We are looking to increase our level-first membership prices on Oct 1. I think I want to change the ranges of the current membership org so that renewals/history stays intact, vs. creating a new Member Org. The level info is staying the same.
However, we have a month and a half of membership renewals happening before the FY ends, so the current org needs to remain. Does someone need to manually update the levels on the org on October 1? How do I manage this transition? Fun addition, I will be out of the office on parental leave during this time, so I'll need to enlist/train someone to make this change manually, if necessary.
v16 has a very elegant solution for this -- membership levels can have start and end dates with predecessor levels attached (meaning what a new level is replacing), but v15 is lacking in this department. When we've changed the amounts for our membership levels we've had to go in manually and do it on the day-of. It was also tricky accounting for mailed in renewals that were postmarked in time for the old rate. The only way to process those was to have the old rate still active, but we were using amount first at the time so we just kept the old rate as the starting rate and changed the minimum on TNEW to ensure that any purchased online were at the correct rate. If you don't have to worry about checks in the mail, then all you should have to do is change the rates on the levels.
Anne RobichauxThe Historic New Orleans Collection
I think(?) that because we use Memberships as Products, I'm able to kind of fudge this changeover a little bit. I'm going to talk through the plan... let me know if anything is glaringly dumb. (also, I'm totally uploading this documentation (once I figure it out) into Tess, thanks to your TLCC presentation)
Right now, the Memb Org Start and End amounts are the same. It's literally a product that costs $89. I'm going to change the End Amount to the new cost, $94 (there are no overlaps with current costs). Then, because we sell these 'products' in the order screen, I have the performances/tickets setup at the correct cost, $94, and with perf/MOS dates, I can control the switchover. I think, then, the only thing that needs to be changed is the start values of the memb levels after the FY rollover, which really doesn't matter much because the "ticket" cost is static. Also, I'm setting up a ticketing discount for fussy members who want the old rate for one last year).
The only thing that looks funny is on the membership record, it says the "Member Amount" is the start value, and when I update the start amount after adding the higher-cost membership, it doesn't update this value (as far as I can tell). I think this is still okay...
Any thoughts?
We don't use the memberships as products plugin, so I can't say for sure, but that sounds right to me. When we've been in times like this and things don't update properly (like the Member Amount), I go in to SSMS and make the changes there so that our data is correct. Glad to hear my presentation was useful!
Hi EricWe don't use Membership as Products, but do have fixed-price memberships and have been through several price increases. We have always done it manually, early in the morning on the FY switch date.During the period when the start and end amounts are NOT the same, our Membership amount on the constituent records shows as the Start amount for everyone, with the difference (ie the price raise) appearing in the AVC field. We just ignore this oddity and report using the total contribution value.We have an additional complication in that we sell Gift Membership vouchers, and accept them for a full membership up to 3 months after the price rise. So we have to keep the start and end values at the old and new prices for a number of months each year. I haven't yet worked out what, if anything, our options are going to be in v16 for this retrospective hono(u)ring of the previous membership level.
v16's memberships are the biggest 'upgrade' by far, so I'm hopefully optimistic about this! Good to know the start amounts are a little inconsistent for other orgs in v15. We'll probably update ours with a procedure as Anne recommended.