Adding Membership Payments in Altru: Which method to choose?

There are a lot of different ways to add membership payments in Altru, but that doesn’t mean we should just pick our favorite method and stick to it for every payment we add.  How you add membership payments depends on where the payment originated and what it’s meant for, and it has a huge impact on the accuracy of your membership reporting.  Making sure your staff always chooses the best method can save you a lot of headaches in the future. Here are a few pointers:

• Membership payments should be added through the office that receives them.  If a patron buys a membership at the ticket office, the payment should be added in the ticket office, through a Sales screen.  If the development office receives a check for a membership renewal, this payment should be added through the Add a Payment screen or through Batch.
• In the Add a Payment screen or in Batch, always add the payment and apply it to the membership, this ties the payment to the membership transaction and allows you to accurately report on your membership revenue.
• Never add a payment, save it, and then separately add or renew the membership.  This results in a payment that has no ties to the membership.
• The payment should always be made under the Constituent record of the payer.  For instance, if Joe is paying to renew a membership for Chris, add the payment under Joe’s record and apply the payment to Chris’s membership.  This provides an accurate history of who made the payment and for what purpose.

We have some great membership videos on our Altru Videos Page, including this one that I think you’ll like:

How to Apply a Payment to a Membership (includes procedures for renewing, adding a new membership and paying for a gift membership)

Remember to sign up for our Membership Miniseries in March for additional discussions on all things memberships! Contact Dorothy McIver for more information at Dorothy.McIver@Blackbaud.com.