membership pro limit members to a single plan

I am considering using membership pro to manage the membership subscriptions of a club that I am webmaster of.
i understand the concept of plans etc but is it possible to configure the system so that members can only be subscribed to one plan at a time.
we have: -
1. full annual memberships that run from 1 Jan to 31st Dec (the annual membership currently can be paid offline by cheque or standing order and online via paypal)
2. partial year membership that starts between 1st July and 30th September that ends on the 31 December of the same year. (currently can be paid offline by cheque and online via paypal),
3. free lifetime honorary memberships that never expire awarded for service to the club.
Access to the content in the members section will be the same whatever plan is subscribed to.
additionally are their any reporting tools you can recommend so that I can create membership lists (for print) etc.

Hi Mike

Unfortunately, at the moment, the extension doesn't have this restriction. In your case, what if users has subscription #3 and they want to sign up for plan #1 ? They are not allowed?

Tuan

If they are an honorary member they never have to pay so there would not be a need to join plan #1
All members can access the same restricted content and I want to avoid new members joining plans #1 & #2 at the same time and us then having to issue refunds.
We are primarily a leisure club with a website that has restricted content rather than selling content on our website.

I understand. In this case, If you use Membership Pro, some customization will be needed. I think this customization will cost you about 100$.

So please think about it before making decision

Tuan

I've been looking at Membership Pro as well and have a similar problem with honorary membership as mike snelling. I've only briefly looked at the demo and documentation, but would this problem be solved by using a free subscription? If the access was set to Admin, it would not be seen by visitors, so would be set up by Admin - I assume there wouldn't be many to do, so not a big deal. They can be set for lifetime membership if that's what's required or expire is it's temporary.

Does that solve the problem?

We also have subscribers who pay by cheque. Could something similar be done here: create a free subscription, give them details on where to send their cheque and once that's received, activate the membership? This 'free' membership would be seen by visitors.

Or am I completely wrong here?

Alan.

What you describe is actually what I am using.
There are 2 "hidden" plans - honorary and associate. Honorary is a free lifetime membership and I set these up manually, associate is an annual plan only applicable to long standing members who can no longer take part in the club activities but still want to stay in touch. we have 430 members overall with about 20 honorary and 2 associate.
For members that want to pay by cheque we use the "offline" payment method (also used if the payment is by direct bank transfer) - membership is approved once payment is confirmed.

Mike

Thanks for that. I don't think we have associates like that, but glad that your method seems to work for both associates and payment by cheque.

I had forgotten about direct bank transfers, but I can see that would just work the same way - once the treasurer confirms payment, the subscription can be activated - I assume an email can be sent out at that point to confirm the subscription to the member?

Another issue is Direct Debits. There are some banks that will set them up electronically for you, but the costs seem prohibitive (well, the one I've found so far was charging £99 a month!). But I suppose this can be done in a similar way: set up the subscription plan, provide the Direct Debit form, tell them to fill it in and post it then once set up, activate their membership? This all sounds feasible with Membership Pro...

I've not looked at any other membership system, so far, but I have been using OD pdf indexer on this same site, so I may just buy Membership Pro and give it a try - but I should perhaps play with the demo first!

Alan.
The email seems to be sent out automatically on activation.
We don't use DD but do use standing orders - we have only just (from Easter) started using membership pro and the standing orders don't come in until the first week of Jan so at this point we will cross any issues when they arrive then.

I had looked at quite a few systems and membership pro seemed the best value. the fact that i can export to excel allows me to generate mailing labels for out quarterly (printed) newsletter, and other reports as necessary.

Sounds like our requirements are very similar - we also need mailing labels, etc.

I generated an excel macro that creates a mailing list file for a word mail merge.