I have a few members who have renewed past the lapse period so there for their inception date has change. How am I able to change it so that their original inception date shows on their membership card. I changed the inception date under attribute but that did not help.
Thank you,
Ngoc
I naively assumed that inception date would only change if the membership had been dormant past the reinstate date, but I was wrong:
Reinstate The number of months after the expiration date when the reinstate period should end; the start of the reinstate period is the end of the lapse period. During the reinstate period, an expired membership is in the Inactive status but can be added as a reinstated membership. The initiation date, inception date, and trends for a reinstated membership are calculated like a new membership, but the NRR Status is set to Reinstate.
https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Help_System_v151/Content/Memberships/Membership%20Status%20Dates.htm
The inception date is part of the Membership itself, and not editable there. If you have an Attribute called "Inception Date" that is likely custom, and you'd have to ask around in your organization what that is expected to record and how it works.
So far as I know, the only way to force an update of inception dates outside of the Membership Update Utility is programmatically in SQL. The only way to address this issue in an ongoing way would be to adjust your Lapsed period months out to the point where you would want the inception data preserved.
Alternatively, depending on your usage of this date, you may be able to get the information from elsewhere. A custom header element or Analytics dashboard widget could look at full membership history to find the actual first membership date.
This may change in v16?