Groups & Membership: 100 & EMS Enterprise Differences

Groups control many features in iMIS 100. Continue reading to understand the alternative approach to groups in iMIS EMS.

Alternative groups functionality in iMIS EMS

iMIS EMS does not offer the same groups workflow, but that does not mean you are losing the functionality that groups offer:

  • Committees - From Community > Committees, manage committees that may have previously been a “committees group” in iMIS 100. Committees can have an administrator like the Group Administrator.
  • Chapters – From Membership > Chapters, manage chapters that may have been “chapter groups” in iMIS 100. Additionally, allow members to join chapters when they are joining the organization. Chapters can have an administrator like the Group Administrator.
  • IQA Groups – Use the Group tab on IQA queries to group members together based on any demographic data. Use these groups to offer special pricing to members for commerce products, event registrations, or even renewal items. These groups are managed from Community > Groups.
  • Product purchase groups - Create products that will assign all purchasers to a group. These groups are managed from Community > Groups.
  • Security – If you use groups to allow staff users access to certain areas of iMIS, instead take advantage of Module authorization levels or Content Authority Groups (CAGs).

Membership groups

All iMIS 100 memberships are created using groups. In iMIS EMS, there are no membership groups; instead, there are customer types, billing cycles, and billing products.

Customer types

Customer types, also referred to as member types, are how iMIS EMS classifies members into categories. These types designate the broad classification of customers, such as Associate Member, Regular Member, Student Member, or Organization Member.

Customer types can be member or non-member types:

  • Member – Has a primary fee defined and is billed a renewal each cycle. Has the Is a member checkbox enabled. Can be an individual person or an organization. If the customer type is meant for organizational memberships, the Is an organization checkbox must be enabled.
  • Non Member – Has no primary fee defined and is not billed during renewal cycles. Does not have the Is a member checkbox enabled.

For each “member” customer type, there must be a primary fee product defined. This is the product that controls the price and term length of the membership. This product also controls the advancing of the member’s Paid Through date.

For more information about customer types, see Contacts Settings: Customer types.

Billing cycles

A billing cycle is another name for a billing run. Define a billing cycle to bill a particular group of people for a particular set of products. This is where you can offer additional products outside of the primary fee product (defined in the customer type).

It is recommended to have a billing cycle per customer type. This helps with organizing the billing runs during each billing period.

See Setting up billing cycles for full details.

Billing products

Like Billing and Subscription products in iMIS 100 for memberships, you have billing products in iMIS EMS (Membership > Billing products).

Billing products are items that will be billed to members, or items for which your organization collects money. For example, membership fees, chapter fees, or voluntary contributions.

A new billing product should be created for each potential dues or subscription-type product or service that will be billed. Unless General Ledger account numbers vary by customer type, a single, primary membership dues product can be established.

See Defining billing products for full details.