CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Were struggling to keep track of memberships and fees at our small judo club.

We have people scribbling things on bits of paper, receipt books - someone is allegedly keeping an excel spreadsheet on a computer (although that could be a viscious rumour). Man o man - so much hassle when all I want to do is get on the mat and train.

So here is what I would like:
1) a contact database to track juniors, seniors and kids (3 different classes)
2) ability to send them emails and track them
3) something simple for our volunteers to use (different volunteers at each class)
4) a way of tracking when training fees are due

What would be awesome:
5) payment of fees online (I know, I'll need a merchant account/3rd party)
6) inclusion of member photos
7) Ability to synchronise the club's database with the website one

Here are our main problems
1) we have no internet access at the club
2) I (who am by default the one who gets to sort this out) have no php knowledge

Further information:
We have a drupal 6 site running.
see www.budokan-judo-club.com

Possibilities include running the (windows + XAMPP) standalone on a USB, so I can take it home and send emails from there where I have internet access. Alternatively - forget about civiCRM altogether and install a customised ACT! database (done this at work) or purchase some other club management software (which to date I have not yet found)

Am I way out of my league with civiCRM? I'm a bit worried it is not a user-friendly option. I'm happy enough to dive in the deep-end, as evidenced by my drupal site efforts but really I don't want to spend weeks setting it up either.

I'd appreciate some insights.
Thanks team....

Well, I guess I want, in main - the following:

To have 3 volunteers to be able to enter/change member information and track/mark whether fees are up to date and check relevant information on the computer we have at the club. We also want to be able to print/generate a report on who has fees outstanding at the club.

We also would like to somehow transfer information between the "standalone" civi at the club and a website version so that the information is synchronised between the two. This way we can still set-up an online payment method and manage newsletters.

Yeah, thanks.

I was afraid of that. I guess you need to be a bit of an expert to operate civiCRM, which is a pity - but I really don't have time to screw around with it for hours every time, modifying PHP code and asking questions on community forums that may or may not be answered promptly.

I suppose that's the danger about open source. Since it's free - you cannot very much complain about a lack of support.

Maybe one day when I have a lot more time I can investigate it further. In the meantime I'll have to go and look for something paid that will do what I need.

Thanks for the feedback.

In my limited experience, there is not a lot that breaks in CiviCRM! I certainly do not think the quality is less then with paid software, and believe me I have implemented a few over the years. You DO need to think about what you want and maintain data, but that is absolutely no different from paid software. And you do NOT I repeat NOT have to modify PHP code to use CiviCRM.
I can imagine there are better solutions for what you want to do (get email at the club?) but I would not consider buying software one of them. I would imagine you'd end up with the same amount of work maintaining the data and less budget for the club.
Regards
Erik

I completely agree that it takes time to get software to do what you want......perhaps self-thinking software should be readily available

Hmmm....you would probably have to use the standard import function or develop a script to synchronize the 2 installations. If that is your only concern I'd be happy to help you out with developing the script. I do the same for data migration for some of our customers who have data sitting in old systems that need to be transferred to CiviCRM. Keeping stuff synochronized in a dynamic environment would be over my head, but if you need to exchange data from a Dupral format to a standalone CiviCRM I'd be happy to do that for you. I am not sure that is your best solution though. Could you not create a local database with OpenOffice?

Erik

I can see that you expect it to synchronize. CiviCRM does not include such an automatic function as far as I know, but there are lots of people around with more knowledge. But....if you describe exactly what you want the synchronize function to do, I am sure it can be developed without too much effort. As you explain you do not have a lot of PHP I am quite willing to put some effort in to create a sync function for you specific situation. What I would recommend is that you install CiviCRM on your site and play with the functionality. If you think it does the job and the only problem is keeping it in sync between the club and your home situation, we can look into that together. I can imagine I would write you a function that you execute at the club which extracts data, and then a function that you call from the site which uploads the data. You would have to compete with work, family, the cats and soccer timewise though 
Does that help you or do you need more support to get it up and running?

How about maintaining a single Civi site on your server and using import/export csv to populate an excel spreadsheet at the club?
Import the records back in with whatever updates were made at the club.