Memberships and dues

Memberships track how an organisation or a person belongs to your clubs and programmes (business network, support programme, association of municipalities…) and the dues owed for each period. An organisation has only one record, even when it is a member of several clubs. This article explains how to set up clubs, record a membership, call the dues, follow overdue dues and record payments. It is intended for the people who manage members and for CRM administrators.

Before you start #

• The CRM module must be enabled for your workspace and open to you (see Enabling and administering the CRM module).
• Permissions in the role matrix, CRM menu: “Memberships and dues — View” to see the members, the Memberships tab of records and a membership’s record; “Memberships and dues — Create” for New membership; “Memberships and dues — Edit” to change a membership and for every action on dues; “Memberships and dues — Delete” to delete a membership. The Access level is enough. By default, only the Administrator role has these permissions.
• The scope is based on the membership’s owner, the person who created it: Memberships domain of the CRM scopes card (see CRM settings). Run the period’s call and Send the calls concern a whole club: they require the All scope for “Memberships and dues — Edit”.
• Clubs are set up with the “CRM settings” permissions. Exporting the member list requires “CRM import and export — View”.

Clubs and their rates #

Open Settings › CRM › Clubs and memberships. Each club shows its period, its manager, its payment term, its reminders, its categories with their dues and the number of memberships in progress.

1. Click New club, or Edit for an existing club.
2. Enter the Name in at least one language (French, English, German, Italian) and, if needed, the Description.
3. Choose the Company issuing the calls, whose details appear on the calls; without a choice, The main company.
4. Choose the Manager, who receives the club’s notices. They must have an active account and be able to read memberships.
5. Choose the Membership period: Calendar year, or Anniversary of the entry date (from the anniversary of the member’s entry to the day before the next one).
6. Set the Payment term (days), which sets a call’s due date (30 by default), Reminder after (days) (15) and Reminders at most (2; 0 turns reminders off).
7. Under Member categories and dues per period *, give each category a name, its Dues and its Currency. Add a category adds one; untick Offered to stop offering it.
8. Click Create the club, or Save.

A membership’s due is its category’s amount on the day the due is created, for the whole period, with no pro rata. Changing a category’s amount does not affect any due already created. A removed category that is used by memberships is deactivated, not deleted.

Deactivate a club to remove it from new memberships and stop its new dues and reminders; its memberships and their dues stay. A club that has memberships cannot be deleted: the screen offers to deactivate it.

Recording a membership #

A membership links a member to a club, in a category. The member is an organisation (its CRM account) or a person (a contact).

1. Open CRM › Memberships and dues and click New membership. From the Memberships tab of an account or a contact, the same button fills in the member.
2. Under Member *, choose An organisation (account) or A person (contact), then search for the record.
3. Choose the Club *, then the Category *, shown with its dues.
4. Choose the Contact person (receives the calls). Without a contact person, a person’s calls are addressed to them; an organisation’s calls have no address.
5. Choose the Status: Active, or Candidate (to validate) for an application not yet accepted.
6. Enter the Entry date (today by default) and a Note if needed, then click Create the membership.

The member and the contact person must be records you can read. A member who already has a membership in progress (candidate, active or suspended) in this club is refused: “This member already has a membership in progress in this club.”. The Open the existing membership link takes you to it. You become the membership’s owner.

The member list #

CRM › Memberships and dues lists the memberships within your scope: Member, Club, Category, Entry, Status and number of Overdue dues. Filter by Club, Category or Status, tick Overdue dues or search for a member by name. Export downloads the filtered list as a CSV file. When a club is chosen and your scope is All, a bar offers Run the period’s call and Send the calls for the whole club.

The Memberships tab of an account or a contact shows each of its memberships: club, category, status, entry date, overdue dues and, for each period, the amount and status of the due. A company that is a member of two clubs has two memberships and two series of dues there, on a single record.

A membership’s record #

It shows the member, their status, the club, the category, the Contact person, the Entry, the Exit where relevant, the Owner and the Overdue dues, then one card per period under Dues. Its buttons:

• Validate the membership moves a candidate to Active.
• Edit changes the category, the contact person, the status (from Candidate to Active, from Active to Suspended and back), the entry date as long as no due exists, and the note. A membership never goes back to the Candidate status.
• Record the exit asks for the Exit date, never before the entry, and an optional Reason. The membership becomes Left and no longer changes. Its dues still to call for periods starting after the exit are cancelled; a due already called remains due.
• Delete removes the membership and its dues still to call. A membership with a called or paid due cannot be deleted: record its exit.

The period’s dues #

One due is owed per active membership and per period. It starts as To call, at the category’s amount on that day, in two ways that never produce a duplicate:

• every morning, the CRM creates the due for the current period of each active membership whose entry date has passed, in active clubs;
• in the member list, with a club chosen, Run the period’s call creates them straight away. The screen says how many, or “No new due: those of the period already exist.”.

A candidate or suspended membership receives no new due, and no due is created retroactively for a past period.

Before the call, the Discount button lowers a due’s amount, down to zero at most. The Reason for the discount is required; the discount and its reason appear on the call.

Calling a due #

1. On the due’s card, click Send the call.
2. Choose By email or Handed over another way (post, in person). By email, leave the address empty to use the contact person’s or the member’s, or enter another one.
3. Click Send, or Issue the call for a call handed over another way.

The first sending issues the call: the due becomes Called and takes its number and its Due date, today plus the club’s payment term. The PDF, in the recipient’s language, carries your logo, the issuing company, the member, the club, the category, the period, the amount due, the reference to quote with the payment and the statement “Membership dues call: this document is not an invoice.”. It is frozen: Call as PDF downloads it, and Resend the call sends it again unchanged.

Calls are numbered COT-, the year and a four-digit counter (COT-2026-0001). The counter restarts at 1 each year, with no gap and no duplicate.

A contact who refuses emails, or who has objected to the processing of their data, receives nothing: “This contact does not accept emails: hand the dues call over another way.”.

For a whole club, choose it in the member list, click Send the calls and confirm: each due to call takes its number and is emailed. Those without an address, or whose contact refuses emails, stay to call; the final message counts them.

The four “Membership dues call — CRM template” templates (French, English, German, Italian) appear in Settings › Documents › Document Templates once the first call has been issued, and can be adapted. The email text is customised in Settings › Manage Illizeo › Email, CRM category.

Overdue dues and reminders #

• The day after its due date, a called or partly paid due that is not yet settled becomes Overdue.
• It is reminded by email Reminder after (days) after the due date, then the same number of days after each reminder, Reminders at most times at most. The reminder states the amount still due and attaches the same PDF; the card shows the number of Reminders, which only counts emails actually sent.
• No email reminder is sent for a call handed over another way (post, in person), nor for a member without an address or whose contact refuses emails. The card of an overdue call handed over another way says so: remind the member yourself, for example with Call as PDF.
• A paid or cancelled due is never reminded, nor is a due of a deactivated club.
• Every morning, as long as the club has overdue dues, its manager receives “CRM: membership dues overdue”, with their number and, if any, how many cannot be reminded by email and must be reminded by the manager.

Recording a payment #

1. On the card of a called due, click Record a payment.
2. Enter the Payment date (today at the latest), the Amount paid (the amount still due is suggested), the Payment method and, if needed, the Reference.
3. Click Record the payment.

The status follows: Paid when the amount paid covers the due; otherwise Partly paid until the due date, then Overdue with its Still due amount. A payment above the amount is kept and flagged as an Overpayment. On a due that is already fully paid, the “Record an overpayment?” window asks for confirmation before the payment is recorded; any refund is handled outside the CRM. Only the payment that settles the due sends the contact person the confirmation email: an overpayment does not send it again. A payment’s bin removes it; the status is recalculated.

Importing a payment statement #

1. Prepare a CSV file with one line per payment: call reference; amount; date; method (optional). Semicolon or comma separator, optional header, date YYYY-MM-DD, DD.MM.YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY, 2 MB at most. The method is written virement, carte, especes, cheque, prelevement or autre; if missing, it counts as a bank transfer.
2. In the member list, click Import payments, choose the CSV file, then click Simulate: nothing is written.
3. Read the summary, then click Import.

Each line is Matched (settled, partial payment or overpayment), Reference not found, Invalid line or Already imported: the same line is never counted twice. Only the dues you can edit are matched. A line that targets a due already paid is marked “on a due already paid”, and the simulation says how many there are: the import records them as overpayments. Remove them from the file before importing if you do not want to record them.

Cancelling a due #

Cancel the due asks for a Reason for the cancellation. A due that has received a payment, even a partial one, cannot be cancelled. Once cancelled, it keeps its number and is no longer reminded.

Notices, emails and workflows #

• Club manager’s bell: “CRM: membership dues calls sent” when someone else sends the club’s calls, and the “CRM: membership dues overdue” summary. Neither amount nor member name. Everyone can turn them off in Personal Settings › Notifications, row “CRM — memberships: dues calls sent, overdue dues”.
• Emails to members, in their language: templates “CRM — membership dues call to the member (PDF attached, in their language)”, “CRM — reminder of overdue membership dues (same PDF attached)” and “CRM — confirmation of a membership dues payment (to the member)”, in Settings › Manage Illizeo › Email.
• Workflows (Settings › Manage Employees › Workflows, CRM category): the “Membership created” and “Overdue membership due” triggers, the latter in the name of the club’s manager when there is one. The “Candidate membership: validation” preset, inactive by default, sends a candidate membership to the line manager of the person who entered it: once approved, it becomes active; if declined, it stays a candidate.
• Validations: depending on Settings › CRM › Validations, creating or editing a membership and sending a call can wait for a decision; nothing is written or sent before then.

Good to know #

• The morning creations, overdue switches and reminders are handled by the CRM’s daily task (crm:cotisations-du-jour): you have nothing to run.
• The dues call is always issued by the CRM, even if the Finance module is installed.
• A registration for a paid event creates an amount due that is followed like a due (numbered call, reminders, payments), managed from the event’s record (see Events and public registrations). The member list’s import does not match it.
• A contact’s data export includes their memberships and their dues; once erased, they are no longer named, and the dues stay (see Protecting contact data (GDPR)).
• When records are merged, memberships follow the kept record (see Finding duplicates and merging records). An account with memberships cannot be deleted: archive it.
• The CRM log keeps clubs, memberships, calls, reminders, payments and exits, never the amounts. Custom reports offer the “CRM — memberships” and “CRM — membership dues” sources (see Creating a custom report).

FAQ #

The member changed category, but their due did not change. #

A due keeps the amount of the day it was created. For a lower amount, apply a discount with a reason before the call. The new category applies from the following periods.

A new member does not have a due yet. #

It is created the next morning if the membership is active and the entry date has passed. To create it straight away, choose the club in the member list and click Run the period’s call.