Bringing in Records from Another System

If your association already has members and dues in a spreadsheet or another system, you can bring them in instead of typing them again. Nothing is created when you upload. The file is checked, you see a preview with totals and any problems, someone with approval permission signs it off, and only then is it applied. Starting fresh? You do not need any of this: create your dues and your members are billed automatically.

Choose what you are bringing in

How it works

Members

• First name and surname are required. Email, phone, membership number, member since and status are optional.
• Member since decides which dues the person owes, so fill it in where you know it. If it is blank the person is treated as a founding member.
• Someone who already has an account on ZenithAMS is asked first. They are listed as awaiting acceptance, and become a member only when they accept the request you send with Send join requests. If they decline they are not added again. Someone already in your association is left alone, so uploading a list twice never duplicates anyone.
• A person with no email can still be a member, but cannot sign in until you record an email for them.
• The import itself sends no email. Afterwards, use Send login invitations on the import's page: each person with a real email gets one email with a button to choose a password and the steps to follow.

Opening balances

• One row per member and per due. The due must already exist on your Financial Items list, with the same name: an unknown name is refused, with a suggestion if it looks like a typo.
• A positive balance is what the member owes. A negative balance on a recurring due that bills itself is money paid ahead; it becomes prepaid cycles of that due. A negative balance on any other due is a member who paid more than they owed: see Members who paid more than they owed, below.
• Any part of a credit that does not fill a whole cycle is listed, and you must acknowledge that it is not applied before the import can be approved.
• These balances carry no late fees unless you choose that when you prepare the import.
• The optional Due date column says when the balance originally fell due. See How old a balance counts as being, below.
• To show members what they PAID as well as what they owe, fill the columns Charged and Paid instead of Balance. Charged is the full amount charged for the due; Paid is what the member has paid on it. The member then sees the whole charge with their payments recorded against it. Balance is optional here, and if you fill it, it must equal Charged minus Paid.
• Rows of one member that share a Payment reference are ONE payment, for example one amount that paid several dues. Without a reference each row with something in Paid is its own payment.
• Old records rarely hold the real date or method of a payment. Each payment is therefore dated the earlier of the due date and the cutoff date (never in the future), marked Carried forward from old records with an approximate date, and left out of this month's revenue and cash figures. Money paid above the charge is kept as credit or as an extra contribution, as you choose once for the file.
• A payment cannot be dated before the member joined. If it would be, the import is blocked until that member's member-since date is corrected.

Members who paid more than they owed

Paying more than was asked is normal, so a negative balance on a one-off due is not an error. But only your association knows what that money is, so the form asks you once: If a member paid more than they owed. You choose, and it is not guessed.

The preview says how many members and how much, and what you chose. You can change the choice on the review page with Refresh preview. It is part of what is approved, and the reconciliation checks it on its own lines. Send the members their summary with Tell members: a member who only has opening credit is told too. Members who have left the association are not told; suspended members are. The message can say who members tell if a record is wrong and by when (Settings, Membership, Corrections to brought-in records), and, if you switch it on there, ask members who paid after the records date to upload their receipt in the app so their account can be credited. The same follow-up appears in the in-app notice for members without an email address.

How old a balance counts as being

A balance is the amount owed on your cutoff date, but the Arrears ageing report should show how long it has really been owed. Each balance takes its date from the Due date column if you fill it in. If you leave it empty, a one-off due uses its own due date when that date is on or before the cutoff, and anything else counts from the cutoff date. The preview tells you how many balances used each. Late fees are not charged and no overdue notices are sent for imported balances.

Detailed history

• The Assessments sheet has one row per charge. The optional Payments sheet has one row per payment, each with its own reference, and the optional Allocations sheet says which charge each payment settled.
• A payment must be fully allocated, and no charge can be over-paid. A payment reference that has already been imported is refused, so a payment can never be counted twice.
• A payment with no allocation rows is a problem, unless you choose to spread such payments over the oldest charges first. That spread is shown before you approve.
• Every period must fall on or before your date. Billing carries on from the next cycle with no gap and no overlap.

Undoing an import

An applied import can be undone, with a reason, only while nothing outside it has been recorded against what it created: no new payment, waiver or adjustment on its charges, and no other record using the members it added. Extra contributions are removed with it. Opening credit is taken back with correction entries (nothing is deleted), and only while it is still there: if a member has used some of it, the import can no longer be undone. Every step, and who took it, is kept under Finance, Past Records.