I have a question about the online membership purchasing as it pertains to a purchase being made for someone by a family member. It seems a little confusing as to what information should go where and to whom the membership will be accredited to.
My dad was trying to purchase my membership online as a christmas present and was a little wary because he wasn’t sure going from the first page to the next that the membership would go to me and not to me.
Okay, so maybe I don’t have an exact question, just hoping that everything will go right with it.
Yes, the current webstore is confusing. It also doesn’t handle some transaction types (such as sustaining, family or affiliates), it cannot handle multiple memberships in the same transaction, and it does a really BAD job with tournament entries.
The good news is that there is a new web store being set up that should deal with all of those problems. (I’m currently waiting for feedback from the Scholastic Council and the USCF’s events coordinator.)
When having a tournament, and the person gives me money or a check for the membership to the USCF. Could as a director send in the membership so the person would get a USCF membership ID number? When able to deposit the cash or checks into my account, then pay for their membership on the next banking day. It will be after the tournament to place the money into my bank account, then use my debit card to pay for their membership.
The reason for asking this question, as it would be nice to tell the player their USCF ID number during the tournament. Or would as a director need to deposit that cash or check into my account before they can get a USCF ID Number?
As seeing a number of people with USCF ID numbers, with the title of non-member. Did send in a membership that had the title of non-member, during the next day the MSA was updated and the title of non-member was changed to a one year membership.
If able to do that, could use the ID numbers and send the tournament online right after the tournament with all the players ID numbers. Then on the next banking day able to send in the membership fees. That would give the players during the tournament the information of their number, and able to send in the tournament report that day. That would work faster for all parties, even the USCF rating department if that could happen.
Before or during the tournament, create a batch just for the new members and submit it using the ‘payment by check’ option. That will get ID numbers assigned for those new members. Don’t include any renewals in this batch, all you’re really after at this point is the new ID numbers.
After you have deposited the funds collected, create another batch for all of the memberships collected, including the new memberships you processed in the first batch, and pay for that one with your debit card.
Treat the new members from the first batch as renewals in this batch, since you have their IDs now. You will have already entered their address and birth date information, so you won’t need to re-enter that in the second batch.
That will activate all of the memberships, the new memberships and any renewals.
All that the ‘payment by check’ option does is set a flag to indicate that payment is still forthcoming on those memberships. The second batch will clear those flags, since the payment has now been received and processed.
