Semester Setup wizard
Semester Setup (/org/semester-setup, national admins only) walks you through
configuring an entire term in one place instead of hopping between Settings →
Dues & Billing, /org/compliance, and /org/pnms/periods. It’s backed by a unified
Term — the shared scheduling spine for dues, compliance, recruitment,
service hours, and training.
The Hub
The wizard opens on a Hub: a set of status cards (one per step) with a progress ring. Each card shows To do, Done, or Skipped. Click Start guided setup to walk the steps in order, or click any card’s Configure to jump straight to it. Every step is skippable and resumable — come back any time to update a term.
Which cards appear depends on your licensed modules and the term’s season (a Full-Year term hides Recruitment; a Summer term hides Compliance).
The steps
0 · Term
Pick the term and its dates, and set it as the current term. Your Term Calendar (semesterly vs. annual, ± Summer) decides which seasons you can create.
Start and end dates are required, and every later step depends on them — dues rates, invoice generation, and compliance activation all refuse to run against a term with no date window. If a term is missing them, the Hub flags it and the Term step shows a Term dates panel where you can set or change them at any time, including after the term is closed. Changing a term’s dates also moves the due dates of compliance requirements generated from it, except due dates edited by hand and requirements in a closed compliance period (closed here means the compliance period, not the term’s own status).
1 · Dues
Set per-member-type rates (Undergraduate, Associate, Officer) — prefilled from the prior term when available — plus the invoice and due dates. Save, then optionally Generate invoices now to issue chapter invoices immediately (the same generation the nightly job uses). If no payment processor is connected, you’ll see a reminder so chapters can actually pay.
The invoice date opens prefilled on the term start, and the due date 30 days after it — you never have to enter the term’s dates a second time. Both are ordinary fields: change either one and your value is what’s saved.
2 · Compliance
Author your requirement templates (category, cadence, priority, targets) right in the step, add one-off ad-hoc requirements for Fall/Spring terms, then Activate compliance to open the term’s period and fan requirements out to every active chapter. Activation is idempotent (safe to re-run) and respects the one-active-period rule.
The compliance open date starts on the term start date, so submissions open with the term. Set a later date to delay them, or clear it to have submissions open the moment you activate — a cleared date stays cleared.
3 · Service hours
Set the per-term service-hour goal, with optional per-status overrides. Optionally, under Track in Compliance, link the goal to one of the term’s numeric compliance requirements: each chapter’s progress on it becomes the percentage of its members who met their goal. See Track service hours in Compliance.
4 · Training
Assign required courses to member statuses, due a set number of days into the term.
5 · Recruitment
Open the term’s intake window (Fall/Spring/Summer only). Requires the Operations module — recruitment is licensed by it, the same as the Dues, Compliance, and Service Hours steps, so the card is absent for an unlicensed org.
The intake window opens prefilled to the term’s own window (start of the term’s first day to start of its last). Widen or narrow it as you like, or clear both dates to leave intake open for as long as recruitment is active — a cleared window stays cleared.
6 · Rollover
Preview the roster changes a term boundary implies — graduating members → alumni and PNMs who crossed this term → undergrad — and confirm the ones you want. Confirming proposes the changes: it creates pending requests in your Approvals queue and never changes a member’s status automatically.
The step also flags data-quality gaps a graduation rollover can’t act on by itself — members with no graduation year on file, and members still active past their graduation year — so you can propose those as alumni manually rather than have them silently missed. Optionally kick off a draft officer election for the term (you add positions and open it in the Elections module).
7 · Review & launch
A summary of where the term stands — including concrete detail like whether rates are set and how many requirements are active — then Launch.
Notes
- National admins only. The wizard is not shown to officers or members.
- Nothing is destructive. Rollover only proposes status changes for approval; compliance activation is idempotent; dues rates and invoices reuse the existing billing records.
- Resumable. Green checks reflect real configuration (dues is “done” only once rates exist, not merely when dates are saved), so you can leave and return without losing your place.
Last verified against v0.78.0 (2026-09-01). Corrected a dead route reference in the intro; the PNM period screen is at /org/pnms/periods.