Batch membership processing gotcha's

[Smith]

I tried using the batch membership processing for the first time this weekend. Here are a couple of points of information. I have provided feedback through the website feedback so I’m not reporting the problem here but want to potentially save others frustration.

1. The payment section uses confusing wording. “Contribution amount” is not a contribution. It’s the payment due. It’s non-editable and probably not that confusing unless you are doing JTP memberships in which case it shows a $0.00 which makes it look like you can donate.
2. You cannot submit a batch of JTP memberships without at least one paid membership. I submitted a batch of only JTP for a couple of schools and they remained “pending.” Batches for schools that had a mix of membership types worked perfectly. When I added a renewal of my membership to a JTP batch, it worked. Apparently, you have to go through the credit card screen for it to process.
3. Gender is now required for batch processing, but the instructions are incorrect. They say to use 1 for female, 2 for male, 5 for non-binary, 6 for prefer not to say. I used codes 1 & 2 and they failed validation. When I changed them to F and M, it worked. I don’t know what the appropriate code for non-binary and prefer not to say are.

Hope that helps someone.

[Micah_Smith]

Many TD’s, like myself, are volunteers. With all the issues with the new programming, I wouldn’t be surprised if some volunteers say “screw it” and quit.

[joepye]

@Smith

I tried using the batch membership processing for the first time this weekend. Here are a couple of points of information. I have provided feedback through the website feedback so I’m not reporting the problem here but want to potentially save others frustration.

1. The payment section uses confusing wording. “Contribution amount” is not a contribution. It’s the payment due. It’s non-editable and probably not that confusing unless you are doing JTP memberships in which case it shows a $0.00 which makes it look like you can donate.
2. You cannot submit a batch of JTP memberships without at least one paid membership. I submitted a batch of only JTP for a couple of schools and they remained “pending.” Batches for schools that had a mix of membership types worked perfectly. When I added a renewal of my membership to a JTP batch, it worked. Apparently, you have to go through the credit card screen for it to process.
3. Gender is now required for batch processing, but the instructions are incorrect. They say to use 1 for female, 2 for male, 5 for non-binary, 6 for prefer not to say. I used codes 1 & 2 and they failed validation. When I changed them to F and M, it worked. I don’t know what the appropriate code for non-binary and prefer not to say are.

Hope that helps someone.

Has anybody else confirmed 2) above?

[martinak]

Yes, M and F worked for gender.

Does anybody know how to get the Chess Life subscription to work. I put a 1 in the field as it instructed but it isn’t coming up with the right charge. Tested a Y which passed but also didn’t work.

[jeff_aldrich]

I used the batch process for the first time last night and ran into a different issue. I had 2 pairs of siblings registered where one was an existing current member and one was a new member. When I submitted the new members, the system extended the current members and changed the names to the new members. It gave no warning that a duplicate member was found so I could have done something different. I am guessing I should have used the “SKIP_DUP” field to force it to create a new record.

[GKarRacer]

Did they have the same email address? If so, then it may very well have thought it was the same account. I have seen some pretty strange things happen when trying to use the same email address. The email address must be unique for every member.