Why Switching to Subscription Management Software Is A More Practical & Efficient Way to Manage & Monetize Associations

Associations have different conduct for their business and operations, so does their management.

They are unique in their management of organizational infrastructure and hierarchy. Members or supporters are their foundational units. When the association is non-profit, it is a community of members where these members are the owners and, at the same time, serve as the dues-paying members.

Associations either manage their processes separately or use the AMS—Association Management Software. Earlier, AMS were marketed as the all-in-one solutions for association management that offer all the necessary features in one-place to run any professional, personal, profit, or non-profit association.

However, the absence of functionalities to efficiently manage recurring invoicing and billing, plan upgrades and downgrades, recurring payment collection, and other membership lifecycle management features have exposed their weakness in managing the membership and recurring billing as a one-size-fits-all membership management solution.

The members manage these associations by assuming different roles and responsibilities as per their domains. Hundreds of thousands of profit and non-profit associations are there. These include charity organizations, professional organizations, research societies, book clubs, children clubs, and many more. Each association can possess member strength up to millions of members or supporters.

This article takes on what AMS is, how does it help in the management of associations and their memberships, what are its challenges, and how subscription management software for associations and clubs is providing better management and monetization solutions to the associations in order to manage their operations, members, and their memberships from one platform and from anywhere, resourcefully.

Also Read: Online Payment Processing for Recurring Payments—A Definitive Guide About The Payment Gateways for Subscription Management

What is AMS and What Does It Do?

AMS is an abbreviation for Association Management Software. These are also known as Membership Management Software.

AMS is used to manage associations, membership clubs or societies, non-profit organizations, etc.

The management of the association is no different than any other organizational management. It is, in fact, more complicated with the extra operations, such as membership recruitment and retention, tax calculations or exemptions, financial management, fundraising or other revenue management, etc. in addition to regular HR, finance, IT project, membership, and billing management matters.

In general, AMS offer solutions like memberships and governing boards administration, communications management, member database management, event organization and administration, committee management, and other related jobs.

Who Uses Association Management Software?

As the name suggests, it is the software to manage the association affairs. Any organization is association if it is comprised of paying or non-paying members. In the case of non-profits, members can also be the charity-paying supporters. These supporters can be one-time paying devotees or are subscribed to the plans paying the recurring amount every month or a year.

Association can further be defined as any organization that is founded and owned by a group of individuals having the same interests or possess common attributes. Some of the most common examples of associations include:

Trade & Commerce Associations
Industry Associations
Professional Associations
Accounting & Finance Associations
Charity and other Non-Profit Associations
Medical Associations
Research Societies
Membership Clubs
Small Business Associations
Employee’s Association
Voluntary Associations
Political Parties

And Many More.

Different associations can have greatly varied needs and requirements to manage their administration, membership management, recurring billing and payment collection, customer service, etc. With the surfacing tech advancements, cause demands, and management requirements, Association Management Software or AMS are facing many challenges and are on the brim to lose attraction for the all-the-management-under-one-roof idea.

Also Read: Gift Subscriptions—The Powerful Business Growth Approach to Grow your Customer Base and Revenue Net

The Challenges of Association Management and AMS

It has frequently been observed that many association management software are not robust enough to manage the recurring billing and payments matters, efficiently. Their membership management approach increases the gap between efficiency and transparency.

But, when you have to manage the invoices, payment collection, communication, and revenue monitoring for hundreds of members, the delay can cost you the loss of opportunities.

For instance, membership management software lacking the ability to offer membership plan upgrades and downgrades and manage the deviations in the billing, accordingly keeps them to earn more so that they can contribute more towards their goals.

Similarly, AWS also lacks the recurring billing and membership lifecycle management features. These roadblocks are hindrances in member retention. The analytics helps the hi-end management to understand what their members want, how they are paying and how much they are willing to pay, and how can they be convinced and keep connected to continue with them as members.

These analytics are the opportunities to design and propel a data-driven marketing strategy that won’t backfire and costs them less time, money, and efforts.

Not only the recurring billing and membership management software, the ultra-advanced tools available for HR, IT, finance, customer service, sales and marketing management, project management, communications, and other business processes are also challenging the viability of the AMS as a one-stop destination for association management software.

It is time for the associations to manage and monetize memberships, gear up to meet all the standards of changing technology and management landscape and switch to a more advanced set of integrated software tools.

AMS vs. CRM vs. Subscription Management Software—What Should Association Managers Use?

The other alternatives of the AMS are ERPs, CRMs, and Subscription Management Software.

AMS is an integrated set of tools that allows the association to managers to save time, money, and effort by managing multiple jobs on one-platform with the accessibilities like automation of repetitive tasks and efficient data management.

ERPs are the Enterprise Resource Planning platforms that allow the organizations to integrate their multiple business processes management applications, including CRMs, sales, marketing, HR, IT, customer service, project, etc.s in one-place.

CRM or Customer Relationship Management Software is a comparatively more comprehensive set of tools, focused on contacts management—whether these are customers, clients, donors, followers, or members—it is used to monitor, manage, and analyze their relationships, including participation, engagement, correspondence, inclination, interest, lifetime value, etc.s with the organization, or, in this case, association. CRMs can also be integrated with a variety of third-party applications to manage different business processes.

On the other hand, Subscription Management Software is used to automate the whole process of recurring invoicing, billing, and payments, in addition to, membership lifecycle management, payment automation and recovery, and integration with other third-party applications, if required.

Also Read: Introducing the Multicurrency Support for Recurring Billing and Payment Processing in SubscriptionFlow—All You Should Know About Solutions & Implementation

Subscription Management—The Road to Hi-end Monetization Optimization for Associations

Subscription Management Software is the most ideal option to manage the membership and recurring billing in one-place. The subscription software not only great to manage recurring billing, recurring payment collection, and recurring revenue monitoring and management, these applications also help to map the membership lifecycle.

The subscription analytics are also useful to find the potential of the association members and remove the frictions that can part them the ways from the association.

SubscriptionFlow Works Best As A Membership and Billing Software for Associations

Subscription management system like SubscriptionFlow is primarily designed to manage the members and their membership concerns. From recurring billing auto-management, faster payment processing, administered members profiling, to managing and reporting the details of the membership plans and further specific subscriptions to the services offered by the club, it does all.

Keep yourself busy in the cause or purpose for which you have established an association and leave the rest of the hassles of accounting, recurring billing and invoicing, membership plans or subscriptions, renewals or cancellation management, services and members management, members engagement, and conversion of lead to the prospering member to a powerful and intelligent digital companion like SubscriptionFlow as a SaaS—Software as the Service.

Automated Recurring Invoicing & Billing

It is now impossible for the associations to, manually, create the invoices and collect the payments from members. With SubscriptionFlow, forget the hassles of recurring billing. At a particular time, it auto-deducts or charges the required amount to a member’s credit card or any other payment methods. They will receive automated intimation of all the activities, from the invoices for the break-up of charges to the deduction notifications to plan upgrade suggestions, everything will be emailed and communicated to the member.

Plan Upgrades and Down

In order to stream more revenue for different purposes, associations may need more financial assistance from their members, donors, or supporters. Political, religious, or organizations for social cause may ask their members or followers to upgrade a plan or donate more for a particular event.

Managing these changes in the billing is called Proration. And, the easy way to handle proration smartly and effortlessly is to let SubscriptionFlow manages it.

SubscriptionFlow ensures the continuous and errorfree adjustment of the charges or dues as per the change in the membership plan, so you never lose credibility, control, and of course, your valuable members.

Secured Payment Gateways With Multiple Payment Method and Currencies Support

You can have a member from anywhere in the world. Increase the prospects of more revenue with multiple payment methods and currencies. SubscriptionFlow gives your members the freedom to choose from a range of secured payment gateways integrated to provide all available options of payment as per their convenience.

Tax, Donations, and Other Membership Costs Management

Rules of Taxations change as you cross a region. If your association knows no boundaries and is extending in lengths and breadths, try using SubscriptionFlow to stay compliant with the needs of sales and other tax regulations as per the state or country. SubscriptionFlow offers smart solutions to all sorts of cost management including in-house, outsource, and donations cashflows with the accounting applications integrations.

Membership Plans

Create membership plans and packages and receive a definite, predictable, and stable recurring revenue. No matter if you are an association for a small business, a non-profit charitable organization, or a research society, you can create, design, and optimize the membership plans to earn more revenue for the purpose or the life of the association.

Secure Membership Database

SubscriptionFlow offers a great deal of security when it comes to the privacy compliance of your valuable members. The updated and organized database helps the managers to stay aware of the membership status of any member in real-time.

Member Dashboard

It is a place where members are given the freedom to update their personal, professional, financial, or any other information, get updates on billing, receive invoices, event or payment reminders, payment failure or decline notifications in personal inboxes, and take advantage of tailored promotions popping up into their personal dashboard. With the dashboard, members can also review, comment, or give feedback on association activities, social events, etc with the integration of other apps and features.

Automated Communications

The automated emails, notifications, and reminders feature in SubscriptionFlow helps the memberships to receive all the invoicing, billing, payments, promotions, and other updates in real-time. Also, integrate SubscriptionFlow with suites like MailChimp or ZenDesk to stay connected and dedicated to your members with better management via Email or Tickets. Inform them about new events, latest development, special programs, etc.

Go Pro and serve your respected members with SubscriptionFlow.