Association list management

iMIS provides many tools that allow you to organize your customer database. Some common ways to group customers include:

  • Customer type
  • Customer status
  • Category
  • Committee
  • Chapter
  • Company/institute
  • Activity
  • Inclusion/exclusion category
  • User-defined index
  • Ad hoc search

By planning for and making appropriate use of iMIS organizational tools, you can easily track and report on various types of customer lists.

Type

You must assign a customer type code to each record you enter in iMIS. Some common customer types may include:

  • Members
  • Companies
  • Individuals
  • Customers according to billing level
  • Categories for prospects, exhibitors, or advertisers

The primary strategy behind establishing customer types should be to distinguish different pricing levels. This usually pertains to billing, but can also include event registrations and order pricing. Customer types must be mutually exclusive; in other words, each customer may have only one customer type.

Customer types are extremely important. You should analyze the organization of your particular association before setting up customer types. Your System Administrator can assist you with this task.

Status

You can further divide types of customers by a status code. iMIS reserves the following status codes:

  • A - for Active
  • S - for Suspended
  • I - for Inactive
  • D - to mark for Deletion

All active customers begin with a status of A. A customer's status could change to S if, for example, they did not pay their dues by the end of the grace period. If, after a period they still did not pay their dues, you might change their status to I. Use a status of D only if you want the record to be marked for permanent deletion from the customer file.

Category

You can use Category as an additional way to categorize customers for billing purposes:

  • Billing Category 1
  • Billing Category 2
  • Billing Category 3

Billing categories are assigned to customers in the Customers > Billing area.

Committees

You can organize customers into various committees through the Committee subsystem. Through this subsystem, you can track the following:

  • Customers on particular committees
  • Positions held
  • Term of appointment
  • Service history

You can use this information to customize print output for various committees. For example, you can print labels for mailings to a specific committee.

Chapters

iMIS lets you group your customers or members into separate and distinct chapters, or groups. Even if your organization does not have official chapters, you may find the chapter feature useful for organizing customers by state or pertinent regional areas.

Company/Institutes

You can keep lists of all individuals affiliated with a specific company or other entity by specifying a Company ID for those customers. Organizing customers by Company ID lets you easily view and work with a company roster or search for an individual by Company ID.

Another benefit of organizing customers by Company ID is that you have the ability to link the company address to the individual customer. When you enter a Company ID (Parent Record) for an individual record (Child Record) that currently has blank name, address, and telephone number fields, the parent company's Company Name, Address, and Telephone Number fields flow down to the child record. iMIS automatically populates the data from the company record. See Company flow down in iMIS for more.

iMIS also lets you maintain multi-level company structures. For example, some individual records can point to intermediate company subsidiaries or branches that in turn point to higher level company records.

Activity

Activity types can include event attendance (system-assigned and generated), billing, fundraising, orders, awards received, volunteer service, and call logging. You can use the various activity types to organize customers into groups such as those who attended the last convention or who received a certain award. With the call-logging capability, you can list all task items that have a follow-up date in a certain date range. Task items are automatic reminders you can set up for activity types such as CALL.

Inclusion/Exclusion Categories

Another way to mark a company or individual's inclusion or exclusion from various groups is through user-defined check boxes. Use this feature to indicate yes/no or on/off responses to single-choice lists or other designations. Some common inclusion categories could be:

  • Send newsletter
  • Participates in insurance program
  • Key customer for legislative action
  • Exclude from categories (exclude from certain mailing types, exclude from sold lists)

User-defined Indexes

During system setup, iMIS lets you specify up to four regular data fields as access keys (for screen lookup only). These fields will display in the Find window. iMIS will create and maintain a special index file for each designated index field. This index sorts the records according to the data in the specified field. For example, if you designate the State field as an index, iMIS would maintain an index list of all records, sorted in state order. This index lets you scan a customer list by state without searching the entire file. See Defining Lookup Indexes for the Find Window.

Note: Although user-defined indexes are useful, keep in mind that there is a performance tradeoff. Indexes can increase efficiency in accessing and searching; however, they do add overhead to data entry and maintenance functions. For this reason, only assign indexes to fields that will be routinely used as access keys.

Ad Hoc Searches

Beyond these list-maintenance features, iMIS also provides ad hoc searching where you can create complex formulas for searching any data fields stored for your customers. When executed, these ad hoc searches create temporary sub-lists that you can work with just as you do with permanent lists.