Billing for membership fees

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Generating mass billing enables you to process a billing cycle for all members who match the parameters defined in the selected billing cycle. iMIS decides which members to bill by comparing the Paid through date to the renewal Effective date.

The Effective date is the first day of the new term being billed. When a member is successfully billed for renewal, their Renewed through date (also known as the Billed through date) is automatically advanced by iMIS to the last day of the billed term. The Paid through date is also automatically advanced by iMIS when the first item of the customer type is paid in full (the primary fee).

Tip! To fully automate themembership renewal process for staff users, see Automating the membership renewal process.

Generating renewals window

After renewals are successfully generated, members will have access to the Renew Now button located on their account pages. The Renew Now button remains on member account pages until the related membership invoice remains with an open balance.

Clicking renew now from membership account page

Note: If the member’s customer type is configured to bill the organization, then their organization will be billed for the membership fees. See List Billing for more information.

Note: If you need to generate a renewal for a single member, see Generating renewal for single contact.

Prerequisite conditions for successful renewal invoice generation

To generate membership renewal invoices, the following conditions must be met:

  • The member must be an active member, which includes the following:
    • The assigned member type must be one in which the Is a member checkbox is enabled.
    • The Contact status must be set to Active.
  • The Paid through and Renewed through (sometimes referred to as Billed through) dates must fall before the Effective date as displayed (or overridden) on the Generate renewals window.

    • Example: The Effective date is 1/1/2023. Anyone who has a Paid through date of 12/31/2022 or earlier is picked up in the billing run, if they have not already been billed.

  • There must be a single active membership subscription (as listed in the Membership fees section on the Membership tab). There will be no active membership subscription row for either a newly created contact or a former member. The only option for a new contact or a former member to purchase a membership term and become an active member is through a Join process.

Generating membership renewal fees

Generating membership renewal fees diagram

Do the following to generate membership renewal fees:

  1. Go to Membership > Renewals > Generate renewals.
  2. Enter a Billing run name. Make sure this name is unique so that you can differentiate this renewal with other renewals.
  3. Select the Billing cycle to process. The customer type(s) defined in the billing cycle determine who is billed.

    4. Selecting a billing cycle with only one customer type

  4. For the Billing type, leave Renewals selected. For information about the Rebill option, see Correcting renewal membership billings.
  5. The Bill date defaults to today's date and generally does not change. This is the date the billing run was generated and processed.
  6. The Effective date serves multiple purposes:
    • This is the date that determines who is included in the billing run. If a member's Paid through date is before the Effective date, they are included in the billing run.
    • This date is the first date of the new membership term for individuals being billed.
  7. If licensed for AutoPay, review the selection under AutoPay options and confirm it is correct. By default, the Default AutoPay option defined in the selected billing cycle is chosen here. See Creating a billing cycle for AutoPay renewals for more information on these options.
  8. (optional) Enable any of the Other options:
    • Only bill a single contact - Enable this option when you want to generate the renewal for a single contact instead of an entire group of contacts.
    • Only bill contacts who are included in a particular query - Enabling this option will allow you to select an existing query, or create a new query, of contacts to be billed. Only contacts included in this query, and who meet all other restrictions, will be billed.

      • Note: At least one of the query's datasources must include CsContact or CsContactBasic, and must include the column iMIS Id. This query cannot contain optional or required filters.

    • Only bill contacts in a particular chapter - Enabling this option and then selecting the desired Chapter will limit the billing to just those whose primary chapter is the one selected.
    • Do not prorate - When enabled, the dues are not prorated.
    • Do not apply credits - When enabled, outstanding AVAIL_CREDIT balances from iMIS 2017 are not applied during the renewal calculation. For more information, see Working with AVAIL_CREDIT balances after upgrading.
  9. Click Generate Bills. You will see a confirmation message that says the selected billing cycle was submitted for processing.
  10. Click the Logs tab. The billing run was successful if the Billing Run name is a link. Clicking the link, you can review everyone who was picked up and billed. The billing run was not successful if the Billing Run name is not linked. See Billing troubleshooting for potential solutions.

    11. Tip! Anyone picked up in the renewal billing run has their Renewed through date automatically advanced. The Paid through date will automatically advance after the primary fee item is paid in full.

    Reviewing the generate renewals logs

  11. If any of the following are true, there is a batch to post after the billing is generated:
    • The Accounting method at Settings > Membership is set to Accrual and the associated billing cycle has the Accounting method set to Default.
    • The billing cycle has the Accounting method set to Accrual.
    • (if licensed for AutoPay) The AutoPay option was set to Bill all contacts and there were AutoPay invoices generated in the billing run. If there were non-AutoPay invoices also generated in the billing run and the Accounting method is set to Cash, those invoices are automatically posted and appear in a separate billing run. AutoPay invoices always appear in a batch.
    • (if licensed for AutoPay) The billing cycle has Only bill contacts enrolled in AutoPay selected as the Default AutoPay option.

    Do the following to post the batch:

    1. Click the Logs tab.
    2. Find the billing run, then select the Batch number.

      3. Selecting the batch number from the generate renewals logs

    3. Review the batch information (See Reviewing and printing accrual-based membership fee batches for more information), then click Post Batch.
  12. If you need to send email notices to those who have just been billed, see Generating renewal fee reminders.

After renewals are successfully generated, members see the Renew Now button on their account page. From the Staff site, staff users also see the member’s Renew Now button on the member’s account page. The member or staff user can process the renewal using the Renew Now button. For more information, see Renewing memberships.

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