Membership End Dates

[Lauren]

Hi all!
We have a strange(ish) membership structure that I'm having a hard time setting up in CiviCRM. Here's an illustrative example of my problem:

 John Smith becomes a new member on October 1, 2014 with the purchase of 1 $25 membership. Membership is (generally) valid for one year. His renewal date is October 1, 2015 with a 30 day grace period in order to keep the benefits of membership. He does not renew until November 15, 2015. Under our system his renewal date is based on his original join date, which would make his new renewal date Oct. 1, 2016. This renewal date never changes, no matter when you actually purchase your next membership. Therefore some people do not get a full year of benefits if they renew after the grace period.

How would I set this up in CiviCRM? I've tried using "member since" as the end date in one of my Membership Statuses but Civi says it's invalid once I try to use it. And there is no way that I can see to alter the terms of membership at all in the Member Types set up. Has anyone dealt with this before?

Thanks for your help!

Lauren

[petednz]

Hi Lauren - maybe try a new 'membership status', so you have your 30 day grace, plus a longer one - if necessary for 9 months from end of Grace

That might get you what you need

[Dan C]

Hi Lauren,  It sounds like you sort of have a hybrid between rolling memberships and fixed period memberships.  It's easy on the administrator end to adjust the end date when you enter the renewal, but if you want to do this on the front end (which I'm guessing is why you are asking) then you are going to have to use hooks to adjust the end date prior to submitting the data to Civi during the transaction. 

[Lauren]

Thanks for your responses! I am still working through how we are going to set Civi up and what our processes will be, so I can definitely work around it by manually adjusting it for now and try using a hook once we get everything in place. Just trying to get everything as automated as possible from the get go!
Thanks again!
Lauren

[JonGold]

Hi Lauren,

For the third time in a week, I find myself on these forums saying, "I had to deal with this for a client, so I wrote them an extension".  Now, my extension was specific to them, so it's quick and dirty - you'd have to know some PHP coding to make it work for you.  However, I DO have such a thing lingering in my personal git repositories.  If you want me to make it public, respond to me on this ticket, and when I find a minute I'll post the extension.

Hmm - actually, now that I look, I have TWO extensions that are applicable.  The one I'm thinking of is for users renewing online, and it shows them their "backdated" renewal date on the renewal form.  That one should work almost out of the box for you - in my client's case, they only backdated the renewal date if they were still in the grace period.

The other was written by my coworker for another client, and silently handles fixing the renewal dates, and works on both the front and back end.  The two extensions should probably be combined at some point!

Jon

[Lauren]

Joh that would be so helpful if you are willing to share that!
Thanks so much!
Lauren