CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Currently, CiviMember requires the join date to be on or after the start date for a membership period. Attempts to have the start date precede the join date are blocked and a message returned: Start date must be the same or later than join date.

That behavior is problematic for fixed period memberships. For fixed period memberships, a person may join after the start of the fixed period, but the membership record extends back to the beginning of that fixed period. For example, if the fixed period is Jan 1-Dec 31, and I join on Jan 15, my join date is Jan 15 by my start date is Jan 1.

Anyway, when creating a new member record or using the renewal tool, this is not a problem, because CiviMember inserts/modifies the start/end dates automatically. But if you enter an existing record to manually edit the membership record, you can't save it, because it recognizes the rule as being broken.

I'd like to propose that rule be removed, or be downgraded to a warning/info message rather than a validation rule that blocks saving. Just wanted to get user input before I submit an issue.

-Brian

Correct, the issue is most relevant for fixed memberships.

However, I suspect there may be situations where someone may back-date the start of a rolling membership, and yet want to capture the actual date the individual joined, which is why I suggested keeping a warning/info message rather than a strict rule. I can't think of a specific scenario right now, but know from experience that there are always unique situations where membership periods are adjusted for the purpose of event registration, directory publication, etc.

-Brian