How is membership type best set up for monthly direct debit payments?

Question

An organization has some members paying their fees annually by cash and therefore need reminders. There are three membership levels - Under 16, Over 65, and others. It's quite straightforward to set CiviCRM's membership types for this.

Other members pay by monthly direct debit, which means they continue to be members until they take action to cancel the direct debit. Bearing in mind they also are categorised by the same three levels - under 16, over 65, others - how should membership type be set up for these members?

Answer 1

Since CiviCRM does not yet allow partial payments/payment plans for annual memberships, you'll have to create a membership type for each level and each payment schedule.

Using your example of levels of memberships, define your membership types as:

• Annual membership for over 65 - amount: $1200
• Monthly membership for over 65 - amount: $100 (require auto-renew)
• Annual membership for under 16 - amount: $60
• Monthly membership for under 16 - amount: $5 (require auto-renew)

Answer 2

I have worked at an organisation where they had a memberships paid by direct debit every quarter (1 jan, 1 april, 1 july, 1 october). And the same principle was applied they didnt had a cancel period. You could cancel at any time. But CiviCRM did not have an option for a fixed quarter membership period. And in addition there was a small selection of people who paid by bank transfer.

So we set up a fixed yearly membership type and I developed two extensions one which would made from one membership contribution, four (for every quarte one) and an extension which added a button to cancel a membership and if pressed any pending contributions where cancelled. Due to the direct debit and financial process we had to generate the four contributions in advance.

The extensions could be seen/downloaded from https://github.com/CiviCooP/org.civicoop.quartelymembershippayment https://github.com/SPnl/nl.sp.membershipcancelcontribution