8.3 System Settings

The parts of Beacon described below are generally only available to the Site Administrator.

Click System settings on the Home Page to set the parameters for the operation of Beacon within your u3a. 

Working from top to bottom, the parameters to set are:

• Membership card colour: The colour of the band on membership cards.
   
• E-mail membership cards: tick to attach membership cards to the confirmation email that is sent when people join or renew online (if enabled). You should also change the System Messages that are sent reflect the fact that there is, or isn't, a membership card attached (see 8.5 System Messages).
   
• E-mail on renewals: tick to enable generation of a confirmation email when the Membership Secretary renews a member. You should set the System Message accordingly (see 8.5 System Messages).
   
• Public enquiry: telephone and email address for general enquiries from the public.
   
• u3a home page: The home page on your u3a website.
   
• Online new member enquiries: Email address for enquiries about online joining.
   
• Online renewal enquiries: Email address for enquiries about online renewals.
   
• Membership fees: Choose same fees all year, or fees vary by month of joining
  (The Rolling Membership pick in the drop-down list is not supported for new sites).
   
• Extended membership: The month from which new memberships can include the following year, e.g. if your membership year starts in April, you may allow members joining in March to have 13 months membership on payment of the 12 month fee.
   
• Advance renewals period: The number of weeks before the start of the membership year that renewals can be processed.
   
• Grace lapse period: The number of weeks after the start of the membership year that before members are considered not to have renewed and can have their status changed to Lapsed.
   
• Non-renewal Deletion period: The number of years after which long term lapsed members may be selected for bulk deletion. Note: The default 7 years can be changed to any whole number from 2 to 7 and will be available in the Non-renewals screen options (see 4.6 Non-Renewals)
   
• Default payment method: this is now applied only to Transactions excluding Membership. Membership Defaults  (see 8.6 Finance Set-up)
   
• Gift Aid declaration: Tick to enable Gift Aid claims (see 7.8 Gift Aid).
   
• Show Gift Aid for online renewals: Tick to display the Gift Aid tick boxes for online renewals.
   
• Default town, county, STD code: defaults values that will be inserted during creation of new Membership Records. They can be overridden at the time of creating a new record. If a default STD code is left in place without the addition of the telephone number, it is automatically removed upon saving.
   
• PayPal account email: Email address for your Paypal account (if PayPal is enabled).
   
• PayPal cancel return URL: The webpage to return to after a Paypal transaction is cancelled (if PayPal is enabled).
   
• Member record: tick to enable a warning message when saving shared addresses if the statuses or classes differ.
   
• Hide Address from group leaders: as of February 2026 this setting has no effect and will be removed in the future. It has been replaced by a Site Administrator being able to set this from the Groups List 5.1.

After making any changes press the Update button to commit the changes to your System Settings.

Revision History

v2	2023-01-14	Graeme Bunting	Updates to Gift Aid
v3	2024-01-29	Graeme Bunting	Default payment method added
v4	2024-09-26	John Alexander	Change to default to exclude Membership
v5	2024-10-24	Graeme Bunting	Image updated. Minor changes to text.
v6	2025-05-01	Pete Edmondson	Image updated and description added for variable non-renewal deletion period
v7	2026-02-25	Graeme Bunting	Hide Address from group leaders now has no effect
v8	2026-04-07	Graeme Bunting	Email on Renewal tick box added