I just sent some patches to @wifasoi.
Here are my comments (having in mind quite a variety of “associations”, from clubs to cooperations)
Dates
- a date of notice of termination is missing - if there is a time for giving notice, it must be documented that the notice arrived in time - depending on the type of assosiaction this might even be a legal requirement.
- If the “leave date” is in the future, a member must not be “stopped” - as this would leave immediately - contrary to the leave date.
- Since stopping a membership can not be reverted, I suggest asking “are you sure?”.
Member
- while a member can be defined for any of the companies, there is a single “Member sequence”. This has at least two issues - when managing several association in one database:
- one can not import an existing member list if Ids overlap
- member Ids of each association will have gaps - which might be an issue depending on type of association and legal requirements
Fees et al:
The mental model behind this design seems to assume there is some fee to be paid per period. (The fee might be zero in case, but basically there is some fee). This can be exemplified be the fact that for defining a Membership Type a revenue account is required. Anyhow:
- Membership might not depend on any money at all
- Example: I’m aware of a club where you are a member by just participating in common activities and being officially accepted as a member. They do not ask fees at all.
- For this case it is “only” confusion if defining a revenue account is required.
- Membership might require to give some capital contribution - which is not a revenue but equity
- Example: Germany Cooperations
- For this case, having accounting defined might be good. Anyhow the restriction on revenue is wrong.
Memberships
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For adding a new Membership, the member needs to be set to “draft” - even if it already is a member and will continue to be a member. IMHO this works more like a subscription line in sale_subscription: member-typed can be added or ended at will - as long as there is at least one active.
- Example: Academic association: You are a member of the association and in special interest groups
- Example: Switching from personal membership to familiy membership.
Rethinking this, there seem to be quite some similarities with subscriptions
Menu
Since an Association in Tryton is a Company, I suggest these change to the menu structure
- Association » Config →→ Company » Config » Association (like under accounting)
- Association →→ Company » Association
- Members →→ Parties » Members - FMPOV Members are just parties with special attributes.
- Print Member Book IMHO should be removed from the menu, as it is just a report of “Members”