Membership module

Availability per ProgressCRM edition
Standard	Enterprise	International
Option	Option	Option

The ProgressCRM Membership module provides the functionality for you to administer your membership or subscription schemes. Whether you are a professional membership body or a charity with a Friends scheme the Membership module can help you process memberships, collect payments, renew members, and analyse the effectiveness of your scheme(s).

Some benefits of the Membership module are:

• Reduced duplication of data. By integrating your membership and fundraising or CRM system you will benefit from reduced duplication and an all round view of your relationship with your contact.
• Superior reporting and analysis. The tools within ProgressCRM – Query and Information Views - make analysing your data quick and simple.
• Streamlined administration. The module provides streamlined methods for joining members, lapsing and renewing memberships, and bulk updating rates.

The following information illustrates how the Membership module can be used.

Defining your Membership schemes

You can create your membership schemes within the module and set up the following:

• Subscription rates, length, and increase amounts and dates
• Joining fee (if applicable)
• Renewal date rule
• Standard renewal date
• Transaction type (e.g. subs)
• Department code
• Start of membership (e.g. payment date or join date)

You may have an infinite number of membership and subscription types. Once these are configured you can join members to schemes.

Joining members and processing payments

The module provides a membership tab, which can be viewed in the main ProgressCRM screen. From here you can join members and record the following:

• Membership scheme
• Membership number (auto-generated)
• Subscriptions rate and payment method
• Join date and renew date
• Source
• Payment schedule and bank account/credit card details

Membership payments paid or due can be seen in the Finance tab. The module can also handle gift memberships and ensure that the membership and payment details are recorded on the relevant contact’s page.

For those paying by Direct Debit on a monthly basis you can automate the collection of payments through the Generate Transactions functionality. This will generate a red (payment due) line in the Finance tab on all records that fall between the dates you enter. Where the payment method is Direct Debit these debt lines will be used to generate the Direct Debit Batch, which in turn will generate the BACS, file ready for submission. Posting the batch will turn the red (due) lines to black (paid).

Renewing and lapsing

Progress allows you to identify those members ready for renewal, send them reminders, and process renewals. There are two ways of handling renewals in the Membership module – either the payments can be entered as new transactions in Progress or a debit transaction can be generated in anticipation of receiving the payment and then enter the payment against the debt.

Analysis and reporting

The module comes with standard reports, which can be viewed in R&R Report Writer. New reports can also be created in R&R by Fisk Brett or those that have attended the training course.

Membership can be queried in the Progress Query tool to produce ad hoc statistics, mailmerge files, or export files for further analysis in Excel.