In order to facilitate registration and renewal through Members360° (see Renewing members), you can set up some default behaviors for renewals, as well as rules for what should happen when different types of members are renewed.
To access renewal preferences and renewal rules, navigate to Members > Tools and Customizations. Then scroll down to the bottom section - Dues and Renewals - and click the Customize memberhsip renewals link. This will take you to the Customize Renewal Rules page. There are two things you can set here: overall default renewal preferences, and renewal rules that certain members can match.
You can set some overall renewal settings in the Renewal Preferences area at the top of the Customize Membership Renewals page, as in the following screen shot:
The settings are explained below.
Membership Period: This is the default length of time, in months, that a member will be renewed for when an administrator renews his/her dues. This can be overridden by specific renewal rules (see below), or you can always edit an individual renewal item to achieve precise adjustment of the start and end dates for a membership period. However, you should set this to the most common renewal period (which is 12 months for most associations).
Warn Member of Membership Expiry within: This shows how many days in advance of a member's expiration that he/she will get a notification on the Profile area of his/her Member Portal (see Member Portal). You can separately configure an alert on the Portal for renewal as well (see Managing the portal settings and layout).
Grace Period before deactivation: If a member is not renewed and his latest membership period is now past, he/she will be automatically deactivated by the system. This setting lets you choose how many days of grace period the member gets before the deactivation occurs, which can give the member time some extra time to get dues paid before deactivation.
Example: Let's assume that you set the grace period to 30 days. Donald Duck is a member whose current membership period ends on 9/30/2007. If an administrator does not renew him by 10/30/2007 (which is 30 days after his end date), he will be automatically deactivated by the system on 10/31/2007. However, if an administrator renews his dues sometime before 10/31/2007, then he will remain active.
Default GL Account for Renewals: This is the GL account that will be assigned to a dues line item on an invoice (see Adding single or batch invoices). You can change this account when you actually create the invoice if you wish, so the account you pick here will simply be the default.
Membership Start Date Rule: This determines the default start date for a member that joins via the Member Portal or is added by an administrator (see Adding new members). You can select from among several choices:
A specific month and day: Use this option if you have a fixed period for all members (such as January to December). When you choose this option, you'll get a field with a calendar control which you can use to set the start date for all new members. Keep in mind that you'll eventually need to change this date to next year.
Today/Yesterday/Tomorrow: These three settings will set the start date to the day on which the member joins or is added, or the previous or next day if Yesterday or Tomorrow are chosen.
The beginning of this month/next month/last month: These three settings will set the member's start date to the first day of the month in which they join or are added (or the first day of the next or previous month).
In the case of Expired Members: This gives you three options of what to do when a member who is renewed by an administrator (see Renewing members), or the member renews him/herself through the member portal (see Member Portal), after they expire.
Use the above start date rule: The person "starts over" with a brand new membership year as though they're a brand new member. Thus, if they renew 3 months late, they'll get a new membership year/period using the start date setting above just as though they're a new member.
If within the above grace period, use the previous expiry date: This means that, if the person is not yet past their expiration date, they get a new period immediately following their last one. That is, if a member's expiration date is 11/1/2007, and they renew on 12/15/2007 (within the grace period), they'll get a new membership period of 11/1/2007-12/1/2007 (assuming a 12 month membership period). If the member renews later than the grace period, they get a new membership year/period.
If within the following membership period, use the previous expiry date: This means that, if the person renews at any point within the year (or the number of months defined as a membership period, if different than 12) following their expiration, they get a new period immediately following their previous one, as described above. Thus, even if a member who expired on 11/1/2007 doesn't renew until sometime in 2008, they'll still get a new membership period of 11/1/2007-12/1/2007.
Remember to click if you change any of these preferences.
You can use renewal rules to set up specific renewal behaviors based on fields for the member being renewed. Renewal rules allow you to:
Choose a custom membership period for the renewal
Convert members who match the rule from one member type to another
If you don't create renewal rules, or if a member does not match a particular renewal rule, he/she will stay at the same member type and will use the renewal period chosen in the renewal preferences. Also, please note that the dues for a renewal are determined by the dues rules you have already set up (see Dues configuration).
To add a new renewal rule, click the add renewal rule link under the Renewal Rules section of the Customize Membership Renewals page. Give your new rule a name, and then continue as shown below.
In the Condition Group 1 section, you can create the conditions that a member must match to be included in this renewal rule. For example, you could simply state that the member type must match a specific value, or you could create a complicated rule that analyzed the values of many fields. For details on creating conditions and condition groups, see Smart Groups by characteristic.
Note: You should probably include the Member Type field as one of your conditions in order to limit your renewal rule to just one member type. In the next step, you need to pick the member type that will be assigned to the renewing member, and you don't want to accidentally change members from one type to another.
In the Renewal Actions section, choose what member type you want the system to assign when a member matching the above criteria is renewed. You can choose the same member type as the member already has, or you can choose a new member type to allow automatic "upgrading" of members that renew and fit this renewal rule.
You must also choose the period in months for this renewal (which will override the default setting above).
When finished, save the rule by clicking 
. It
will then appear in your list of renewal rules.
Note: If a member matches more than one renewal rule, only the first matching rule will be processed. You should take care to construct your rules so that a member can only match one rule.
To edit a renewal rule, just click its name. Then
you can change the criteria, the renewal actions, or both. Finally,
save the changes by clicking .
To delete one or more renewal rules, use the 
button to
the right of any rule in the list.