Re: Membership decrease

["David Lass" <davidlass@villasunscape.com>]

This sounds like an even better solution.
How difficult is it, and who would, to create new reports, add new fields,
etc. This is very easy in Filemaker.
Also, who maintains the master?
David
----- Original Message -----
From: Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>
To: <aga-mcm@thekrib.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 9:41 AM
Subject: Re: Membership decrease


> Here is what I have been doing for our local aquarium society.  IF Jack
> would like to do this, I can easily set everything up for the AGA
> membership as well:
>
> We used to have our membership database in Microsoft Access and kept by
> one person.  This was a pain because that one person was responsible for
> printing out the labels every month, and it had to be the same person who
> did the treasury.  When he turned over the treasury to another person, the
> new guy didn't even have a computer of his own.
>
> So I set up a web-based database.  I put it on a password-protected web
> site, and transferred all the records from the old format into SQL, and
> wrote some very rudimentary glue code (to hold everything together).  Now
> when the treasurer gets a renewal, he logs into the website (usually from
> work), brings up the person's account, makes the change, and submits the
> change.  Then the guy who has to print out the labels (that'd be me) once
> a month goes to a "create labels" program also on the website, which spits
> out a printable page of labels (which include the expiration date, and
> optionally "LAST ISSUE").  The labels could be sorted or filtered in a
> variety of ways, including a run of "about-to-expire" labels.  In fact, as
> I said before, this could be done by a totally different person than the
> one doing the membership.
>
> The one weak link in this (up to now) is that I always spit out the label
> pages as postscript, because I have access to a postscript printer.  One
> way I could get around this is to convert to PDF on the fly, which
> everyone can print from.  Recently I tried out stamps.com to print the
> postage directly onto postcards.  A few quick modifications to the label
> creating program created files of addresses that the stamps.com program
> could import and print.  I suspect it'd be just as easy to spit it out in
> a format that Jack can print out as well.
>
> A free side-perks of this system is that everyone who is given access to
> the special site now can correct spelling mistakes, renew members, print
> labels, etc. It's accessable from conventions, airports, work.  Another
> perk is that if the club ever decides it wants some special members-only
> things on the website, it can be easily determined who's a member,
> automatically.
>
> Anyway, it's worked very well for our club over the last year and a half.
> And it always seems kind of funny to me when I print out our labels every
> month that they "magically" have been updated.
>
>   - Erik
>
> --
> Erik Olson
> erik at thekrib dot com
>
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