If your site has a members area, the people who can get into 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, who has lapsed, and where everybody's dues stand, 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.
Opening it
Sign in, choose Manage in the bar in the lower right, then Members. This one opens large, because it is a list rather than a form: sections down the left, and whichever one you are in filling the rest.
Under Membership are People, Applications, Groups and Tiers. Under The portal are Resources and Settings. A section you are not using stays out of the way — Groups does not appear until your site says it has organizations, and Applications appears the moment somebody is waiting on you.
Adding people
Add people, at the top right, asks how you want to do it. There are three ways, and the first two are the ones that get used.
One person is the default, and it is what you want most days: a name, an email address, and you are done. The address is the important half — it is how they sign in — and the name is optional, because without one the part before the @ is used.
A spreadsheet is what you want on the first day, when the list already exists somewhere. Choose a spreadsheet, pick a CSV or a tab-separated file saved out of Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets, and the tool reads it: it finds the column that actually holds email addresses, works out which columns hold names — a single Name column, or First Name and Last Name together — and tells you what it found before anything is added.
128 people in members.csv. Addresses from "Email", names from "First Name + Last Name". 2 rows had no address and are left out.
Nothing is added until you choose Add them, so if it has read the wrong column you will see that first. Quoted commas, an odd column order, a file with no header row and files with no names at all are all handled. Rows without an address are skipped and counted rather than guessed at.
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.
Whichever way you use, the two pickers underneath put everybody on a tier and give them a seat on an organization in one go.
Everyone added is active and can sign in straight away. What is kept about a member is their name, their address, and the one word saying where they stand — nothing else, unless you put it there. Somebody already on the list is not duplicated; their record is brought up to date instead, and the count afterwards tells you how many of each.
The list
People shows everybody, with their tier, whether they are active or lapsed, and how their dues stand. The line under the heading is the count: how many are active, how many have lapsed, and how many have asked to join and are waiting on you.
Find somebody by name or address in the box at the top. The pickers beside it narrow the list to one tier or one organization.
One person's record
Press a row and it opens. Standing, tier, dues, when they joined, and the address they sign in with. From here you can change their tier, mark their dues paid — for somebody who paid you by cheque or in person — or take them off the list.
How a member signs in
The same way you do, and with no password. They go to the members area, type the address you have for them, and a six-digit code arrives by email. They type it in and they are through. 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.
Lapsed, not gone
A member whose dues have run out reads Lapsed. They can still sign in; what they can no longer get to is whatever you have marked for their tier. Nobody is thrown out for being late, and marking the dues paid puts them back where they were.
People waiting to join
If your site asks people to be approved before they are let in, Applications is where they land: what they said, which tier they asked for, and Approve or Turn down. Nothing is charged until you say yes. How people join, and how they pay covers the setting that turns this on.
Organizations
If a membership can belong to a company rather than a person, Groups is where those live. An organization pays once and holds a number of seats, and its own coordinator fills them from their portal — you do not have to. You can always step in from Groups 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.