CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

hi folks,

not sure if this is best here or on the dev list, but decided to err on the side of recent momentum. 

use case: allow online membership signup with an "email invoice" option that does not initiate an immediate online transaction; instead, the member receives invoices in the amount chosen (in our case, not fixed by membership type) on a monthly or annual basis according to membership type.

this is close to achievable in existing infrastructure:

  1) UpdateMembershipRecords script could be revised to send invoices (aka membership reminders, but which ask for check to be sent); 
  2) in the "contribution amounts" section of contribution profile, enabling contribution amounts section allows "other" amounts beyond membership minimum, while
  3) not executing realtime transactions means that no attempt is made to obtain payment information.

the problem is that the contribution is recorded as complete without any actual funds being transferred.

i see several ways to address this, and would appreciate suggestions.

  1) create a mechanism to notate such contributions as "pending" until payment is received, and then revising to "complete" (using either status flag or new field)
  2) prevent a contribution from being created at all, but create a new field for "membership amount" with value for invoices
  3) use this as an opportunity to start dealing with pledges?

any recommendations from core developers?  any similar use cases or suggestions from rest of community?

thanks,
.b

We have created a "pay later" option for event and contributions. You can check it out at:

http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-2395

and test it on our sandbox at http://sandbox.civicrm.org/ to ensure this works as per the spec. This would be a great way of contributing back to the project

lobo