Charting Module Math doesn't Add Up
Hi Guys,
Our membership graphs don't seem to be adding up. For reference, our freezes, thaws, and terminations all happen on the first of the month. A new member may be signed up any time during the month. The basic question I was trying to answer that started all of this was "how many net members did I add last month? (New Memberships - Terminations)"
If I go into the RGP charts, there's a convenient chart under Memberships => By Individual => Monthly Change that looks like it would answer this question for me. The problem was that the number it showed for October (18) didn't seem right. Should this number = New members - Terminated members? It doesn't seem to match the numbers below any way you slice them.
The details:
I can pull up a list of new members with a Customer Query on "became member" and filter the date range with "last month" (10/1-10/31). Once you filter out the current "Guests" from the list, our number was 50 (the guests-showing-in-the-new-member-report thing is a separate bug report itself, but possibly working as intended; I can start a new thread if you'd like). This number matches the number on the "New Memberships (Est.)" chart.
I can then View => Status Changes for 10/1-10/31 and see that there were 37 terminations on 10/1 or during the month of October. This number matches the number on the "Terminations" chart.
I can then View => Status Changes for 10/1-10/31 and filter on OK to see that 10 members have changed to OK status during the month of October. (People walking in the door to thaw their memberships or old terminated members that signed back up for memberships. Three of these ten are already counted in the first query of 50 as they were terminated members that reactivated)
I can then View => Status Changes for 10/1-10/31 and filter on FREEZE to see that 24 members have a FREEZE status with START date during the month of October.
Comments
Please be aware that these membership total charts are always an approximation due to the fact that the membership state of customers changes over time, which makes reporting membership deltas very tricky.
The best estimate is the New Membership chart - but this too as an approximation for a number of reasons.
The Monthly Change chart is the difference between the number of members on the 1st of the month from the number of members on the 1st of the previous month, as recorded by RGP when the computer is first turned on each morning. It doesn't give a hoot about freezes, terminations, new memberships, etc. It is just the sum total of all members (OK or FROZEN) on the 1st of the month compared to the previous 1st of the month.
Due to reporting "shortcut", the delta may be 1 or 2 off from the actual numbers reported by the At Month Start report.
(I just noticed there is a bug with the Family Unit charts, but that is different than your question!)
Thanks Andy! Yes I noticed the family unit bug too, forgot to mention. If I have more concrete questions I will post them in a different, more general thread since they are probably not bugs.
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