This menu item allows an authorised Committee Member, usually the Membership Secretary, to record receipt of a membership fee paid ‘offline’ i.e. by cash, cheque or bank transfer. Once the receipt is recorded, the System will change the user from ‘Unpaid’ to ‘Paid’ in User Management.
If a fee is paid ‘online’ i.e. through the Club’s Paypal account, the System is meant to change automatically the user from ‘Unpaid’ to ‘Paid’ (provided the Club’s Paypal account setting for Instant Payment Notifications is set to Yes). However, as at March 2018, the Paypal link was not working correctly and Paypal payments are not triggering the change to ‘Paid’. Since the payments are arriving ok and the transaction record can be viewed by the Treasurer through the the Club’s Paypal account, we can live with this bug.
To record receipt of a fee:
- Log in
- Change ‘Member’ to your Committee role, e.g. ‘Membership Secretary’
- Fees Receipt Management
- Add Fees Receipt (blue button, top of page)
- Fill in the form. Note that once you have selected the person’s Username from the drop-down list, the System will display their Name, and the applicable fee in the ‘Total Fee’ box at the foot of the page. If you can’t see the person’s Username near the top of the drop-down list, type the first few letters of their Username in the search box.
- After filling in the form, Submit.
To edit an existing receipt
The ‘Edit’ button against each Added Fee receipt allows you to make a correction e.g. if you made a typing error when you entered a Cheque number.
It could also be used if the Club only wanted to retain data about a member’s most recently-paid fee – you could use the Edit button to overwrite the previous fee receipt – with a new Payment Date and with a new fee amount, if fees have changed since last year. However, this method retains less data than using ‘Add Fees Receipt’. If in doubt, use ‘Add Fees Receipt’.
Edit Fee Receipt date picker
Opens at the date of that user’s previous fee receipt. This is reasonable. For instance if you received a cheque on the 15th or the month, recorded its receipt, then found that it bounced, received a new cheque on the 30th of the month, and hit Edit to change the date of receipt, the date picker would open at approximately the right date, which is good.
In the case of the migrated data, however, the date picker opens at January 2001, which means an annoying number of clicks to move forward to today’s date. This problem will gradually disappear.
Migrated fee receipt data
The members who were not expired at the time the new System was implemented on 3rd November 2017 were all migrated to the Fees Receipt page, regardless of whether they had paid online (Paypal or credit card) or offline. Normally, the Fees Receipt page only lists people who have paid offline. However, at the time of data migration, this was a way to ensure that all un-expired members displayed the blue ‘Paid’ button in User Management.
For these members, the migrated data displays the received fees as $0 and the date as 2001. But we decided that did not matter since all that the data really needed to do was cause the Blue ‘Paid’ button to appear.
Gradually, these $0 and 2001 receipts will be superseded and become less of a distraction.
Troubleshooting
At March 2018, there were two known bugs:
Paypal payments are not triggering the change of a user’s record in User management to ‘Paid’; since the payments are arriving ok, the user’s access is not affected, and the transaction record can be viewed by the Treasurer through the Club’s Paypal account, we can live with this bug
A Membership application for which the applicant has paid Online i.e. via Paypal, are not triggering an alert email to the Membership Secretary. The Membership Secretary is working around this by checking User management regularly for new applicants.
If any other symptoms appear, such as:
- The expiry dates of users who renew with online payment are not being automatically extended by 12 months, or
- Users who paid offline are not appearing in the ‘Add Fee Receipt’ drop-down list
ask the Treasurer to check the Club’s Papal account settings. If Instant Payment Notifications has been switched off in the settings, switch it back to On.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. In anticipation of a fee rise, several people applied for membership around the time of the AGM. Some submitted their applications before the AGM and some a day or two later. How do I know which fee applies to which person?
A. If the person applied and paid online, the System will have charged them the fee at the time of they hit ‘Submit’ on their application form. If the person applied online but selected offline payment, the System still knows which fee applied at the time the person hit ‘Submit’ on the membership application form.
Q. Do the ‘Paid’ and ‘Unpaid’ labels in User Management affect a user’s access?
A. No. The Paid and Unpaid labels in User Management are for information only. The System does not use these labels to enable or disable a user’s access to the System – that is controlled by the user’s status i.e. Approved, Rejected or Expired.
Q. In Add Fees Receipt, there is a drop-down list of names that I can select from. But the list does not contain all current members and applicants. Why not?
A. It includes only migrated users and people who have applied for membership offline (ie via the paper form), or are seeking to renew offline.
by Linda Groom