Status Tab (Members)

The Status tab is used to record the starting and ending date of the membership, the current status, whether this record should be included on mailing labels, as well as other miscellaneous options.

Note: If your computer monitor supports a higher resolution, the General and Status tab pages will be combined into one "General" page.

The following fields on this tab require some additional explanation:

Status - This indicates the current membership status of the record. You can have up to 25 separate membership status codes defined, each of which can have many properties of its own. For example, the status can be updated automatically by the system if set to Expire. See Maintaining Status Codes for more information. Note that if you choose a status that requires a related record (this is another property of the status code you can define), you will have to go to the Related tab and create the required member and/or group relationship before saving the record.

Status History icon - Click the Status History icon to open the Maintain Status Change History window, where you can view and change the record of status changes that have been applied to the current member. See Status Change History for more information.

Start Date - This date typically represents the original date the person joined the group, regardless of their current status. This is the date the Retention report looks at when determining who joined when. If you want this field to indicate the starting date of the current status, you may do so, but the reports based on this date may be inaccurate. The start date is populated automatically by the setting in the Default Start Date Membership Preference.

End Date - This date typically represents the date on which the person's membership expires. This field is required if you select a status that has been setup to Expire (because a status that expires will have a "next status" defined, and the system needs to know when to change the record to the "next status") If the status does not expire, the End Date is optional. The end date can be populated automatically by the setting in the Default End Date Membership Preference.

Include in Mailings - This field is a little confusing.  It implies that selecting it will automatically make it appear on mailing label reports, but it is meant to be something you can choose to include as report criteria.  In other words, if you want this field to limit the records retrieved on a mailing label (or other) report, you have to choose the "Include in Mailings" field as report criteria.

This checkbox can also be cleared automatically by the system if the status is automatically changed to an Inactive status. To enable this feature, see the Clear Mailing Flag setting in Membership Preferences. .

This setting can also be changed automatically based on the status you select. See Maintaining Status Codes for more information.

Include on Reports - This field works like the Include in Mailings field. You can choose to use it as part of your criteria to limit the records returned on reports (or labels or views).  We just tried to give it a name that would make sense when used in criteria.

This setting can also be changed automatically based on the status you select. See Maintaining Status Codes for more information.

Head of Household - If you enter all members of a household, you can use this setting to designate a particular contact person. There is no special processing tied to this field by the system.

This setting can also be changed automatically based on the status you select. See Maintaining Status Codes for more information.

Birthdate - If you do not know the birth year, you may enter "9999" as the year.  A 9999 year will appear on this window, but on other system-defined reports, the 9999 will be suppressed.  On other reports and views, the 9999 is only suppressed in the "Birth Year" component, since 9999 is the same as "no year."  When creating user-defined reports and views, various smart fields are available to show birthdate component values.

Age - The age of the member is computed automatically and displayed to the right of the Birthdate field.

Anniversary - Can be used to represent the wedding anniversary of a married couple, or any other anniversary that is appropriate to your organization.

Occupation - Similar to the City and County fields, this dropdown contains the names of all occupations that already exist on any membership record. In other words, once an occupation has been added to a record and saved, it becomes available to all other records. This is designed to help keep spelling and naming consistent You can also pre-define occupation names. See Maintaining Occupation Names for additional information.

Reference - This dropdown contains the codes that are defined in the Reference Codes list. Reference codes intended to indicate the manner by which a person heard of your group, i.e., via a friend, newspaper advertisement, etc. See Maintaining Reference Codes for information about maintaining this list.