining: The name and address where to send cheques joining.
  • Cheque address Renewing: The name and address where to send cheques when renewing membership.

Security

All accesses are made via the SSL HTTPS secure connection.

There are two security groups for access. "viewMembership" and "adminMembership". Any website user can be given those permissions as needed. Without them no membership database access will be allowed.
"viewMembership" allows viewing only.

Notes and ideas for future changes

  • Currently RO's can view all members rather than just the members in their area.