Dues are fixed time membership periods. Rather than running relative to the date someone joins, a dues period covers a set stretch of your calendar — a quarter, a year — and anyone who joins inside it owes that period's dues. This walkthrough covers setting up a dues tier, generating periods, and managing who pays.
What dues are
A dues tier sets an amount for a specific period. From there you decide who pays, who is waived, and who is exempt from dues entirely.
Dues Settings: creating a dues tier
Where to find it. From your dashboard, open Dues → Dues Settings.
Create a new dues tier here, or edit an existing one. Start with a name and an amount.
The interval, and how periods appear to donors
The interval is the billing interval for the dues period. It also determines how the period is presented on your dues form, where a dues-paying member can pay for the current period, a future one, or a period that has lapsed without payment.
Anchor month and anchor day
The anchor month and anchor day set the day a dues period begins and looks forward from. A description of the dues sits alongside them.
A worked example: aligning to your fiscal year
Set the anchor month to October and the anchor day to the 1st, and the first dues period aligns to the fiscal year configured in your organization settings — beginning on 1 October.
On a quarterly interval that gives you four periods: October to December, January to March, April to June, and July to September. The anchor month and anchor day are what tie your dues periods to your organization's fiscal year, and that fiscal year is set at the organization level in settings.
Fee coverage and proration
Fee coverage is optional for dues and defaults to on. Leaving it on is recommended for revenue optimization.
Proration decides what happens when a member joins mid-period. Either they pay the full period's dues regardless of when they joined, or they are prorated and pay only from their signup date forward.
Generating your dues periods
With the tier set, use the calendar icon to generate the dues periods. They then appear in the dues periods table.
The dues periods table
The table lists every period with its status — open, closed, or upcoming — and the dates it runs between. Sorting in descending order brings the current period to the top.
Collection progress and failed payments
Each period carries a collection progress bar and the figures behind it: revenue expected from all members, revenue collected, the total number of members, and a breakdown of who has paid, who is due, how many have been waived, and how many payments have failed.
Failures are most commonly caused by an outdated payment method, or one that is no longer available and needs replacing with a new method on file.
Inside a single dues period
Click into any period to see every potential dues-paying member for it — who is due, whose payments have failed, who has been waived automatically, and who has already paid.
Member types: regular, honorary, and emeritus
Select any member record and edit their details to set their type:
- Regular — counts towards the expected dues-paying members going forward.
- Honorary — no dues assessed for a period.
- Emeritus — carries no dues payments of their own.
Honorary and emeritus are kept separate because, depending on your 501(c) classification, you may still need to pay for emeritus members where you would not for honorary ones.
Member statuses, and what stops dues being assessed
- Active — automatically eligible for the dues period.
- Inactive — dues periods do not apply going forward, though they still apply retroactively.
- Deceased — no further dues periods, and the record moves to a status that stops emails going to any address on it.
- Resigned and removed — for recording that a member has left, according to your organization's own conventions.
Deceased, inactive, resigned, and removed all prevent a dues period being assigned to that member on a go-forward basis.
The start date shows when that dues-paying member started. You can set it manually going forward, or let it be recorded automatically when the member joins.
Dues on a campaign form
Dues make most sense seen from the donor's side. On a campaign form with dues enabled, the form always shows the current open period, followed by the periods for the next fiscal year.
A donor enters their email address; if they are already recognized in the system they can log in, verify their information, and join as a dues-paying member.
Dues periods versus memberships
A membership entitlement badge on the form is not the same thing as being a dues member.
A dues-paying member pays for a fixed period inside a calendar or fiscal year. A membership is time relative — start one on 1 August and it runs from 1 August; join on 3 August and it runs from 3 August. A dues period, by contrast, may have begun on 1 July regardless of when the member joins.
Paying open, future, and lapsed periods
Once the donor's information is validated, the open dues period is shown and they can pay it, or pay several at once. If the member is behind and has periods that lapsed without payment, those surface automatically.
Autopay for future dues
After choosing which dues to pay, the member can opt into autopay for future dues. PineconeAI saves and stores their payment information on file, so they no longer have to come back and pay each period manually.
Reminders, exports, and searching
For any period that has passed and closed, you can send a reminder directly from PineconeAI to everyone with unpaid dues. Automated billing reminders go out anyway, but this lets you do a single bulk send when you want one.
You can export everyone who has not paid, or a full annual view. You can also search by name and filter by status across your dues-paying members.
