Accept Online Member Applications (Desktop version)

This article refers to our custom/legacy membership application web pages and not the dynamic Join Form Builder tool.

Support for the desktop version will be ending March 31, 2024. All users are moving over to the browser version. Click here for more information.

Issue

How do I accept and process new member applications that have been submitted through my website?

Resolution

MC Trade enables you to accept membership applications through a form on your website. Once submitted, the form will be stored in MC Trade, where you can then choose to Approve or Reject the application. You can also choose to create a Profile Record, Invoice and Payment record from the form without having to manually enter the information.

Please note that the form brings in core profile information for the organization and main contact profile, if applicable. Additional contacts or profile information does not automatically populate on the profile and must be manually added after accepting the application.
The Results from an Online Membership Application are stored in the Web Input area of MC Trade.

1. Go to Communication > Web Input.

2. Use the Page Name drop-down menu to select your Membership Application. (Note: if you do not know the name of your page, check the url address of your online Membership Application. It is usually 'join.aspx' or something similar.)

3. In the Response Date drop-down fields, enter the date range for Responses you want to see.

4. Click the Get Web Input Responses button. The datagrid will fill with your responses. The Tabular view displays each submission as a row; the Vertical View displays all submissions in a column.

5. To use the Web Input Response to create an actual Profile Record in MC Trade, highlight the response you want to process, then right-click and select Choose/Create Selected Profile/Invoice/Payment Records.

6. When you do this, MC Trade will automatically check to see if this profile already exists in your database. If it does find a potential duplicate, it will tell you it found a profile with the same information and you can search for it to associate the application with the existing profile. If WebLink does not find a potential duplicate, it will ask you if you want to create a new profile with the information from the Application. Click Yes.

7. MC Trade will also check to see if the main contact person submitted on the form already has a profile in MC Trade. If not, click Yes to create a new related profile for the main contact.

8. The member and main contact profiles will be created (or related to existing profiles), with all basic contact information entered as well as the invoice and payment for the new membership.

9. To view the new Profile Record from here, select the View Associated Profile 1 (for the Organization) or View the Associated Profile 2 (for the individual). You can then enter the additional membership information, including Member Activity, Listing, and Recurring Billing records. For more information on entering new member information, see the Membership section of the Knowledge Base.

In the Web Input screen, you can click the "Vertical View" tab to see the application responses laid out vertically and export this to Excel to do your additional data entry.

10. Once you have finished processing the membership (entering all member data), you can flag the record as approved/complete. Right-click and select Flag Selected Web Input Records as Approved.

11. After accepting the application, the member’s billing, listing, join activity, additional contacts, and any other needed information will need to be created on their profile.

12. If you are using membership levels, please go to the Member tab of the profile and assign the correct Membership Level and then follow the prompts to update all information to reflect the profile's new Membership Level.  Click here to see how to assign the Membership Level.