Every member of your organization must be a contact in your database before you can record their membership information.

In this scenario, Brian Medley would like to purchase a membership.

First search your Contact List to see if Brian is already a contact in your database. In your Sumac console, click Contacts. Then type in Brian’s last name in the Simple Donor Search field.

Brian is not already a contact in this database. Start by clicking New and entering basic contact information about Brian. Click OK to create his record.

Here we can enter any other information we have about him, like his address, for example. Once you've entered all of Brian's information, click OK to save his contact record.

Select Brian in your Contact List, then click Add to Contact. Click Membership.

Sumac opens a new membership record, filling in Brian's name for us.

Choose the Membership Type. For this example, Brian is purchasing an Individual Membership. Notice that Sumac filled in the Start and End Date for you. However, if you need to specify a different date range for this membership record, you can override this.

Notice that Sumac filled in the Fee for this membership record. If Brian also wanted to make a donation at the time of purchasing his membership, you could enter a Donation amount here as well. Sumac calculates the total amount for you. 

The Renewal Complete check box indicates if the renewal cycle processing has been completed for this particular membership.

Since it is his first membership, and he's paying by cash today, we can put a check-mark here.

You can allocate the payment for this membership to up to three accounts, which might be necessary for accounting purposes. If you require this, choose the appropriate account from the Account drop-down menu, and specify the portion of the membership fee that should go to that account.

Click OK to save the membership record in your database.