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Greg.Tomkins
Greg.Tomkins
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Setting up initial recurring membership database

Aug 14, 2012 11:56 PM

Tags: #membership #secure_zone #recurring

I have a problem regarding establshing a new membership website form an existing database of over 1000 members split across half dozen different membership classifications and I would be interested to hear how I tackle this matter.

 

Each membership level has a different price so am considering setting the memberships up as either

  1. individual products for each membership class with prices set rather than charging for the secure zone as we have to raise manual invoices for new members joining par the way through the year who will be charged pro-rata, or
  2. setting up a secure zone for each classification with separate prices and a common 'member' zone that all belong to as well which would be used to control access to the common member aeas of the site

 

Following Option 2

 

Choice (2) is relatively easy if I understand BC correctly in that as I import the existing members into the CRM I include them into the relevant secure zones and set their expiry date as being the common membership renewal date.The memberships are all renewed on the same date in the year. We are putting the new website together and need to take up the existing members.

 

Quest 1: Am I correct in understanding that BC will generate a new invoice to all members 2 weeks prior to the secure zone expiry. As we don't have their credit card details we will have to direct them for their first renewal to a link to sign up to that secure zone again based on their existing CRM details. Will this then kick off the recurring payments from that year on?

 

Following Option 1

 

This provides a simpler secure zone management but leads to the problem of how do we generate the automatic invoices 2 weeks prior to the membership renewal date?

 

As we don't have a recurring order against these members there is no trigger for recurring invoices to be generated.

 

Quest 2: Is there any way that you can pre-load a recurring order against a list of CRM customers (in our case 1000+) without doing this one by one per customer?

 

Quest 3: Assuming we can pre-load the orders how do we handle that initial renewal of membership where it is against a recurring product item when we don't have any existing credit card details?

 

The answer to Quest 2 may force my hand here but I thought it worth exporing some of the great ideas that this Forum produces and someone may suggest an approach that i have not considered.

 

Cheers... Greg

303 Views   3 Replies   Latest reply: mario_gudelj, Aug 16, 2012 5:10 PM
 
Replies
  • mario_gudelj
    1,579 posts
    Oct 13, 2010
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    1. mario_gudelj,
    Aug 16, 2012 12:35 AM   in reply to Greg.Tomkins
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    Hi Greg,

     

    BC's recurrence for memberships is very basic and it will not be easy to implement your requirement. So, there are two ways to create a recurring order in BC. 1 - Customer goes to a site and fills in the secure zone membership form and the recurring order is created. The system will then raise an instance of that initial order 14 days prior to the next billing cycle and charge the credit card. 2 - You manually create a recurring order for every customer through admin interface. You have to have credit card details to do this.

     

    There could be a third option where you can use the API and go through the list of customers and create CRM records and orders for them. You may want to contact someone like Simpleflame to see if they can implement this for you.

     

    -Anything outside of this can not be easily achieved.

     

    Cheers,

     

    -mario

     
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  • Greg.Tomkins
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    2. Greg.Tomkins,
    Aug 16, 2012 1:36 AM   in reply to mario_gudelj
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    Thanks Mario - I suspected as such and am now thinking thatthe answer to the problem will be along your first suggestion.

    1. We will import all the current members and grant them access to a secure zone called say "zone1" with an expiry date 1 month after their membership renewal.
    2. "zone1" will not have a fee and will be set to recurr annually.
    3. We will generate renewal reminder email to all members prior to their renewal date advising them to login to the site and to complete their renewal vaia a form that will be for payment to the "members" secure zone
    4. This form will use their existing CRM details to populate the form and they then complete the payment for the "member" zone which is set with an annual recurring membership fee
    5. When this form is submitted it will not only receive their payment and set their expiry date for the "member" zone but also increment the expiry date of "zone1" by 1 year

      Are we able to set the expiry date to a fixed date when submitting (ie the annual renewal date of all members)?

    6. "zone1" provides a grace period of 1 month to be able to login and renew their "membership" still accessing their current CRM details.

     

    Does this sound reasonable?

     

    Cheers... Greg

     
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  • mario_gudelj
    1,579 posts
    Oct 13, 2010
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    3. mario_gudelj,
    Aug 16, 2012 5:10 PM   in reply to Greg.Tomkins
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    That sounds reasonable, Greg.

     

    "Are we able to set the expiry date to a fixed date when submitting (ie the annual renewal date of all members)?" <<< Yes. Please see http://kb.worldsecuresystems.com/134/bc_134.html, section "Setting the expiration date for a Secure Zone subscription based on a web form submission"

     

    Cheers,

     

    -mario

     
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