If your site has a members area, the people in it are a list you keep yourself. Adding somebody takes a name and an address, and a whole list takes a spreadsheet. After that the list tells you who is Active, whose renewal is due and who is Inactive, and each person has a record you can open and change. If you have not opened the tool before, How to make edits on an Avistra website shows the sign-in.
Everything in this note shows people's names and addresses, so it needs your passkey. Signed in with only the emailed code, these panels ask you to set up a passkey or use it first.
Two places: People and Membership
Sign in and choose Dashboard in the bar in the lower right. It is a page of its own with a list down the left, and two items in that list, under Members, do different jobs.
- People is the list of humans: everyone your organization knows, members, people who registered for an event, people who gave. There is one list, and a member is a kind of person on it.
- Membership is how your membership runs: the levels and their prices, applications waiting on you, renewals and reminders, joining codes, organizations and their seats, the directory, and polls.
Each opens beside the list, with its own sections down its left side and whichever one you are in filling the rest.
Adding people
In People, Add people, at the top right, asks how you want to do it. There are three ways.
One person is the default, and it is what you want most days: a first name, a last name and an email address. The address is the important part, because it is how they sign in. Tick Make them a member to put them on a level at the same time; the button then reads Add and make a member. If somebody with that address is already on the list, the tool says so rather than adding them twice.
A spreadsheet is what you want on the first day, when the list already exists somewhere. It takes four steps, and nothing is added until the third:
- Choose the file. A CSV or tab-separated file saved out of Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. A Wild Apricot contacts export works as it is.
- Match the columns. Each column in your file is matched to where it goes: first name, email, level, renewal date, or a field of your own. The tool matches what it can by the column name and by what is in it, and any column it could not match is listed first, so nothing is dropped without you seeing it. Choose Fill in blanks only to leave the details you already have alone, or Update people with the spreadsheet's values.
- Check. How many people are new, how many are already here and will be updated, and any rows with a problem, in plain words. Choose Import when it reads right.
- Done. Undo this import takes it all back, for 30 days.
Paste a list is the third, for the two addresses a colleague sent you in an email. One per line, in whatever shape you have them: Dana Reed <dana@example.com>, Dana Reed, dana@example.com, or just the address. It goes through the same Check step.
Newsletter and event announcements are only switched on for somebody when you can say how they asked to hear from you. Being on a list is not the same as asking.
The list
People opens on Recent: members, and anyone who has registered, given or applied in the last two years. The chips along the top narrow it: Members (Active and Renewal due), Renewal due, Inactive, Applied, Registrants, Subscribers, and Everyone, for everyone the organization has ever known.
Find somebody by name, email, phone or organization in the box at the top.
One person's record
Press a row and it opens: their name, their status and level, and tabs for their Details, Membership, Events, Payments, Emails, Notes and Activity.
- Record a payment is for somebody who paid you by check, in cash or by bank transfer. Recording a membership payment renews them.
- Change level, Change renewal date and End membership are on the Membership tab.
- Make a member turns somebody on the list into a member.
- A note under Notes is seen only by admins.
How a member signs in
With no password. They go to your site, choose to sign in, type the address you have for them, and a six-digit code arrives by email. They type it in and they are in Your account, where they see their membership, their registrations and their receipts, and can renew. Nothing to remember, nothing to reset, and nothing you have to store.
That is why the address matters more than anything else on the record. If somebody cannot get in, the address on their record is the first place to look.
Active, Renewal due, Inactive
A member whose renewal date has passed reads Renewal due for the grace period you set under Membership, then Renewals. They keep everything and see a renew button. After that they read Inactive. An Inactive member can still sign in to their account and renew; what they can no longer get to is whatever you have marked for their level. Recording their payment makes them Active again.
People waiting to join
If your site asks people to be approved first, Membership, then Applications is where they land: what they said, which level they asked for, and Approve or Decline. Nothing is charged until you approve. How people join and pay on an Avistra website covers the setting that turns this on.
Organizations
If a membership can belong to a company rather than a person, Membership, then Organizations is where those live. An organization pays once and holds a number of seats, and the person who manages the seats fills them from their own account. You can always step in from Organizations and do it yourself.
If you get stuck
Send it to us. Choose Support request in the bar and say what you need: a list imported, somebody's record put right, a question about how any of it works. How to submit a support request on an Avistra website shows how.