CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hey! I'm running into an issue and looking for community feedback on proposed improvements.

When a contact joins in between the fixed start day and rollover day on a fixed period membership (with a year duration), the start date is set to the fixed period start date. For instance, we have a fixed period start date set to July 1st with a Rollover day of March 31. If someone joins on September 18th, 2011, their membership dates will be:

Join Date: September 18th, 2011
Start Date: July 1, 2011
End Date: June 30, 2012

I would argue that the membership start date is incorrect. It didn't actually start on July 1, 2011. It started on September 18th, 2011. However, being that the Join Date does mark the actual join date, I could live with that. But then, say this person renews on July 15, 2012. Their membership dates will be:

Join Date: September 18th, 2011
Start Date: July 1, 2012
End Date: June 30, 2013

Now, by looking at this membership, I can't tell when that person renewed. I could, of course, look at the associated activity or contribution record, but at a glance of the membership record itself, I don't know when they renewed.

And when I look at the membership dashboard, I find this information to be incorrect. Let's say 5 people joined this month (October) so far, so they all have October 2011 join dates. The dashboard is showing me that no new members have joined because it's pulling based off the membership start date and these 5 memberships have start dates set back to July 1. And let's say 10 people renewed this month (late, yes). The dashboard will show me that I have no renewed members this month because it's based off, once again, the start date.

So....what I suggest is that EITHER:

The membership dashboard criteria for new member counts be modified to use JOIN DATE rather than START DATE. And membership records should be modified to include a RENEWAL DATE, which records the date the membership was renewed and then the dashboard criteria for renewal member counts be modified to use RENEWAL DATE rather than START DATE.

OR

The START DATE of fixed period memberships doesn't get set to the fixed start day. Rather, the start date would be set to the day the contact joined, if a new membership, or the day the contact renewed, if a renewing membership. And if this change were made, fixed period membership definitions should no longer have a FIXED PERIOD START DAY as that would be misleading. Instead, it should be replaced with a FIXED PERIOD END DAY.