After a specific date near the end of the membership year, many calendar-year associations begin giving new members who join an expiration date in the following year. This prevents a scenario where someone joins today for the remainder of the year, and then receives a renewal for next year tomorrow.
You can accomplish this by using the Multi-Year Initial Term setting, which can be found on each member type's Renewal tab.
What is a Multi-Year Initial Term?
Associations use multi-year initial terms to encourage late-year signups. Instead of asking, “Why would I pay dues for just the last couple months of this year?” members see the value in joining because their initial term includes both the remainder of this year and all of next year.
When setting up a multi-year initial term, you’ll configure:
When signups start to include the rest of this year plus all of next year (on the Member Type).
How dues rules should be billed during that initial term (on each Dues Rule).
Step 1: Member Type Setup
On each Member Type > Renewal tab, you can enable Multi-Year Initial Term and set the cutoff date (in months or days prior to expiration).
Example:
If members expire on 12/31, and you set “30 days prior,” then anyone joining on or after 12/1 will receive an expiration date of 12/31 the following year.
Step 2: Decide How Dues Rules Should Apply
When Multi-Year Initial Term is turned on for a member type and both years are being charged for dues, a Multi-Year Initial Term Billing section will appear within each dues rule.
Bill for Both Terms (default): The rule applies in both Year 1 and Year 2 of the initial term.
Example: Standard annual dues should be billed in both years.Bill for One Year Only: The rule applies only in Year 1.
Example: A one-time application fee should only be billed once, in the first year.
💡 You can mix and match. Base dues might bill in both years, while fees or optional items only bill once.
Example A: Charge dues for both years
Let's say that your members expire on 12/31. Beginning in November, you want new signups to expire in the following year. You also want to bill them for the remainder of this year plus all of next year. Your settings would look like this:
Under each dues rule, you will also have the option to select if you would like to Bill for Both Terms or Bill for One Year Only
With Bill for Both Terms selected, the dues rule is charged each year.
Members signing up in November will pay for the last two months of this year and the full amount for the upcoming year.
With Bill for One Year Only selected, the dues rule is charged in the first membership term.
When the member renews in the second year of their initial term, an application fee will be charged in the first membership term, and will not be charged again.
Accounting Note: If you’d like to recognize the first and second terms in different accounts, there’s one more step after enabling the Multi-Year Initial Term setting. Head to your dues rules after turning that setting on. You’ll see options at the bottom where you can choose which Items and Classes to use for each term.
Example B: Charge dues for next year only
Let's say that your members expire on 12/31. Beginning in November, you want new signups to expire in the following year. You only want to bill them for next year and they can have the remainder of this year for free. Your settings would look like this instead:
Where can I view and edit the Multi-Year Initial Term setting?
The Multi-Year Initial Term setting can be found on the Renewal tab of each member type, but only if the Expiration setting is Calendar. Anniversary renewals will not have a setting for multi-year initial terms since all terms will be the same length.
This setting is based on your calendar expiration date and can be set either months or days prior. Example: 30 days prior to 12/31 would mean any member that joins starting on 12/1 would have a multi-year initial term.
Once you've checked the box to turn on the Multi-Year Initial Term, you can enter the date and whether the system should charge dues for "both years" or "second year only".
The multi-year initial term billing setting can be found on the Dues Rule tab of each member type, once a dues rule is selected. This setting will appear only if the Multi-Year Initial Term is turned ON and both years is selected
Important: How Proration Interacts
The settings for Prorated Dues and Multi-Year Initial Term Billing are separate but related.
Prorated Dues controls how much of Year 1’s dues are billed (e.g., discounting for mid-year join dates).
Multi-Year Initial Term Billing controls whether the dues rule repeats in Year 2.
💡 Always check both settings together for the full picture of how much a member will pay when they join.
What happens if this setting is not turned on?
If you aren't using the multi-year initial term setting, and you have Auto-Renewal turned on, you might run into a bit of confusion surrounding late-year signups.
Let's again say that your members expire 12/31. Let's also say that the member type is set to auto-renew 90 days prior to expiration, on 10/2.
Example #1
ABC Company joins as a new member on 10/15. A few things will happen if Multi-Year Initial Term is not turned on:
On 10/15, they will be invoiced for their first year and their expiration date will be 12/31 of this year.
On 10/16, the system will see that the expiration date is still for this year and renew them since renewals have been run according to the settings. They will renew. They will be issued a second invoice, for their second year, and their expiration date will move to the following year.
This is actually correct, because if this didn't happen, then come 12/31 of this year, they would no longer be a member and then an admin would have to go to their record and manually renew them. However, while it is correct, it could cause a negative reaction from the member who now has to submit a second dues payment right after they've joined your organization.
Another place this scenario could cause confusion is in Recent Signups. When you're reviewing new signups on 10/16 (or later), you will see them in the list from when they joined on 10/15, but it will list the second invoice in the Transaction column. This is because Recent Signups will always show the most recent dues invoice. At this point, you might think the system didn't charge for the first year. It did. It's simply on a separate invoice.
As you can see, not using this setting breaks the registration process during this time period into two parts and creates two separate transactions.
It also does not allow for you to forgo the remainder of the current year's dues, if that is something you want to do. On the other hand, using the setting will allow that and will also be a better experience for your new member.
Example #2
ABC Company joins even later in the year on 12/15. The system has stopped checking for renewals for this year because it's been months since renewals initially ran. The company will not auto-renew and their membership benefits would stop on 12/31 of the current year. In this case, an admin would need to manually renew the member.