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Setting Membership Preferences

1.Choose the Home workspace by clicking the Home tab above the ribbon.

2.In the Settings section of the ribbon, click Preferences
 

3.When the System Preferences window opens, expand the Membership section of the hierarchy on the left.

4.The following preferences are available:

•Auto-Save Changes - controls whether the system saves the current record when you select a new page. This can speed data-entry, but it also means an accidental change can be saved by mistake.  The Save and Cancel buttons still work normally regardless of this preference.

•Check for Duplicates - controls whether the system checks the database for potential duplicates when saving a new member record.

•Clear Dues Entries on Expire - controls whether a records associated dues entries are deleted when the record is automatically updated to an inactive status (based on status settings)

•Default End Date - controls the default entry in the End Date field on all new membership records.

oIf you choose to set a number of months to add to the Start Date, the End Date will be blank until the Start Date is entered.

oIf you choose to set a month and day combination, the system will check to see whether the day has already passed before using it. In such a case, the date will be moved to the following year.  If the selected date is February 28th, and the current year is a leap year, the date will be changed to February 29th.

•Default Start Date - controls the default entry in the Start Date field on all new membership records.

oIf you choose to use the Current Date, the Start Date will always be set to the current system date at the time the record is created.

oIf you choose to set a month and day combination, the system will always set the year to the current year, even if the date will be in the past.  i.e., a setting of Feb. 15 will always be entered as Feb. 15, of this year for every record created anytime this year.

•Delete Action - controls what happens when a membership record is selected and deleted. There are two possible outcomes:

oIf you choose to Delete Immediately, after you confirm the deletion the record will be permanently removed from the database. This is the normal behavior of the system.

oIf you choose to Change Status, then the system will change the record's status to "(Delete)". Any record set to this status will be permanently deleted by the system when you exit MemberTies (unless you have set the Auto-Delete preference to prevent this). Thus, the Delete Action preference essentially gives you a chance to change your mind, because prior to exiting the system you can still change the record to some other status and prevent deletion.

•Member IDs

oMember ID Prefix - if specified, the system will automatically begin each new Member ID with the desired prefix text. If Member IDs have been preloaded, the prefix value will be added to the preloaded ID value when it is selected for use.
 
Note: if this preference is used, the Require Numeric IDs preference will automatically be turned off.

oRecycle Preloaded IDs - controls whether a pre-loaded member ID that has been used will be marked as Unused if the corresponding membership record is deleted. For example, if preloaded ID number 100 was assigned to a membership record (and therefore marked as Used), it would normally remain unavailable for reuse forever. If this preference is enabled, then when the membership record using that ID is deleted the ID will be marked as Unused and will be selected again when a new record is created. This can be helpful if your organization has a finite pool of ID numbers and the order in which they are used does not matter (i.e., if it is ok that ID 100 might get assigned to a new record that would otherwise have been number 1923 had ID 100 not been marked as Unused again).

oRequire Numeric IDs - controls whether non-numeric data can be used in the Member ID field on membership records. In addition, if numeric IDs are required the Member ID column will use a numeric sort when it appears on the Membership List or a report. Otherwise, the column will use an alphanumeric sort. (To understand the difference between a numeric and alphanumeric sort, consider the following list of numbers:

oRequire Preloaded IDs - controls whether a pre-loaded ID is required in order to create a member record.  If there are no remaining pre-loaded IDs, no more members can be created.

oShow System ID - controls whether the internal system ID is displayed on the General Info tab of the member record

•Middle Initial Period - controls whether the system automatically appends a period to single-character middle initial entries on member and friend/family records. (This punctuation goes against postal addressing standards.) Changing this preference will update all applicable records to add or remove the period as applicable.

•Private Field Labels - controls the label used for each of the available private fields on member records

•Reset Copied Item Date - controls whether the primary date field (Date1) on an assigned item is set to the current date when a copy is made.  If this is off, the copied item will exactly match the original item. This is designed to simplify item entry where a member is assigned an item repeatedly, and the date needs to be set to the date it was assigned every time.

•Reset End Date - controls what happens when the expiration behavior of a Status is based on the End Date, and it causes the system to change the status of a membership record. By default, the system will reset the End Date of the affected record to the date the status change occurred. This is designed to allow the grace period of a subsequent status to begin calculating from the date the member actually changed to the new status.  If you would prefer to have all calculations use the original End Date, turn this preference off.

•Set Flag on New - controls whether the system automatically turns on the Flag switch when creating a new membership record.  This can enable you to easily query for new records if you need to run a special report or mailing list for new members.

•Start in Search Box - controls whether the search box above the list is automatically activated when the list is opened or refreshed.

•Starting Field - controls where the cursor begins in new membership records: the First Name field or Prefix.  If the Prefix field is rarely used, choose the First Name option to speed data entry

5.Click Save after changing settings.
 
Note: The Auto-Save Preference Changes preference controls whether the system saves each preference automatically when changes are made.

6.When finished, click Close.