Charity Membership Database: managing renewal dates; reminders and payments

[Pete Mccann]

Dear all, I am new to this forum and fairly new to Access. I help to run a small charity. Up until now, we have been managing the membership records and bank details within a spread sheet but his is now becoming cumbersome. So, we have decided to transfer to Access when we have set up a series of queries, forms, reports etc. similar to what we already have in Excel. So far, we have two tables in the draft database:

1. Table of Membership (all the data that would normally not change: name, address, phone, email, etc. along with the date that they joined and their membership level).
2. Table of Bank transactions (each transaction as recorded by the bank). This table has the same name field as the Table of Membership. Each record in this table can be allocated to a particular member and shown as a donation or membership.

Membership to the charity is for one year and it would then be renewed. One of the complications is how to run a query to show which members are overdue in their membership payments (or their membership renewal payments are due in say, 1 month). For year 1, this is fairly easy to do I think with a calculated field: “Membership_renewal_date_year1” = “original_membership_date”+1year. For the second (year 2) renewal date, though, how would this be done? Would this be based on the “original_membership_date”+”2year?
It would also be good to send out email reminders to members automatically (if they are overdue or nearing their renewal date) and to send email receipts for payments received.
Finally, is it normal practice on this site to upload a sample database file to explain the questions? If so, I can create a file with dummy data since I think there may be other questions relating to this file.

[Bob Fitz]

It is often helpful to upload a zipped copy of your db with some dummy records. Best to run compact and repair before zipping

[davegri]

The way that I've handled this for memberships is to have a membership expiry date.
Every time membership is renewed, the expiry date is updated.
You can also keep a DateJoined which will not change.

[Pete Mccann]

Bob and davegri ..... you've both got "stars" on this post. I think the best thing I can do is to upload a database file as suggested in the earlier posts. Since I am quite new to using Access, I may ask some dumb questions so hopefully the forum bears with me. Thanks so far.....