4.2 Member Record

a) Viewing & Editing a Member Record
Member Records can be accessed by clicking on a member's Name or membership No highlighted in blue in the Members List (see 4.1) and elsewhere throughout the Beacon system.

The fields in the upper part of the record, including Mobile number, relate to that member alone. The address fields at the bottom, including Telephone (landline), may be shared with another member that lives at the same address.

• An email can be sent to the member by pressing the Send button [B] adjacent to their email address (see 6.1)
• The Joined and Next renewal dates are set automatically by the system and will not normally need to be touched. They may, however, be overridden manually.
• Known as may be used if the member prefers to be known by a different name, e.g. Bill rather than William.
• Suffix may be used for honours, e.g. MBE.
• The Hide contact details from group leaders tick box is provided for members who have specified that they don’t wish Group Leaders to be able to see their contact details
  Note: Group Leaders are still able to send emails to the member, but without seeing the email address.
• If your u3a has created any Polls, the boxes can be ticked or unticked to add or remove the member from a poll.

Members Portal
The text to the right of the Member Status drop-down list [A] shows whether or not the member has registered to use the Members Portal (see 10.2).

This helps answer any questions that members raise about not being able to access the Portal; it can be seen if they have registered and set their password. The information shown will be one of three things:

1. Not Portal Registered
2. Portal Password Set
3. Email not confirmed
   

No. 3 is only seen if the member has set their password, but not verified their email address by clicking on the link in the email received.  That link is only valid for one hour.  After that, they will need to use the "Forgotten password" link on the Portal sign-in page to validate the email address reset their password - the five data pieces will not work. 

Member Photo
A photo of the member may be uploaded.  Press the Choose File button [C] (the style of which varies between browsers) and select an image file from your device.

Note: The picture must be saved as jpg, png, or gif, maximum file size 2MB. A square format photo (aspect ratio 1:1) is advised to suit the space on the membership card. Photos can be cropped to a square using a smartphone app or other photo editing software.

Gift Aid Date
Gift Aid from is the date from which the member consented for Gift Aid claims to be made on their membership subscriptions. If the member becomes ineligible for Gift Aid or withdraws consent, the date must be removed by pressing the Cancel button [D].

• Entering a Gift Aid date in the future is not possible.
• If a date in the past is entered, or a date older than the original date, a warning is displayed saying that the Gift Aid consent date is being back dated. The status of any previous Gift Aid eligible transactions in Beacon for the member will not be changed.

Note: When setting a new members for Gift Aid it is important that you include a title: e.g. Mr , Mrs, Ms etc. This is necessary when making a submission to claim from HMRC.

The Membership Secretary can change the Gift Aid status of members directly from the Renewals screen (see 4.5). This avoids having to update individual Member Records in advance of processing the renewal.

Ticking Gift Aid on the Renewals screen sets the consent date to today's date. Ticking or unticking on the Renewals screen updates the member's Gift Aid status immediately, even if the renewal is not subsequently completed. 

Saving Changes
After making any changes to a Member Record, press the Save button [E] to commit the changes.

Note: if a member that is a System User has their status has changed to Deceased or Resigned, they will automatically be removed from the System User list on saving the Member Record.

Groups and Ledger

At the bottom of the Member Record page any Groups that the member belongs to (or is on the waiting list for) and the financial Transactions associated with the member are displayed. By clicking the corresponding links, you may go directly to the associated Group Record or Transaction Record.

 

b) Adding a new Member Record
Refer to 4.3 for details of how to create a Member Record for a new member.

c) Deleting a Member Record
When a person ceases to be a current member, rather than deleting the Member Record straight away, their status needs to be changed to Lapsed or some other non-current value such as Resigned or Deceased (see 4.6).

A Delete button [F] is provided to remove a Member Record, although you may not be able to see this, depending on how your access rights have been set up. 

Before deleting a Member Record the member must be removed from any Groups that they belonged to.  Attempting to delete a member that is still linked to a Group will generate the following message:

Note 1. Please refer to 4.2.2 Deleting members including GDPR compliance for information about how long to keep records, and what happens when a record is deleted.

Note 2. Please refer to 4.2.1 Deleting Duplicate Members if duplicate Member Records are inadvertently created.

Note 3. Please refer to 4.2.3 Removing deleted members from Groups for how to identify and remove members from Groups if they have died, resigned, or lapsed.

Revision History

v1	2020-04-03	Graeme Bunting	First version
v2	2020-05-18	Graeme Bunting	Reference to Beacon User Guide replaced by a link to the Knowledge Base article about deleting members
v3	2021-04-24	Graeme Bunting	Links added in part (b) to 4.2.1, 4.2.2 and 4.2.3
v4	2021-08-10	Lyn Bossons	Note about photo size amended
v5	2021-08-23	Graham Tigg	Emphasised Gift Aid date in the past has no effect
v6	2023-01-12	Graeme Bunting	Guidance on adding or changing the Gift Aid date updated. Groups and Ledger section re-worded. Warning about not deleting Members Records removed.
v7	2023-05-15	Graeme Bunting / John Alexander	Update to accommodate Membership Card changes
v8	2023-06-30	Graeme Bunting	References to Polls and Members Portal added. Graphics updated.
v9	2023-08-14	Graeme Bunting	Note about removing Members from Groups before deleting added. Note about changes to System Users added.
v10	2023-08-18	John Alexander	Add note about putting in Title for Gift Aid