Almost all clubs have a set date on which all memberships expire. This may the end of the year, June 30, the date of the Annual General Meeting, or some other arbitrary date.
In the master record for your Club (the "Categories" link in the menu, known as the "View Club" page), there are two fields which are used to manage how your club’s memberships will expire.
Finding where these values are stored
From the home page or any page, click on the "Categories" heading in the menu.
View Current Settings
New Sub End Date
Unsurprisingly, this is the date on which any new members’ memberships and existing members’ renewals will expire. You will need to update this field from time to time, most likely annually.
Grace Period
This is a value in days, such as 14, 60 or 90. For this number of days beyond the latest subscription end-date, that member will continue to be treated as "Current". (Their Membership Status will be shown as "Expiring"). The member will be considered "struck off" and their status will show "Lapsed" once Grace Period days have passed from their last renewal.
Click Edit to adjust these club-wide settings.
Change New Sub End Date and Grace Period Settings
Membership Fees and Membership Expiry Management.
From our experience with Car Clubs, there are three typical models for managing when new memberships will expire and how much new members are charged: Extended Membership, Discounted Rate or by Anniversary. You will have entered the standard Joining Fee and Renewal Fee for each Membership Type in the Membership Types table previously. When creating a New Member, you can over-ride this amount if you wish.
1. Extended Membership Model.
New memberships are given more than 12 month’s initial membership, so that they get good value for money from their initial joining fee. A club that uses this model and expires all memberships on June 30 might allow a member that joins in March to get 15 months’ worth of membership in their initial subscription, rather than be expected to renew after 3 months.
This club would update New Sub End Date at the beginning of March to be June 30 of next year.
2. Discounted Rate Model.
A club for whom all memberships expire on June 30 might allow members who join after Jan 1 to pay half the normal Joining Fee. Perhaps members who join from March 1 pay one quarter.
This club would update New Sub End Date to end of June next year at the end of June. Additionally, they could choose to adjust the Joining Fee in the Membership Types table on Jan 1 and March 1, or just amend how much a new member pays when they create the new membership directly.
3. Anniversary Model.
Every membership expires on the anniversary of the date that member joined, in the manner of car rego or home insurance. This is a massive administrative burden, suitable only for very small or very large clubs that need to consider cash-flow.
This club would either ignore New Sub End Date entirely, or update it to this day next year before adding a large number of members.
Remember that you can always override the end-date when creating a new member or renewal if need be.
Life Membership
Your club may have some form of Honorary Life Membership, where certain members are not required to pay renewals and are effectively members forever. The simplest way to manage this is to set the Subs End Date for any Life Member to sometime far, far in the future, such as 2099-12-31. Such a membership will never expire.
Should that member pass away, or resign from the club, you could choose to set the "Is Not To Be Contacted" checkbox to stop further correspondence, and update the Subs End Date to reflect the real end of their Membership.
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