Membership Application-Approve the Applicant

Approve On-line Applications

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If you have included a Membership Application form on your web-site. You can configure your system to automatically accept applicants as new members, or you can manually approve the applications.

When applications are submitted, the member status is set to Prospect. To approve an on-line application:

1. Click Mbr Signups in the Task List. A list of the memberships awaiting approval will be displayed. Click the Member Name to view further information about the applicant.

   If the member paid by credit card - you may see the following messages:

   • "Member chose to pay by credit card. Transaction successful": Pay by Credit card was chosen and completed successfully.
   • "Member chose to pay by credit card. Transaction is being processed. Transaction submitted MM/DD/YY - HH:MM": Pay by credit card was chosen, credit card information was entered but never received a success message. Check credit card report for success/fail.
   • "Member chose to pay by credit card. Credit Card information was not entered.": This indicates the applicant selected pay by credit card but never even entered in their credit card information and closed out. The reason these still come through as an application is because it gives the chamber/organization the opportunity to pursue the member who might have just been too busy to complete the application.
   • When you see the wording included on these messages saying receipt has been created or invoice has been created that indicates that a staff member has been processing that application and created the receipt or invoice from that application.

2. For each of the membership requests, you may:

   • Approve: This option allows you to approve memberships paid by credit card OR approve memberships where the applicant has requested to be invoiced without creating an invoice. Once approved, the member status will be changed to Active.
   • Approve/Create Invoice: This options is only displayed if the applicant has requested to be invoiced (it will not be displayed if paid by credit card). When this option is selected, the applicant will be assigned as an Active member, and the invoice will be created so that you may deliver it.
   • Approve/Create Receipt: This option is displayed if the applicant has paid by credit card, and you wish to approve the application AND create a receipt for the transaction.
   • Create Invoice Only This option allows you to create the invoice for the new membership. Select this option if your business process requires that you receive payment prior to activating a membership. The applicant will remain in Prospective status. Once you have received payment for the invoice, you will need to approve the membership, which will mark the membership status as Active.
   • Create Receipt Only: This option will be displayed if the applicant has paid by credit card, and you do not wish to approve, simply create an invoice.
   • Decline: Select this option if you do not wish to activate this new membership. NOTE: When you decline an application, the applicant will be maintained in your database as a Non Member.

NOTE: You have the opportunity to review the applicant information prior to approving. At times you may receive "fake" applications. The membership application has a CAPTCHA in place and it will prevent most junk applications. However, no CAPTCHA is foolproof and none of them will prevent human-powered spam (where humans fill out captchas for forms that bots complete). A few spam applications here and there are to be expected. Best practice will be to decline these applicants, then delete the contact, which will have been added to your database as a non-member.