This Extensions provides tools for a "European" interpretation of the membership concept. In the Anglo-Saxon countries (CiviCRM's native land) a membership is similar to a service subscription. If you don't pay anymore, your "subscription" will not be extended, and you will be excluded from the service (= your membership ends). In many other countries, the conception is different: it's more like a indeterminate binding contract. You don't necessarily pay upfront, and your membership is not terminated automatically if you don't pay for the next period (which is what CiviCRM assumes).
A number of problems arise from this different concept:
- Payments are often not made upfront, the way CiviCRM expects.
- Membership fees are not necessarily entered manually, or collected via a payment processor, but can enter CiviCRM by other means (e.g. import, SEPA collection, etc.). This means that they can be contribution records, but not (yet) linked to the corresponding membership.
- Memberships should be automatically extended, when the appropriate payment is in the system.
- Despite all those possible irregularities, you need to know who is behind on their payments and by how much.
- Etc.
The membership extension replaces the built-in functionality of extending memberships. It provides the following features:
- Assign contributions of a specific financial type to memberships. This makes it possible to find contacts that did not pay enough membership fees.
- Automatically extend the end date of a membership if enough membership fees for the period are paid.
- Create membership numbers automatically with a configurable pattern.
- Provide additional tokens for communication, for example cancellation date and reason.
The project 60 membership extension does not interfere with the built-in mechanism of membership types and membership statuses, as well as the automatic changing of membership statuses.
https://docs.civicrm.org/project60-membership/en/latest
This CiviCRM extension is provided as Free and Open Source Software, and we are happy if you find it useful. However, we have put a lot of work into it (and continue to do so), much of it unpaid for. So if you benefit from our software, please consider making a financial contribution so we can continue to maintain and develop it further.
If you are willing to support us in developing this CiviCRM extension, please send an email to info@systopia.de to get an invoice or agree a different payment method. Thank you!