For anyone running a large networking or membership organisation coping with thousands of transactions of the same value is a challenge. In the case of 4Networking, Tuesday to Friday thousands of members are booking breakfasts online for £12 each (they all need a VAT receipt) [note in addition to breakfasts its £499 plus VAT to join and there is an annual membership fee after the first year], so what information do they analyse, well they need to know, which member or visitor, which group/venue, which area leader, for visitors they need to know the number of visits (so that they can charge when the maximum is reached), when membership renewals are due. Thats a lot of information and to run an efficient network you need to quickly see the results and take action if attendees drop.

The solution that we used was to have a description made up of numbers separated with a # so that you could quickly extract results for any data group or multiple groups.

The other challenge faced is that Memberships cover a future period and to comply with revenue recognition rules the revenue must be phased over the period to which it relates.

steve@bicknells.net