auto updating end date for membership renewals

[jamie]

Currently, when a rolling membership is renewed, the end date of the membership is automatically extended by the period assigned to the Membership type. For example, if I define a membership type with a one month duration and dues of $2, when I renew that membership, the end date is extended by one month.

That works great and is very convenient.

The problem is that many users of Power base have members that  want to pay $12 all at once. If I renew with a $12 payment, the end date is extended by just one month, not 6 months ($12 / $2 per month = 6 months). In practice, the data entry person has to always re-edit the membership record and manually enter the proper end date.

What if instead...

• If no payment is made, the current behavior applies. Clicking the renew button extends the membership by the duration configured for the membership type
• If a payment is made along with the renewal and the payment divided by the dues amount divides evenly, then the end date is extended by:  ( payment amount / dues amount ) * duration.
• If a payment is made along with the renewal and the payment divided by the dues amount does not divide evenly, then payment amount / dues amount  is rounded down and you get a message letting you know that it was rounded down.

Curious to hear feedback or possible problems with this approach.

jamie

[petednz]

Could you offer 2 types of membership - one that is monthly and one that is annual?

[jamie]

That was my first suggestion .

But it was resoundingly shot down. The payment amounts vary a lot (not just one month or one years worth). Also - it would mean adding new membership types that essentially have no meaning, which would be confusing.

jamie

[josue]

this is a piece of functionality that most of the PowerBase groups need. the question here is whether this is functionality that will serve the broader community.

we can do this in a module. we can even offer an option in a drupal setting to turn this functionality on or off.

if this would be useful to the broader community then we (PTP) needs some guidance on how to best do this. our solution will only work in drupal, which is all we use.

--josue

[JoeMurray]

Rather than working backward from the payment amount to the number of periods to renew for, I would recommend inserting a field into the membership form allowing people to specify 1 - n periods, default it to 1, and (re-)calculate the amount as necessary. I'm not sure this is widely needed - best to package it as an extension rather than require these UI elements to be present in core. Alternatively, you could complicate the membership admin wizard by adding a yes/no option there to turn on this functionality in the signup process.

My sense is this a nice to have feature that is not used by many, is very useful to those who want it, and is better packaged as a extension so that usability is not unnecessary degraded by complications most don't need.

[jamie]

After a discussion with Dave G, we came to the same conclusion about extending for N periods.

We agreed on a text line in the UI that says: Extend membership end date by 1 term, with a link next to it that says "change" which would transform it into a text field in which the user could add an arbitrary number.

jamie

[Dave Greenberg]

For anyone following this - the feature will be included in 4.1:
http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-8750