Selling Merchandise

by Wade Girard

March 23, 2021

You can sell group merchandise through the member portal by setting up categories and items in the store app of the administrator app. Note that only admins with “Store Manager” permission can access and manage the store management app.

In general you want to configure categories for the types of items that you will sell in your store, like Apparel, Jacket, Hat, Accessory, etc. After you have created appropriate categories you will add listings for the various products you have.

For each product you will be able to provide image of the product, specify the name and description, category, and even a UPC and SKU if you use them. When the basic product is defined then you need to setup inventory. The inventory is what the store will use to show the items in the member portal for members to buy. When members purchase items the inventory is automatically reduced to reflect the purchase. It is up to you to ensure that the inventory matches what you actually have for inventory.

You can also specify a promotion code for your products. The code it tied to the product and is part of the product setup.

See the individual knowledge base documents on setting up categories and products for more details.

Payments from product sales will be collected by Middletwin and paid out to your group. You will want to setup your payout preferences. Also, each charge incurs a 3.46% processing fee, you will need to setup if you want to pass this on to the customer or absorb this cost.

The last bit of configuration is to setup an email address that is notified of each purchase. This is setup by the account administrator in the account settings.

Signing Up

by Wade Girard

March 22, 2021

If you want to use Middletwin for your group you can sign up for an account easily by using our “Sign Up” wizard. To start out just go to our public web site (www.middletwin.com) and click on the “Sign In” button in the upper right hand corner OR you can navigate to the app login by going to https://app.middletwin.com/.

To get started, click on the “Sign Up” link that is to the right of “Don’t have an account?”.

The first thing the wizard will ask is if you have a group code. If you are creating an account that is going to be under the umbrella of a larger group, like a subchapter of a group, then this is where you would enter in the main groups group code. If you don’t have this situation you can just click the “Continue” button.

The next screen will ask you to enter in your groups geographic information. This is used by us to contact you. Note that we don’t share or sell any of our customers data, ever. Click “Continue” when you have completed this information.

Next you will need to provide the main email address for this account. This email address must be a valid working email address that you have access to and that is not being used as a login for any other accounts. Enter in your email address and click the “Verify Email Address” button. The system will send an email to the email address you provided with a code that you will need to enter on the next screen.

Do not close the window because there is no way to get back to this screen without redoing the previous steps and sending another verification email.

Check your email for the verification email and when you receive it get the code from it and enter it into the “Verification Code” input. Click “Continue” when finished. Note that you can use the “Change Email Address” or “Resend Code” links to perform their respective functions.

Create a password for your account login. Note that when the account is create one administrator login for the account will be created that uses the email address from the previous step and this password. This login will have the correct permissions to create additional logins for the account.

Enter in a phone number to a mobile phone that can receive sms text messages. When finished click the “Send Code” button to have a verification code sent to this phone number.

Check your phone for a sms message with a code, enter it into the input and click “Continue” to proceed. Note that you can use the “Change Phone Number” and “Resend Code” to perform their respective functions.

Lastly you need to accept our terms of use in order to have an account on our system, click the “Accept Terms of Use and Create Account” button after you have read our terms of use and agree to them. If you do not agree to them then close the browser and skip this step.

When the account is created it will be placed into a “Review” state and not be accessible until we have reviewed and approved the account. You will receive an email when the account is ready for you to begin using.

If for some reason we want to talk to you before approving the account we will reach out to you.

Managing your subscription

by Wade Girard

March 22, 2021

You can view your account subscription in the “Administration” Page.

From here you can see when your subscription renews, and what the amount is that you will be charged for your subscription. If you feel that any of this is incorrect, please contact support@middletewin.com and let them know.

You can setup your payment method for your subscription in the finance page

Click create to add a new payment method. Click on the Invoices tab to view invoices that have been generated for your account, and the Payment history tab will display your payment history to Middletwin.

If you have questions or want to cancel your subscription, contact our support team at support@middletwin.com. Note that we do not offer refunds on accounts that are cancelled prior to the end of a subscription period.

Changing a registrations class

by Wade Girard

March 22, 2021

If you have an event registration that is in an incorrect class you can easily re-classify the registration. To do this, go to the registrations list for the event, find the registration you want to change and click on the line for the registration (not the checkbox in the first column) to open the details panel on the right.

Scroll to the bottom to find the “Class”

Change the class from its current value to the value you want it to be. When done, click on “Save”. The registration will be moved to the new class and the next available number in that class will be assigned to the registrations. Also, if there have been any votes for this registration, the votes will also be moved to the new number.

You will get a confirmation dialog with the registrations new number

Payments

by Wade Girard

March 21, 2021

Most groups sell things. The types of things that groups can sell are

Membership & Renewals (annual)
Merchandise (one time)
Event Registrations (one time)
Event Tickets (one time)

All of these types of sales transactions occur using credit cards.

Middletwin uses a company called Stripe to process your customers credit cards. Note that on your customers bank account statements they will see a charge to your groups name.

Fees

Stripe charges us a fee for processing each transaction. The fee can vary between the different payment method types (Visa, Discover, AMEX, etc…). On average this is around 3.5%. We automatically calculate and withhold this fee from every transaction.

Returns

If someone makes a purchase from your group but later decides they want to return that purchase, you need to have a policy in place so that you know how handle the return. Most groups will want to make an “all sales final” policy, eliminating the need to process returns. In the event that you need to process a return you will need to login to your groups stripe account (at www.stripe.com), find the transaction, and refund it. If you cannot do this for some reason you can contact support@middltwin.com with details about the purchase. Note that you will still be responsible for all the transaction fees.

Payouts

Our payment processor, Stripe, will process all the payments that your club members make and deposit those funds into your groups bank account. You can log into your Stripe account and view these payout, run reports, and get any other details that you need from Stripe.

Setting up your own

Note that we are always evaluating our process and may have other options for payment and payouts in the future.

Resetting an administrators multi-factor authentication

by Wade Girard

March 21, 2021

If an administrator needs to change their multi-factor authentication settings, they will need to have an administrator with “Account Administration” permissions or Middletwin support reset it for them.

For an account administrator to do this they will have to

Log into their account
Goto the “Administration” page
Select the logins tab
Select the account admin that they want to reset
In the Login Details pane click the “Reset MFA” button

After doing these steps the login will be reset with no multi factor authentication and the next time the administrator logs in the system will take them through the steps of setting up their own Multi-factor authentication settings.

Changing an administrators password

by Wade Girard

March 21, 2021

If an administrator to your account needs to have three password reset they have 2 options. One option is for them to use the “Forgot Password” link at the bottom of the password field (visible after they have entered in and verified their email)

This will walk them through the step of having a temporary generated password created and emailed to them to allow them login and change their password.

The second option is for an administrator with “Account Administrator” permission to set the password for the account. To do this the account administrator will have to

Login and go to the “Administration” page
Select the Logins tab
Select the login that you want to set the password for
Enter the new password into appropriate input on the login details panel
Re-enter the new password in the second input
Save the password

Now the administrator will be able to use the new password to login

Importing Members from CSV

by Wade Girard

March 18, 2021

Preparing Your Data

After setting up your member types you will likely want to add your members to the list of members. The easiest way to do this is to import them from a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file. CSV is a very common file format type that Excel and most other spreadsheet applications can export their data to.

No Comma’s in the CSV

There are some caveats for the CSV data that you need to adhere to in order to have a successful import. First and most importantly is that you cannot have any comma’s in your data, even if the data is quoted. Here is an example:

Comma’s in the data is by far the most common caveat that we see happening when new users are importing data for the first time.

Header Row

The first row of the data needs to be a header row. This is because this is used during the CSV import mapping step:

Here you can see we always consider the first row to be a header, and display the header (replacing spaces with underscores) in the CSV Column.

Add Appropriate Member Types

If you do not provide a member type the import members won’t have one set. In order to fix this now, go to your member types table, click on the gear icon button next to the Create button, in the columns dialog turn on the “ID” column, then close the columns dialog. You should now be able to see the internal ID’s for the member types.

Go to your CSV file (or back to your Excel file) and add a column named “member type” and set the appropriate internal ID for each member type to each member.

Date Formatting

Our system maintains 3 dates for each member. Their join date, their expiration date, and their updated date. During an import, if any of these dates are not provided, the system will use the current date. If you know what you want these dates to be set to, you can provide that in the CSV, however the date needs to be in ISO standard date format. This format is YYYY-MM-DD, so January 12, 2020 would appear as 2020-01-12. If the date cannot be interpreted, the current date will be used.

IDs

If you want to import your members IDs as part of the data, you can, however the IDs must be number, no letters, spaces, or any other characters, and each number must be unique. If you do not provide an ID the system will start assigning IDs sequentially starting from the next available ID number.

Start Importing

If you have gone through the preparation, as described above, you should be ready to import your data. To begin, click on the “Import” icon above the members table

The import dialog will apper

Click on “Choose File” or drag and drop your members CSV file into the area at the top where it says “Drop Files Here”. The system will run a pre-process on the data to try and determine if there are any potential issues with the CSV file.

Mapping Columns

The next really important step is to link your CSV columns to the database columns. This is done by selecting the appropriate Member Data for the source columns from the CSV.

After a Member Data has been mapped to a CSV Column, it will not be selectable for other CSV Columns.

If you make a mistake and want to un-map columns, just select a different Member Data item to map the CSV data to.

Repeat this process until all the CSV Columns are mapped to an appropriate Member Data item.

With phone numbers, our system can be used to send test messages to members. If you plan to use this feature you will need to specify which phone number the system should use for your members when sending a text message (usually a mobile number). If you know what phone numbers in your CSV file are mobile and which ones are not, we recommend separating them into 2 columns, one for mobile and one for other, and when linking columns link the mobile number to the “Mobile” target.

When you have completed mapping all the columns, click the “Import” button.

The importing process will begin. During the import the system will try to determine if you already have a member in your database for each row you are importing. It tries to match on member id, mobile number, and name. If it finds a matching member, it will update the member with the data from the CSV, if it does not find a match it will create a new member with the data. When it is done the system will report how many members were created and how many were updated.

Member Portal Setup

by Wade Girard

March 17, 2021

Your account comes with a dedicated member portal for your members. Before they can use it you will need to setup the subdomain for the member portal. A subdomain is the prefix on the URL that your member portal will use.

https://[subdomain].middletwin.com/

This should have been setup when you were setting up the account for the first time. If you need to change it after setting it up you will need to contact support at support@middletwin.com.

Go to the “Portal” tab within the “Administration” page

Your members will be able to access your member portal immediately. Note that you cannot use your administrator login to login to the member portal, only member logins will work on the member portal.

It is up to you to let your members know about the member portal. Please contact us at support@middletwin.com to get a QuickStart guide that you can distribute to your members.

Styling your member portal

You can add your club logo to the portal, this will be displayed in the header area of the portal.

Click on the Change Image button to change the image.

You can set the font (css font-family) that is used in the member portal, as well as the background and text colors in the header and on the buttons.

In the “Member Portal” setup you will see the following settings

Set this with the css values you would like the portal to use and they will be used instead of the default Middletwin styling. This is optional.

Note: You must click the “Save Portal Settings” button to save these settings. Changes are immediate.

Controlling Content

You can control what tabs your members can have access to by disabling the tabs in the Member Portal settings.

Note: You must click the “Save Portal Settings” button to save these settings. Changes are immediate.

Changing Your Password

by Wade Girard

March 17, 2021

The weakest link in most security is weak passwords. This is because most users want to use a handful of passwords that they can easily remember, unfortunately this causes a huge risk because non-complex passwords can be figured out in seconds by hackers using special software.

You can change your password by clicking on the “Settings” (the gear in the upper right hand corner)

Look for “User Settings” and in that section you will see your name, your email address, and the “Change Password” inputs.

You need to provide your new password. New passwords require one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and must be at least 8 characters long.

Verify your new password by re-typing it and click save password.