Typically, there are two types of membership: individual and company. Individual memberships are invoiced directly and receive membership benefits through the purchase of their membership order. Company memberships are purchased by corporations and institutions for their employees, and membership benefits can be given to either the company or individual employees.
Membership is sold to non-members individuals and, therefore, the rate structure that determines that price of the membership will be set for non-member pricing. The default rate should be setup as the most popular rate that the association offers to non-members. This is usually a one-year rate.
If the membership period is using the anniversary model where the Begin Date can be any day of the year, the membership period will be for a full 12 months. If the membership period is using a calendar model, then the Begin Date will be the current date and the End Date will be the end of the year or a specific month. In this case, proration of the first year’s dues will be calculated.
Based on your setup, if the association has special rules concerning calendar proration, then rate codes can be setup based on which quarter of the year the member joins and staff will manually select the correct rate code.
Companies purchasing a membership could have their annual membership dues rate determined by a characteristic of the company, such as revenue, quantity sold, or number of employees. This is accomplished by adding a dues basis schedule.
Trade associations very often have an entire company entered as a customer on a membership order, and by doing so can purchase one membership product that provides the membership to all individuals in the company.
The membership products will be setup using dues schedules. But before the schedules can be calculated, staff must go into the customer record and add a Dues Basis entry to enter the value to be used in this year’s membership calculation.