In an effort to give you, the site admin, the ability to set the dates to which installment payments are due has reached an impasse and we need your input.

 

If you were able to define four dates to which installments are due how would you expect the following scenario to function. You have set the dates to 3/1, 6/1, 9/1, and 12/1. These are your quarter start dates and you want to be able to collect payments on these dates. The membership is for one year and does not have a set end date. A new member signs up on 7/5 so their membership will run from 7/5/2016 to 7/5/2017. The next quarter due date is not until 9/1.

• Do you expect the first payment to be from 7/5/2016 to 9/1/2016 or do you expect the member to be billed through the next full quarter date to result in a first payment from 7/5/2016 to 12/1/2016? What if the member signed up on 8/26? We probably would not want to bill them from 8/26/2016 to 9/1/2016 and then have another payment due on 9/1/2016, right?
• As this member will renew on 7/5/2017 their first installment will always fall in between two quarter dates.

 

This scenario above would be the same if you want to bill installments on the first of each month. If they sign up on 7/5 do we bill them up to the next installment date of 8/1?

 

What I need from you is what you expect from this scenario? If the member does not signup nor renew on a specific date that you set inside the membership, what duration should we charge for the first bill and how will this impact the next year when the member renews on 7/5/2017? How should we calculate the first and last payments in this scenario?

 

Also, please think about whether these types of memberships should expire on a specific date. This would make this scenario easier because the renewals would always start on a set date and that date could be a quarter start or end depending on how you setup your quarterly installments.

For our association we need the quarters to run based on join/ renew dates not on an actual calendar year. Our memberships run one year from the date they join. For example: Start 07/05/2016 end 07/05/2017.

In an ideal world we would want our quarterly installments to run consistent with their term. Most of our members are annual and must be paid in full at the time of joining. However, we do have lifetime members and their dues can be billed / paid in 4 equal quarterly installments For example: Join 07/05/2016 next quarterly payment would be due October 5, 2016 and so on.

As for renewal/expiration dates our lifetime members do not have an expiration date once they have paid the entire amount. However if they are paying the dues in quarterly installments and miss an installment, we give them a 3 year membership for each quarterly amount paid and just keep billing them every quarter either until they pay or until the 3 years expires.

Our memberships run on the calendar year. So if someone joins on 7/5, we give them that month for free and prorate by month, so the first payment on 7/5 would be for Aug and Sept, then the second installment on 9/20 (whatever date we set) would be for the last quarter.
If they join on 8/26 we would not want to bill for 1 month. We would want to charge for Sept 1 - Dec 31 . Having a selection to allow a minimum amount of time to bill for would be very effective.

all our memberships expire on either 6/30 or 12/31 depending what the members chooses for a membership, 6 mo or 1 yr

Monthly installments we would charge the day they sign up for the next month(not the month the joined) and always charge on the 1st of the month.


We have semi-annual and annual memberships that all run from 1/1 to 6/30 and 7/1 to 12/31
Installments need to always be on a specific date. if a member renews on 12/10/16 for a year and does 2 payments we would like to set the date for the 2nd payment on 6/20 (or whatever we choose)
If someone joins on 3/5: we give them the first month for free and prorate by month for either 3 months or 9 month depending on how long they want to join for. if they join for 9 months have the second payment due at the 6 month mark 6/20.
It would be good to be able to calculate prorating by day(the way it is now) or by month.

This way a member can actual understand what the calculation is and it keeps thing very simple.

This also rolls into deferred income: if they renew on 12/16 then the income would need to be deferred till Jan 1 of the next year.

Thanks for the feedback Sarah. From your reply it sounds like you are just using the number of installments as 4 and are not needing a way to bill the installments on specific dates. Is that correct?

Brian - I don't know if this topic is closed but having fixed quarterly dates would not work for us at all. We offer a four, monthly payment plan based on renewal date and all plans having a hard end of June 30. We currently handle this manually (spreadsheet tracking) and process credit card payments twice a month (15th and 30th). We also have a fixed, calendar year membership. So - to use a variation of your example - a member renewing on December 7th would pay 1/4 of the total renewal at that time and then added to the 15th of the month cohort and would be subsequently charged on Jan 15, Feb 15 and March 15.

Patricia,

 We are also looking into giving an option for a monthly installment due date as well.  When you select MONTHLY for the installment we would give you the option of 1st or 15th of the month.  It helps when you have a set expiration date as the first year is the only invoice that would have some kind of prorate or partial duration depending on when they sign up. 

Do you process cards on the 15th and 30th depending on when someone signs up?  I am assuming you are not charging each member twice a month, right?

Our membership is yearly, based on the join date, with a monthly payment. We previously set all expiration dates to the end of the month for a year after they joined, starting the roll over at the middle of the month. Example: If they paid on 2/4, they would expire on 2/28 of the following year. If they paid on 2/24, they would expire on 3/31 of the following year.

Quarterly payments would not work for us. Fixed date payments may, if they are monthly. The logic above is what I personally would expect.