Pls is there anyone who uses the membership module very well? I have some flow issues with it and it seems disturbing
I expect that before a member is changed from Member Pending to Up-to-Date, there must be an action from Admin or a person in charge to authenticate payment (In a case where payment gateway isnt used). Right now, once the user puts contribution and submits, it says Member up-to Date meanwhile, Payment has not been confirmed for it to be activated to the Up-to-date . I understand that using a payment platform may have automated that process, but what about where a payment gateway isnt used?
Must a member be a user? How can you create an external user for them?
I started using Dolibarr in june of this year, as we were looking for an open-source membership management system for our non-profit association. My learning was, tha using the membership module in combination with third-party module fits most of our needs. All of our members have a linked third-party customer. This makes invoicing and payment checking easier for us. We do not use the online payment integration via paypal or swipe module.
In my understanding a member is āup to dateā when having an active subscription (Contribution). This subscription has to be set / activated by a dolibarr user for the relevant member. In this activation process you can also set payment information. Without using the linked third-party integration, these payment options are rather limited.
Basically, member management and payment management work even without a link to the third-party module.
There is no need to create a dolibarr-user for a member you want to manage.
Can you help answer the following questions to help me understand your position clearly?
Do your members use or have access to the Dolibarr application? Cos our members would have some level of access, as such, they will have username and password they can create from the filling of the form
From your example of linking to 3rd party, at what point are they linked to Subscription up- to - date, after creating the invoice and payment is made? Help me explain that part of the process
How do you handle renewals using your structure?
Lastly, what is the variable for member login and password so we can send it to the newly created member via email upon jew subscription
I would appreciate help in these areas so the work doesnt seem complex.
to 1.
No, our members do not have a dollibarr user account, as this is not needed in our way of usage. So I canāt share experience on how to use a combination of āMembersā and the āUser & Groupsā module
Maybe weāll use it later in combination with the āEvent Organizationā Module.
to 2.
When creating a new member, there is automatically created a linked 3rd party by making use of the hidden variable āADHERENT_DEFAULT_CREATE_THIRDPARTYā (see Wiki).
In the process of creating a ānew contributionā you can create an invoice (and also a payment) which is direcly linked to the Third-party (the Third-party which is linked to the member).
to 3.
There was no need for renewl so far. As I say, our organisation was foundedd this summer, so current subscriptions are active until the end of december. So I have to explore the renewal process myself in the new year.
The process of renewing the active membership status for the next year is done in dolibarr by me and not by the members themselfes.
to 4.
As I said, our members do not have / use a dolibarr login. I canāt share experience to this.
I only did some light tests with the āPublic self-registration formā, which can be activated in them Members module. In my understanding, this would be a possible way of making users able to login to dolibarr, as a user account can be created by this process.
Your feedback is well appreciated and i got assiatnce through a few points, however, i guess since our operations are different, i may still go further for more solutions.
My challenge here is the switch to Subscription-up-to-date when recorded entry payment has not been confirmed received(just as it is with donation where someone make a donation promise, fills in the payment entry and the system sees it as Validation Promise , But once the real money is confirmed, the authorized officer confirms to Donation Received(Status changes from Promise Validation to Donation Received) and the payment entry is now seen under Bank/Cash module. So meaning that for the Contribution without Payment Gateway activation, upon validating the member auto registration, when he makes payment to the bank and submits his teller(Electronically or others), the authorised officer should be the one to confirm and change the status to Subscription-Up-to-Date
so that I understand you correctly:
You want the status of a member to only be displayed as āup to dateā when there is a confirmed receipt of payment for the contribution/ subscription fee.
As far as I understand, this cannot be implemented natively in dolibarr. The member is āup to dateā as soon as he or she is in an active, ongoing contribution period.
When thinking about your requirement, I am still fine with the decision that we keep the membership and contribution management (members module) separate from the invoice and payment processing (Third Parties, Invoices, etc. modules) but still linked to each other. I think that is more in line with the usual business cases.
At the time an active membership (a contribution/subscription) is established, a contribution invoice is created for this. The subscriptionis active even if no payment is made immediately. Tracking (outstanding) payments is done in a separate billing or reminder process and has no impact on the existing subscription. If no payment has been made after the payment deadline has expired (multiple times), the membership or subscription will be actively terminated by the organization.
Furthermore as you highlighted, what needs to be done is not to change the existing process, that could still be an option to follow, but if the process to up-to-date is such that an internal user like the financial secretary affirms receipt of payment, then status can change.
The reason why the 3rd paragraph may not be so smooth is it can create data inconsistencies at some period where total number of up-to-date members are 55 and after a period it comes down to 35. What about the bank entries? Cos they havent paid, up to date members are showing 55, and only 30 has paid, its kind of confusing when looking at the records.
I just hope it can be better than this except when a payment gateway is enabled then this doesnt matter anymore as the process is captured.
I think one method to make the member module better would be to create an order not an invoice, and then link the member contribution to the order. This would allow for making a new member status: ācontribution requestedā.
Orders are possible to pay online and when done so, an invoice is created. So the member contribution can link to the order which can be linked to the invoice and that linked to the payment.
I think it requires code changes @Absmachin, but not too complicated as one just need to link to an order, not an invoice, and the functions for either are probably very similar
hereās a little update. Iāve been laying some ground work for improving the membership module - based on my own situation, which is that I also sell memberships as an add on to other services - dance classes and dance events.
I have an upcoming pull request here, in which I want to be able to use the API to link subscriptions to proposals, orders and invoices.
Then in the GUI I have 2 pull requests which has already been accepted, these are for the GUI to shown when proposals, orders and invoices are linked to a subscription.
