Membership Orders Overview

Membership products are different from other products in the following ways:

· Membership can include services, such as access to social networking site or a members-only portal of a website that may include special content, such as a member directory, job posting board, etc.

· Membership products are intangible.

· The benefits of membership can be received over a specified period of time.

· Membership can offer benefits such as, discounted pricing for store products, meeting registration, publications or subscriptions.

Although membership products are unique in the ways listed above, they are similar to all products in that order creation stems from the Order Entry screen. From the Order Entry screen, to complete the creation of an order, the following steps are necessary:

1. Verify prerequisites.

2. Add a Dues Basis to a Customer. (optional)

3. Add a membership product to the order.

4. Change Membership Order Line Item Details. (optional)

5. Define shipping information (only necessary if an inventoried product is also added to the order as a benefit of the membership).

6. Create a receipt for the order.

For a video demonstrating the mandatory steps necessary in order to create a membership order, refer to Video Demo: Creating an Order for a Membership Product.

In this section:

· Membership Order Prerequisites

· Membership Life Cycle

· Understanding Membership Order Line Activation Rules

Membership Order Prerequisites

There are a couple special circumstances that would require prerequisite setup to occur before the creation of a membership order. For example, in order to qualify for a specific type of membership, such as a student membership, customers may be required to submit proof of current enrollment.

Submission, review, and acceptance of qualification documents, such as the example previously stated, is strictly a manual process.

Therefore, before creating a membership order, you need to verify that the customer meets the requirements, such as dues basis.

Membership Life Cycle

Below is a description of the lifecycle of a membership product order:

Task	Line Status	Fulfill Status
When you add a membership product to your order	Defaults to PROFORMA	Defaults to ACTIVE
When PARTIAL payment is made to the membership product (Short Pay Code = REJECT)	No Change to Line Status, remains in PROFORMA	No change to Fulfill Status
When FULL payment is made to the membership product (Short Pay Code =REJECT)	Changes from PROFORMA to ACTIVE	No change to Fulfill Status
When you cancel a membership product (Currently in Proforma Status)	Changes from PROFORMA to CANCELLED	No change to Fulfill Status
When you cancel a membership product (Currently in Active Status)	Changes from ACTIVE to CANCELLED	No change to Fulfill Status
When you renew your membership product to a new order	Old Order: Line Status = ACTIVE (or PROFORMA) New Order: Order Status = PROFORMA, Line Status = PROFORMA	No Change to Fulfill Status
If you have a membership order that starts in UNAPPROVED	UNAPPROVED	ACTIVE
When PARTIAL payment is made to the membership product from Unapproved (Short Pay Code = REJECT)	UNAPPROVED (If you approve the line, it will go to PROFORMA)	No change to Fulfill Status
When FULL payment is made to the membership product from Unapproved (Short Pay Code =REJECT)	UNAPPROVED (If you approve the line, it will go to ACTIVE)	No change to Fulfill Status
If you have a membership order where an advancement was done	First NATL line will be ACTIVE or PROFORMA Second NATL line will be ACTIVE or PROFORMA	First NATL line will be Terminate at End Second NATL line will be Active

Understanding Membership Order Line Activation Rules

Most organizations want membership order lines to be created with a proforma line status that gets activated when payment is made. This is accomplished by setting the default membership line status to “P” (for “proforma”) at the organization unit level.

Whether full payment is required for order line activation is controlled by the short-pay rule defined for the product rate code on the order line.

Another factor that impacts whether a membership order line is created as proforma or active is whether the membership product has a price of $0 when the “Allow Price Update” checkbox is checked on the General Setup screen in Product Maintenance. This setup is typically used by trade associations that negotiate with their company members the amount of dues that needs to be paid. When a membership order line is created for a membership product with a price of $0 and defined to allow price update, the system will set the line status to proforma so that the price can be edited before the order line is activated.

The typical setup for membership chapter, section, and donation products is that those products are defined as non-master products. Non-master membership products are created as sub-lines to the main membership order line. Non-master membership product order lines cannot be activated until the main master membership product order line is activated.

When the main membership line is activated, it may cause sub-lines to be activated, based on the setup of the products in the order sub-lines. The rules for how sub-lines are activated are detailed in the chart below:

MBR Product Record Type	Price > 0?	Allow Direct Price Update?	Master Product?	Short-Pay Rule	Sub-line?	Payment > 0 Applied to Line?	What Happens When Related Master Line Is Activated (Whether Activated by Payment or Manually by User)?
CHAPTER or SIG	Y	N	N	AR	Y	Y	Line is activated.
CHAPTER or SIG	Y	N	N	REJECT	Y	Y	If full payment applied, line is activated; otherwise, line remains as proforma.
CHAPTER or SIG	Y	N	N	AR	Y	N	Because short pay is AR, if the master order line is activated, this line status will go active and there will be a balance due.
CHAPTER or SIG	Y	N	N	REJECT	Y	N	Line remains as proforma.
CHAPTER or SIG	Y	Y	N	AR	Y	Y	Even though Allow Direct Price Update is Y, because the price is > 0, and because short pay is AR, the line does not remain as proforma; it is activated. This should be a back office activity only.
CHAPTER or SIG	Y	Y	N	AR	Y	N	Even though no payment is applied to the line, because the short pay is AR and the price is > 0, the line is activated. This should be a back office activity only.
CHAPTER or SIG	Y	Y	N	REJECT	Y	Y	Even though Allow Direct Price Update is Y, because the price is > 0, if full payment is applied, the line is activated. This should be a back office activity only.
CHAPTER or SIG	Y	Y	N	REJECT	Y	N	Because short pay is REJECT, because full payment is not applied to this line, the line will remain as proforma. This should be a back office activity only.
CHAPTER or SIG	N	Y	N	AR or REJECT	Y	N	This should only happen in the back office. Because line product is defined to allow direct price update and the price is zero, the line remains as proforma.
CHAPTER or SIG	N	Y	N	AR or REJECT	Y	Y	This scenario should not happen. The back office staff person should not apply payment until the price has been updated. If payment is applied to the chapter or SIG line, and the related master product order line has been activated, the chapter or SIG line will also be activated.
CHAPTER or SIG	N	N	N	AR or REJECT	Y	Y	From the web, this wouldn’t happen because the price is zero so the system won’t allow the customer to pay more than they owe. From back office, the line will go active and there will be a credit balance on the line.
CHAPTER or SIG	N	N	N	AR or REJECT	Y	N	Because price is $0, line will go active when related master line is activated.
DONATION	Y	Y	Y or N	ADJUST	Y or N	Y	Line is activated and unit price & base total amount is updated to the amount paid.
DONATION	Y	Y	Y or N	ADJUST	Y or N	N	Unit price remains as is and line status remains as proforma.
DONATION	N	Y	Y or N	ADJUST	Y or N	Y	Line is activated and unit price and base total amount is updated to the amount paid.
DONATION	N	Y	Y or N	ADJUST	Y or N	N	Unit price remains as zero and line status remains as proforma.

Best Practice Recommendations

· Org unit default status for MBR should be defined as “P”roforma. For more information, please see Defining Organization Unit Line Status Defaults.

· Chapter and section membership products should be defined as non-master products.

· Organizations should not web-enable membership products defined as “Allow Price Update”, because those should not be purchased from the web.

· The short pay rule of ADJUST should only be used on MBR DONATION products.