You can invoice members for their membership fees quickly and automatically with Making Music Platform. (For information on the technical aspects of invoicing members, please see the Setting up Member Invoicing help guide above).
Automatic membership invoicing is simplest if your members pay a fixed fee at regular periods (e.g. monthly, weekly, quarterly). However, if your group’s fee structure doesn’t work this way, it may still be possible for you to customise the automatic invoicing feature to work for you.
Termly invoicing
Making Music Platform creates automatic invoices for regular payment periods (e.g. monthly, weekly, quarterly). This can raise an issue for groups which invoice termly, as often music groups terms are not all the same length and don’t begin at regular points in the calendar year.
It’s still possible to send automatic invoices if your fees are paid termly. However there are some things to be aware of:
- All ‘terms’ in the MM Platform system must be the same length of time. E.g. if you have three terms in the year, then each term will be exactly four months long. If you have two semesters, each semester will be exactly six months long and so on.
- For groups with three terms, this usually means that their term dates in the Making Music Platform system will be:
- Term 1: 1 September – 31 December
- Term 2: 1 January – 31 April
- Term 3: 1 May – 31 August
Even if these dates don’t correspond to the group’s active periods.
This doesn’t have to cause a problem for your group - you can click the ‘Invoice now’ button on your MM Platform and send out invoices for the next dues period whenever you want. You’re not forced to invoice members on (e.g.) 1 Sep, 1 Jan, 1 May. However, members will find that the period printed on their invoices corresponds to the one in the MM Platform system. I.e. their invoice will say that it is for the period 1May – 31 August even if your actual term dates are different from this.
Non traditional fee structures
Your group might have a more complex fee structures, for example you have several ensembles, and members pay a different amount based on how many ensembles they attend. In these cases you need to create a set of Fee Levels which reflect all the possible amounts that your members could owe.
We’ve written two examples of this below. If you have any questions about how your group’s fee structure could be made to work with the automatic system, please get in touch.
- Example 1. A choir runs three sessions each week. Each session costs the same amount, but members who attend more than one session receive a discount. This group could have the following fee levels:
|
One session only |
£10 |
|
Two sessions only |
£18 |
|
Three sessions |
£26 |
- Example 2. A group has two ensembles: a main band and a training band. Some members play in the main band only, some play in the training band, and some play in both. The group has a discount for students. This group could have the following fee levels:
|
Main band |
£15 |
|
Main band (student discount) |
£12 |
|
Training band |
£10 |
|
Training band (student discount) |
£8 |
|
Main and training band |
£25 |
|
Main and training band (student discount) |
£20 |
