Before You Begin:
- Only calendar-based dues can be prorated; anniversary-based dues cannot. To apply automatic prorating, a membership type must use a specific month for the renewal period. Select the desired month from the Renew Everyone field when adding a new membership type. See Add a New Membership Type. The system is designed to work with 12-month terms.
- The term of the membership must be set to 12 months. See Add a New Membership Type.
- For monthly proration, go to Memberships, click Settings and select Proration Settings to define your preferred Prorate Cutoff Day of Month. This date is used to determine whether or not you will charge the member in the month joined. The default is 15. If you do not wish to use a cutoff day, populate this field with 28. See Set Prorate Cutoff Day.
- Prorate Partial Years must be enabled when adding pricing to your membership type.
For membership types that use a specific renewal date, rather than an anniversary date, you can prorate or adjust the membership fee when members join in the middle of the year, so that the member pays only for a portion of the year.
For example, if your annual membership fee is $1200 and your memberships renew on January 1st, and someone joins on July 1st, the system can automatically adjust their membership fee to $600.00.
Proration is set per payment frequency, in the Proration Interval column of the Payment Options grid. Each frequency row — Monthly, Quarterly, Semiannually and Annually — carries its own Proration Interval selector, so a member who pays annually can be prorated on a different interval than a member who pays monthly.
Step-by-Step Instructions
- Go to Memberships, click Settings and select Membership Types. The page opens as Membership Settings.
- Open the membership type you want to prorate, then confirm the renewal month is set in the Renew Everyone field and the term is set to 12 months. See Add a New Membership Type.
- When adding pricing to the membership type, enable Prorate Partial Years.
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Scroll to the Payment Options grid at the bottom of the Edit Membership Billing window and tick Advanced Options in the lower right so the Proration Interval column is shown. Set a Proration Interval on each frequency row you offer. Each frequency allows a different set of intervals:
- Monthly row: No Proration, or Partial Month (Using Prorate Cutoff Day).
- Quarterly row: No Proration, or Monthly.
- Semiannually row: No Proration, Quarterly, or Monthly.
- Annually row: No Proration, Semiannually, Quarterly, or Monthly.
What each interval does:
- No Proration: If the overall membership is set for proration, use this option to NOT include this payment frequency in the proration calculation.
- Semiannually: By using this option, if the new member joins in the second half of the year, he/she will be charged 1/2 of the membership dues.
- Quarterly: By using this option, a new member would be charged based on the quarter in which they join your organization.
- Monthly: By using this option, a new member would be charged based on the month in which they join.
- Partial Month (Using Prorate Cutoff Day): On Memberships > Settings > Proration Settings, you determine the cutoff day for billing new members within the month. If the new member joins prior to the cut-off day, he/she will be charged for the month. If the new member joins after the cut-off day, he/she would not be charged for that month.
- Click the Done button to finalize your changes.
Common Pitfalls
- Using anniversary-based dues: Only calendar-based dues (with a specific renewal month set in Renew Everyone) can be prorated. Anniversary-based dues cannot be prorated.
- Expecting proration on every bill: IMPORTANT: Proration only affects the initial membership payment. After their first payment, members will be billed based on the payment frequency and amount they selected on the membership application.