Skip to main content
Skip table of contents

Create a Membership Type


Administrators can create a membership type to configure their membership offerings for constituents to purchase in Community Hub or for staff to process in Staff View. Details such as term length, grace period length, re-instate period length, online visibility and others are available for review or update on the membership type.

  1. In the tab bar, click 

    App Launcher, or in Salesforce Classic, click 
    Nimble AMS, Staff View, Button, All Tabs.

  2. Click Membership Types.

  3. Click New

  4. In Membership Type Name, enter a name to assign to the membership type. This displays to staff when selecting the membership type in the order process, and this name displays to constituents in Community Hub.

    Because this name displays to constituents in Community Hub, we recommend a short name.

    For example: Individual or Professional is preferred over Individual Member or Professional Member.

  5. In Description, enter a phrase to describe the membership type. This displays to constituents in Community Hub.

  6. Status is Active. Only Active membership types can be purchased. 

  7. In Category, select:

      1. Individual—if the membership type is only available for purchase by individuals, and not by companies.
      2. Company—if the membership type is only available for purchase by companies. Because this selection includes company, if the Flowdown Manager Class rule is populated with a value the rule will be executed the next time a membership is purchased. 
      3. Both—if the membership type is available for purchase by both individuals and companies. Because this selection includes company, if the Flowdown Manager Class rule is populated with a value the rule will be executed the next time a membership is purchased. 
  8. In Renewal Type, select:

    • Anniversary—membership begins on any calendar month based on membership purchase date.
    • Annual—membership begins on the same month for all member terms. Intelligently calculate the membership term End Date while renewing annual memberships with Improved Annual Membership feature!

      Show Me How to Enable Improved Annual Membership

      When the Improved Annual Membership feature is enabled and you renew a membership which is extended beyond its End Date, the End Date populated during membership renewal will always be set to the End Date of annual term. For example, consider an annual membership with Start Date as January 1, 2021 and End Date as March, 2022. If a constituent renews the membership on April 1, 2022 then the End Date will be correctly set to Dec 31, 2022 if this feature is enabled. You can change the End Date manually if you need to.

      To enable Improved Annual Membership feature, follow the below steps:

      1. From Setup, enter Custom Metadata Types in the Quick Find box, then select Custom Metadata Types.
      2. Click Manage Records next to the Tag of Nimble AMS.
      3. Click Edit next to the ImprovedAnnualMembershipWIN18.
      4. Select Is Active.
      5. Click Save.

    Prorated memberships allow you to set varying term lengths based on specific join dates occurring mid-year for Annual membership types, as configured by an administrator and based on membership type product link set up.

    Auto-Renewal Required

    You can add Auto-Renewal Required checkbox to the page layout for membership types which have high chances of being renewed, for example, monthly memberships. By selecting this checkbox, the memberships of this type will renew by default and constituent will not have the option to discontinue membership renewal in Community Hub. Only in case of cancellation, the membership will be discontinued.

    Please do not mark a membership as ‘Auto-Renewal Required' while the product is NOT marked as ‘Recurring Eligible’. Please avoid this configuration, as it is not supported by Nimble AMS at this stage and will cause failure, if tried.

  9. In Term (Months), enter the duration in months to be assigned to the purchased membership. For example: 12, indicates a membership term of 12 months.

    If you need to offer several term options relating to one membership type, sharing the same Revenue GL Account on the membership product, you may choose to override this term with Term Override (Months) when creating a membership type product link.

    For example: If you offer annual and bi-annual memberships, one membership type would be configured with two membership type product links where the Term Override (Months) is 12 for the first membership type product link, and 24 for the second membership type product link.

  10. If Renewal Type is Anniversary, in Start Date Control (Day), enter the day of the month that determines when the purchase membership will begin. For example: 15 sets the rule that a membership purchased on the 15th—or any day after—of any month will begin on the 1st of the following month; membership purchases made prior to the 15th of the month will begin on the 1st of the current month. 

  11. In Grace Period (Months), enter the number of months to reflect the new grace period length appended to the normal membership term, allowing members to keep their active status and the opportunity to renew their dues without benefit disruption. For example: 3 adds 3 months to a member's end date; during this time the member retains their member benefits. When the 3 month grace period ends, the member is considered Lapsed and unable to renew their membership online. 

    The Grace Period directly affects the Account field - Lapsed On, by adding the value of Grace Period to the account's current Member Thru date field. Also, during the grace period, the Status field on membership record will be set to 'Grace', and after the grace period ends, it will be set to 'Expired'.

    Grace Period Unit

    As of Nimble AMS Winter '20, a new field, Grace Period Unit is added to Membership Type. It gives you the flexibility of defining the grace period in Months or Days as for monthly memberships, generally a grace period in days will be preferred.

  12.  Membership extension period to make ‘Renew’ button available to Community Hub (CH): In Re-Instate Period, enter the number of months or days to reflect the new period length appended to the Grace Period, allowing constituents to 'Renew' their membership in Community Hub even though their previous membership has become inactive, and the grace period has lapsed. This gives constituents the opportunity to renew their dues but membership benefits will be disrupted during this period due to inactive status. For example, 2 adds additional 2 months to the end of a member's grace period; during this time the member does not retain their member benefits but will have the 'Renew' option, instead of 'Rejoin', in Community Hub. When the 2-month re-instate period ends, the constituent's membership is considered Lapsed and unable to renew their membership online but instead required to rejoin to become a member again. 

    Re-Instate Period & Unit

    The fields Re-Instate Period  and Re-Instate Unit has been added to the Membership Type. It gives you the flexibility to add value and extend Renew the option after the end of the member's grace period and define the value in terms of Months , for yearly memberships, or Days , for monthly memberships. Edit the page layout to add this field to the membership type record.

    Do not save the Membership Type record by just selecting the value against Re-Instate Unit field and keeping the Re-Instate Period field blank. If you do something like this then the pages on your Community Hub will error out.

    Renewal Cart Deletion Job

    In addition to the Re-Instate option, a Renewal Cart Deletion Job has been introduced for membership renewal carts. This job is scheduled to periodically delete the existing renewal carts in the association’s environment, to avoid duplicate charges when a constituent rejoins after the membership period lapses and the re-instate period ends. Contact Support to request a Job.

  13. If Renewal Type is Annual, in Annual Start Month, enter the calendar month as a number that is considered the first month for purchased memberships of this type. For example: 7 sets the annual start date for a purchased membership to begin in July of the current year. 

    Enable Start Date Control on Prorated Annual Memberships

    You can also use the Start Date Control (Day) field on Membership Type for annual prorated memberships, just like anniversary memberships in point 10 (see example). To do this, enable the Start Date Control functionality for the same as given below:

    1. From Setup, enter Custom Metadata Types in the Quick Find box, then select Custom Metadata Types.
    2. Click Manage Records next to the Tag of Nimble AMS.
    3. Click Edit next to the StartDateControlForAnnualProratedMembers.
    4. Select Is Active.
    5. Click Save.
  14. In Entity, enter the name of the entity associated to the membership type, click 

    Nimble AMS, Staff View, Button, Lookup, and select the financial entity.

  15. In Accounting Method, select:

    • Cash—indicates this membership's income is recognized at the time of payment, and is a required setting to support the Billing History feature.
    • Accrual—indicates the membership's income is recognized at the time of invoicing, and is a required setting to support the accrual billing feature. Accrual dues is a feature that can be enabled in Nimble AMS.

  16. In Flowdown Manager Class, select NU.StandardMembershipFlowdownManager2 to enable the standard membership information flow down for this membership type. 

    Administrators can add a custom apex class that will execute the custom process by adding additional values to the picklist (external).

  17. In Self Service Enabled, enter TRUE to enable the membership type for purchase by constituents in Community Hub. Join or renew purchase options are dependent on the membership type product link configuration.

  18. In Restrict Auto-Renewal Cancellation, select the checkbox if you do not want to give the constituent the option to cancel memberships of this type in Community Hub. 
  19. In Account Membership Field, select the API name of the Membership lookup field on the Account object that should be updated when a new membership is created. Learn how to Find the API Name of a Field (external).

  20. In Account Join On Field, select the API name of the Join On date field on the Account object that should be updated when a new membership is created for the first time. Learn how to Find the API Name of a Field (external).

  21. Optionally, in Currency, select the right currency value.

    Note

    If you have enabled Salesforce multi-currency, Salesforce introduces the Currency field on all object layouts within your org.

    While creating a new Membership Type record make sure to select the Currency field value that matches the Currency field value on the linked Entity record. If the Currency field value of the Membership Type and the Entity record do not match, then it throws an error.

    Also, once the record is saved, you will not be allowed to edit the value of the Currency field.

    Show Me An Image

  22. Click Save.



JavaScript errors detected

Please note, these errors can depend on your browser setup.

If this problem persists, please contact our support.