Creating a non-dues billing cycle

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If you want members and website users to purchase subscription products (such as journals and magazines) separately from membership fees and subscriptions, you can create a billing cycle used exclusively for non-membership subscriptions. You can also use a subscription billing cycle to allow users to renew their existing subscriptions outside of the membership renewal process.

This billing cycle can be displayed as a multi-item product on your website. Users can select any included items in order to purchase or renew them. Users can check out without altering any of their membership data and being billed for a membership join or renewal.

Creating the billing cycle

This billing cycle must not contain any Primary fee product for any customer type or use the Membership billing cycle option. Do the following to create a subscription billing cycle:

  1. Go to Membership > Billing cycles.
  2. Select Add new billing cycle.
  3. Enter a Cycle name.
  4. Ensure Membership billing cycle is not selected.
  5. Select one or more Customer types. You can choose *ALL* or leave the field blank to indicate the billing cycle is not restricted to any certain customer types. As you begin typing in this field, a drop-down is displayed from which you can select your Customer types.
  6. Select one or more Categories. Billing categories are optional subcategories of a customer type which define membership fee amounts when the customer type is not specific enough for an association's needs. See Setting up billing categories for more information.
  7. Select the billing products to include in the billing cycle. The products you select are not limited to subscription products. For more information, see Defining billing products.

    8. Selecting products in the new billing cycle window

  8. Choose either Cash or Accrual for the Accounting method, or leave the Default accounting method selected. The chosen accounting method is used for join and renewal invoices.
  9. Select other options as needed. See Creating a new billing cycle for more information.
  10. Enable Use to display join item set.

    11. Enabling the "used to display join item set" setting

  11. Click Save & Exit.
Allowing website users to purchase non-dues subscriptions

Do the following to add the non-dues billing cycle content to your website. This will allow members and website users to more easily locate non-dues subscription products for purchase:

  1. Go to RiSE > Page Builder > Manage content.
  2. Create new content or open an existing content record.
  3. Add a General Product Display (Commerce folder) content item to the page:
    1. In the Default product to display field, enter the name of the subscription non-dues billing cycle (Cycle name) created previously, replacing spaces with underscores.

      2. Note: The Cycle name is used in the URL parameter. You must replace any spaces in the Cycle name with underscores.

      For more information about how the billing cycle is set up, see Creating a new billing cycle.

      General product display window with box around the default product to display setting

    2. Select other configuration options as needed.
    3. Click OK.
  4. Save and publish the page.

    Saving and publishing the new page

  5. To allow users to access the subscription non-dues billing cycle content, you can do one of the following:
    • Create a new navigation item that links to the new content. See Using sitemaps for more information.
    • Create a link within your site to the new content. For example, you can insert links to content in the Data Showcase and Content Html content items.
    • For renewals, send subscribers a link to the content in an email.
Viewing non-dues subscriptions on account pages

Any subscription items purchased outside of the renewal process are displayed on the Membership tab in the Subscriptions section. If you are using custom account pages, it is recommended you add the same content to your account pages.

Clarifying which is the subscription adder and which is the query menu

Do the following to add a Subscriptions section to your custom account pages:

  1. Go to RiSE > Page Builder > Manage content.
  2. Locate the account page, then open it for edit.
  3. Select Add content.
  4. Click the Contact folder, then choose the Subscription Adder content item:
    1. Title: Subscriptions
    2. Product type: Subscription

      3. Configuring the subscription adder window

  5. Click OK.
  6. Select Add content.
  7. Click the Utility folder, then choose the Query Menu content item:
    1. (required) Enable the Open link in a pop-up checkbox.
    2. Source query or folder: Go to the following location - $/ContactManagement/DefaultSystem/Queries/Advanced/Contact/Financial
    3. Depending on which account page you are editing, add one of the following queries:

      4. Table 1: Account page and related query
      Account PageQuery
      Individual - PublicNon-membership subscriptions - public
      Individual - StaffNon-membership subscriptions
      Organization/Company - PublicNon-membership subscriptions billed to selected contact - public
      Organization/Company - StaffNon-membership subscriptions billed to selected contact - Staff

    4. Click OK.

      5. Configuring the query menu content item with box around "source query or folder" setting

  8. Save & Publish the content record.

For more information, see Ensuring account pages have membership queries.