Member Benefits Flow

Learn how to flow member benefits to non-dues paying members.

Pete Zimek, CAE avatar
Written by Pete Zimek, CAE
Updated over a week ago

Before proceeding, please review this article that explains the concept of a dues-paying member.


Family Tree Overview

In Novi AMS, as in QuickBooks, records can be placed into what many databases call a "family tree". This is when a record has a parent, child, sibling, or some other related record.

Parent

Family relationships are created when a member record is assigned to a parent on the Details tab of the member record. A record can only have one parent.

Child: People or Sub Companies

A parent can have any number of companies or people underneath as children.

  • When the child is a person, Novi refers to them as People. Depending on your member type settings, these may be "inheriting" members or these individuals could have a membership of their own.

  • When the child is a company, Novi refers to them as Sub Companies. Depending on your member type settings, these may be "inheriting" members or may have a membership of their own.


Flowing Member Benefits

A record's family tree is independent of member benefits.

Member Benefits Flow is set up on each Member Type on the Member Benefits tab. 

Member benefits can flow to various family relationships, as listed in the screenshot below. 

>> Deep Dive: Membership Status Types in Novi AMS - A deep dive into membership statuses and scenarios relating to member benefits and member dependencies.


Limited Benefit Flow

On the Member Benefits tab of each member type, the "Dues Paying Member's Children (People)" relationship has a gear icon to the right (see image below), which allows you to add a limit of how many records can "inherit" membership benefits from the dues-paying member.

Important Notes:

  • This setting does not alter the dues amount that will be charged to the dues-paying member. The dues for this member type are fixed because the company member only pays once no matter how many people are inheriting (up to the maximum limit you set).

    • If you're looking to charge variable dues, based on the number of people inheriting benefits from the company member, check out the Member Type Category of Companies with Individual Seat Dues option instead.

  • If you've already gone through the data import process during onboarding and there was no limit on the benefit flow, keep in mind that all existing records in this member type will need to be updated manually. On the other hand, if you haven't done your initial import yet, you can include the benefit flow in your spreadsheet.

Example of a member type with benefit flow

limited to 3 people for each company member:

>> Learn More: Member Types that Limit Company Member Benefits to Certain Individual Members - A guide to understanding sign-up and visibility on member types where company member benefits flow to a select number of people.

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