If your MatrixMaxx implementation includes the Membership Renewal Application Pregenerator upgrade — or if you’re interested in learning more about it before purchasing it — this article will show you how this workflow operates. This article also illustrates how the Pregenerator may be seamlessly connected to the PDF-on-demand/bulk-emailer upgrade.
NOTE: you can see a video of this in action at timestamp 34:30 on the 19.1 overview session, here!
Background
Many associations — particularly professional societies or groups with rolling anniversary dates — support their annual dues cycle with dynamic, online renewals. Meaning, that when it is time to renew, they drive their members to MatrixMaxx’s WWW membership renewal application form in order to both create and pay their annual renewal invoice. So if the association opens up their renewals on Oct 1 for the upcoming year, renewals may be generated on Oct 1, or Oct 2, or Oct 3, etc. Renewals are generated in real-time by the members themselves.
However, other associations — particularly trade associations with large annual dues or complex formulas — like to pregenerate all of their member renewals/invoices in bulk. They often email and print-mail these invoices at one time, giving the members (many of whom pay by check) a variety of payment options.
Traditionally, this renewal invoice pregeneration has been done two ways:
- manually by staff, one-by-one (which works well for small associations who have complex grandfathered formulas)
- automatically via a script which Matrix has developed and run on behalf of the association.
Starting with the 19.1 release in 2019, MatrixMaxx now has the interface/code to support setting up a Pregenerator function in the AMS. This allows the association staff themselves to select members for whom to pregenerate renewal invoices, and create the applications in bulk. And if the association has also purchased the PDF-on-demand upgrade with the bulk mailer, this pregeneration can feed directly into a bulk mailing of the PDF invoice to all of the primary contacts. Pretty slick.
How it Works
First, scroll to the Members tab. If you have purchased this upgrade and it has been implemented into your instance of MAXX, you’ll find it two places. You can click either “Pregenerate Membership Applications” under Applications, or under Membership Records, both links will take you to the same place.
Next, you’ll find yourself at the “Pregenerate Membership Applications form. Your custom help text underneath the title will detail the specific membership types your organization has approved and implemented. For this help article, we have only one type of membership currently implemented.
On this form, you’ll want to choose the application year first. Then, you can fill in the remaining information you want to use to pregneerate renewal applications. For this article, we’ve created some test companies with “Test” in the organization name. So, we added “Test” to the Organization Name field. We then chose the Membership Type. And finally, since these applications are for renewing memberships, we selected “active” are our membership status. Each of these fields are indicated with a large red arrow in the following image.
After you have filled in the criteria of the members you would like to renew, hit the search button.
NOTE! For the purposes of this article, we are demonstrating with Organization members, but this process also works with Individual members.
You will next find yourself on the Search Results page. At the top, you will see the number of results coordinating with the search criteria you inputted. The criteria box is a great way to double check your search parameters for these applications. The member organizations/companies will be displayed in the right hand column titled, “Search Results”. From here, you can select to add all or individually add the member organizations for the renewal application pregeneration. If you make a mistake, you can easily select the remove option.
Further down the screen, if you have purchased the PDF-on-Demand and Bulk Mailer upgrade, as well, you’ll find a drop down menu of the kind of email you will choose to send to those organizations selected in the picker above.
When you’re ready to generate the renewal applications, select the “Finish” button.
NOTE!!!! You will also find a list of organizations under the “Finish” button. These are companies or organizations that fit the criteria you selected, but already have an application created for the specified year, so no application/renewal will be pregenerated for them.
On the next screen of this workflow, you’ll find the applications that were created for the organizations you picked on the previous screen. It will detail how many were created, as well as the application year.
If you only have the Pregeneration upgrade, you are now done! Your renewal applications and invoices are generated!
But if you also own the PDF/bulk-email upgrade, you may continue forward into sending emails for these newly generated invoices.
** These are not HTML emails and won’t send html tags properly to email clients.**
First, you have a chance to review the members who will be emailed. If you find a mistake, or decide not to include one company/member, or all companies/members, you can either easily deselect all or deselect the member(s) you wish by unchecking the box to the left of the organization name.
When you’re ready to commit, click on the “Proceed to Email” button.
Next, you will find yourself on the Bulk Email creation form. Under recipients, Maxx has listed all Primary contacts for the organizations that are receiving the pregenerated application. If needed the CC field will also be pre-populated with the email address of an individual associated with a company who would also need this information, ie. the billing contact. The form will also give you the opportunity to edit the “Sender’s Name” field, the “Sender’s Email Address”, the “Subject” line, and any additional text you would like to include after the first paragraph. This form will pre populate with the information from the first company in the list of applications you created. Don’t worry, MAXX will not send Company A’s information to Company B. This pre-population is just to give you an example of all the emails you are about to send out.
Next on the form, you will notice the default selection of “Attach PDF Copy of Invoice.” This allows each individual organization/ company to receive a WWW-side invoice for their renewal. You also have the option of including additional files you would like to send to all organizations receiving these membership renewal application emails.
Then, when you are ready to send, select the “Send Email” button.
Congratulations! You’ve sent your first batch of Pregenerated Membership Renewal Applications!
The next step in our workflow allows you to see the processing of the bulk email submission and will notify you when it is complete. You can see the progress in the lavender colored bar beneath the report link and is indicated with the red arrow in the following image. When it is finished, you can also review the bulk email submission by clicking on the report link.
When you click on the report link, you’ll get a detail of all emails sent. If you then click on the organization name, you should be redirected to the renewal application.
If the email you have sent is one of the ‘official’ emails, you’ll see the date stamped on the application view under the email section. If you have used a ‘custom’ template that you have created, you won’t see a date stamp on the application, but each email sent will stamp into communications for that member.
Thanks for walking through Membership Renewal Pregeneration with us! If you have any additional questions, or want to purchase these upgrades, please reach out to the MatrixMAXX team. We will be happy to speak with you!