4.7 Membership Cards

Beacon Membership Cards can be generated from the Membership Cards page and the following options are available:

• Download cards in pdf format; see Section b) below
• Email cards to members; see Section c) below
• Print blank cards; see Section d) below
• Download card data in Excel; see Section e) below

The cards are designed to be printed onto standard 85 x 54mm business cards, 10 per A4 sheet. Avery card numbers include C32011, C32026, C32070 and C32075. Please check that the print scaling is set to 100%.

The barcode on Membership Cards contains the membership number and can be read by barcode readers.

There is an option to include Membership Cards as an attachment on the confirmatory email that is sent when a member joins or renews online. This can be done by an Admin user in System Settings (see 8.3).

a) Membership Card colour
It is recommended that the colour band shown at the bottom of the Membership Card is changed each year. This can be done by an Admin user in System Settings (see 8.3).

Click anywhere in the membership card colour box to choose a colour. Each colour has a unique code, e.g. 99FF99 for the light green shown below. Entering a known colour code is an alternative method of recalling a previously used colour.

Press the Update button to save the new colour.

b) Download Membership Cards
To download Membership Cards in pdf format, select Membership cards from the Home Page or the Membership Renewals confirmation page to see a list of members who have recently joined or renewed and who are therefore flagged as outstanding, in need of a membership card.

By selecting a different radio button near the top of the page, you may instead show members based on a Poll, a combination of outstanding members and a poll, or All current members.

By default, cards are printed for the current membership year.

By ticking Advance expiry to next membership year you can print cards with the expiry date incremented by one year. This enables the printing of cards before the start of the next membership year so that you can have cards ready to give to renewing members as soon as they renew.

Cards are printed in the same order as displayed in the list, so to re-order the cards by (say) the Membership Number, first click the blue ‘No’ column heading to re-sort the list.

After ticking the required members, select Download cards in the drop-down list below the table and press the Do with selected button.

You will be prompted to Mark selected cards as printed? or skip:

 

If you choose Mark, those members will not appear in a future list of outstanding Membership Cards.

You will be given the choice of Opening the file onscreen or Saving the file in your default download location. Clicking the arrow next to Save gives the option of doing a Save-as to a specified location.

The resulting pdf file will contain all the Membership Cards, 10 to a page: 

Note: There can sometimes be a difficulty with the bar code and the membership class overlapping, particularly if the membership number was 4 digits and the class name is long. This can be alleviated by using a shorter class name (see 8.7).

c) Email Cards to Members
To email membership Cards to members, first tick one or more members as described in Section b) above. Then select Send card by email in the drop-down list below the table and press the Do with selected button.

The Send email page will open with an attachment called <u3a name> 0000.pdf.  This represents the personalised attachment of the membership card that will be attached to each email.

A standard email message can be created to personalise the email. 

When the email is sent you will be prompted to Mark selected cards as issued? or skip:

 

If you choose Mark, those members will not appear in a future list of outstanding Membership Cards.

Please note that no other attachments can be sent with the emailed Membership card.

d) Print Blank Cards
To download a sheet of blank Membership Cards select Print blank cards in the drop-down list below the table and press the Do with selected button.

The resulting pdf file will be one page containing 10 blank cards:

e) Download Excel card data

To download Membership Card data in Excel, first tick one or more members as described in Section b) above. Then select Download Excel card data in the drop-down list below the table and press the Do with selected button.

Revision History

v1	2020-04-03	Graeme Bunting	First Issue
v2	2020-05-18	Graeme Bunting	Notes about standard card sizes, bar codes and attaching cards to membership confirmation emails added
v3	2021-04-18	Lyn Bossons	Need for 100% scaling when printing added to first bullet point
v4	2022-01-27	Graeme Bunting	Note about an issue with bar code and membership class overlapping added
v5	2023-05-15	Graeme Bunting	Section c (Emailing cards to Members) added. Graphics updated.
v6	2023-05-16	John Alexander	Add Section e (additional information on downloading Excel card data.
v7	2023-05-17	John Alexander	Update screen images
v8	2023-06-23	John Alexander	Add note about not including any other attachments
v9	2024-01-12	Graeme Bunting	Images updated and minor changes to text