Membership ID vs Lookup ID - scanning barcodes

Riley Holland
Riley Holland
Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Altru® General Discussions

Our institution is starting the process of launching a digital membership card program, and we're running into some issues. A constituent's Membership ID and Lookup ID don't match, but that makes sense since not every constituent becomes a member (therefore the numbers won't be in the same order).

However, we find that when the barcode is scanned, the ID sometimes pulls up multiple people, since the number can be one person's Membership ID, and another person's Lookup ID. For example, John Smith's Membership ID may be 8-10002600, but Lucy Jones has the same number listed as a Lookup ID. When scanning John's ID, it pulls up both him and Lucy.

Has anyone found a way around this, or does anyone have any advice on how to deal with this issue? It would be really unfortunate if someone's annual pass was mistakenly redeemed by a different member.

Tagged:

Comments

  • Lori Elder
    Lori Elder
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Riley Holland
    I use the lookup ID of the primary member.

  • Riley Holland
    Riley Holland
    Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Lori Elder Do you use the Lookup ID on Membership Cards? When we tried this it still pulled other constituents, and we are running into an issue where Membership benefits are being used by non-members due to a misclick.

  • Lori Elder
    Lori Elder
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
    f9623542dbd71b60e4ebb0c164de3745-huge-im

    @Riley Holland yes, it then pulls in the second adult on the account,

  • Riley Holland
    Riley Holland
    Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Lori Elder Thank you for the visual! We do the same thing with our cards.

    Do you ever run into the issue I'm facing where two people are assigned the same number? When you “search” the Lookup ID by scanning the barcode, it also pulls up anyone who has that number as their Membership ID

  • Regina Holten
    Regina Holten
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    @Lori Elder
    Is this because both are in the same household?

    We never use the Member ID…at our ticket desk. I use it in the back office for reports. On the member card we ONLY used the primary member's constituent Lookup ID as their card's ‘member ID’. As long as that number is entered, or the name on the card, you'll usually see that person AND the household their in (showing, then the spouse/domestic partner).

    I like this system, used even before we converted to Altru in 2017. Having ONE person that is the primary member with their Lookup ID as their member id works for us. Now, it might affect attendance notes, but so far, no, as the member cards, though only one number there are two names if the primary had a spouse/domestic partner. I understand that this is all dependent on what the org is comfortable doing. This simply seems to work for us.

  • Ceasar Perez
    Ceasar Perez
    Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Regina Holten

    I Think the problem with this is that when you click on memberships button or the search patron button in the daily sales page, or even from anywhere else in constituent lookup for that matter, if you scan the barcode with either the membership ID OR Lookup ID it'll pull the membership under that ID, as well as the constituent profile that shares that duplicated Id number but its just their constituent profile lookup ID. So really the only way to not pull extra profiles when scanning membership codes is to manually click under the membership ID search bar which is separate from the quick search bar that your cursor auto selects. This creates an extra step in the check-in process and requires re-training from the standard SOP that my co-workers have been used too in order to reduce the amount of mis-clicks, and misuse of the wrong membership benefits. I really wish altru didn't use the same number code format for membership Ids and Constituent account IDs and would love for them to update Membership IDs to have a special unique character or sequence to differentiate from look-up IDs.

  • Riley Holland
    Riley Holland
    Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Ceasar Perez We worked with Blackbaud and came up with a solution to this! Because yes, unfortunately the Constituent Lookup ID, Membership ID, Ticket ID, Sales Order ID, Receipt ID, SKUs for our Store, etc. all start with 8-1000 in Altru. So there are always duplicates when trying to scan a barcode to search. No matter how we train our ticketing folks, there is always room for human error,

    To fix the membership issue, we started using the Membership Card Number. This seems to be the only number in Altru that doesn't begin with 8-1000, so it never pulls another patron's record.

    However, the only real ways to view this are to pull a query using “Members/Membership Card/Number.” Or, if you need a single person's card number, you have to go into their constituent record, click their membership, click the chevron under their member card, and click “assign card number” and it will show the default assigned card number and it will prompt you to edit it.

    I hope this helps you with your issue! We are in the process of pashing out the cards with the Membership ID, and favoring the Membership Card Number instead, and have had no issues!

Categories