About iMIS IDs

iMIS uses the ID internally to store and access customer records. For this reason, you can never change the ID that you assign to a newly entered customer.

Most users should allow iMIS to assign IDs to new customers code for the following reasons:

The ID must be unique to each customer record. Once it's assigned, you can never change it. If you enter an incorrect ID assignment, you have to delete the entire customer record and reenter it. This can create problems if other records are linked to the incorrect ID.
The customer ID is not critical for searching, so it does not need to be easily remembered. iMIS provides search methods such as name, company, and customer type for finding customer records.
You can label and use a second, optional user-entered ID (or major key) for iMIS to maintain. This Major Key field can serve as your primary look-up key throughout iMIS. This user-entered ID can be validated to be unique, such as a social security or license number.
Having users assign IDs is complicated by the fact that iMIS tracks prospects in the main database, and all of these records must be assigned unique IDs. The volume of these records could make it hard to maintain a user-assigned series of IDs.
Some features, such as Add to Master in iMIS Events, will auto-assign IDs.

Note: If you allow iMIS to assign the ID, give some consideration to the starting ID. If you are doing an automatic conversion of records from another system and you are retaining the old ID numbers, set the last ID of the original record to any number equal to or higher than the highest pre-established ID number in the data you will be converting. The first system-assigned ID will be one greater than the last ID number of the original record.

Note: If you allow users to create new accounts in iMIS Public or Web views, be sure to enable the Auto Assign Member Numbers option (Customers > Set up module > General > Basic Options).

To facilitate statistical reporting on your organization's customer activity, iMIS automatically tracks a customer's overall status (Name.MEMBER_STATUS) based on status-relevant events: customer type changes, status field changes, and billing payments. These changes are stored with the effective date of the change.

Source codes

Certain income-oriented data entry processes throughout iMIS let you enter a source code for each transaction. This source code, retained in the activity records generated from the transaction, lets you track the campaign or other source that motivated the purchase which can then be used for analysis or searches. Although the Source Code is a data entry field in all appropriate transaction entry windows, users do not have to enter a source code unless you enable this option.

Note: To use this feature, you need to establish a table of valid source codes.

Customer status

By default, iMIS automatically updates Name.MEMBER_STATUS_DATE to the current system date (or the dues payment's transaction date) for status changes (except when you enter a JOIN_DATE for a new record, in which case the JOIN_DATE is used).

If you select the Prompt for Status Date option, iMIS will prompt you to accept or override the default effective date for the change. The prompt will only occur if you change the status from an active status (status = A or begins with A) to an inactive status (S, I, D or statuses that begin with S, I, or D) and vice versa. A user-defined status that does not begin with those letters may not work with this feature. Most users do not need to manually control these dates, so they should not enable this setup option.

ID Checksum digits

Checksum digits give IDs a more unique value than simple sequentially assigned numbers. The checksum is not a random number; it is derived from the ID using a specific set of algorithms. The check digit calculation used to derive a checksum is the standard Mod 11 check digit algorithm.

Allowed symbols in iMIS IDs

iMIS does not allow these symbols in the ID field: &, /, [, ], |, \, ", ', #, +, <. Remember that the Auto Assign Member Numbers option must be cleared in order for you to enter IDs in the ID field.