Association management software (AMS) is the software that runs a professional body or a trade association: its members' records, the yearly renewal of membership and dues, its events, and the certifications that members must keep up. A professional body is an organisation of people in one profession, such as engineers, doctors or accountants. A trade association is an organisation of companies in one industry. IEEE, the international society of electrical and electronics engineers, is a well-known professional body with many members in India.
An association has two main jobs that need software. The first is membership. Each member pays dues every year. The association must remind members before their membership ends, collect the dues, and keep a record of who is a current member. The second is professional standing. In many professions, members must keep learning to keep their certificate. They earn credits, often called continuing professional development (CPD) credits, by attending conferences, workshops and online courses. The association must count each member's credits.
Here is a typical case. A national association of physiotherapists has 22,000 members across India and an office of 12 staff in Delhi. Membership costs ₹3,000 a year and renews on 1 April. Members who hold its advanced certificate must earn 30 CPD credits every two years.
In February, the AMS sends an email and a text message to every member whose membership ends on 31 March, with a link to pay. The dues are billed and collected through subscription billing software, which also sends the GST invoice and retries payments that fail. By April, 19,500 members have renewed. The AMS marks the other 2,500 as lapsed and removes them from the public directory of members.
During the year, the association holds a two-day conference in Goa, run on an event management platform. Each session is worth a number of credits. When a member's badge is scanned at a session, the event platform reports her attendance, and the AMS adds the credits to her record. Members also take online courses on the association's learning management system (LMS), which reports each course that a member completes. A physiotherapist in Jaipur opens her member page and sees that she has 26 of her 30 credits, with four months to go.
Some associations also raise donations, for example for a scholarship fund for students. For that, they use donor management software, which keeps the donors' records and their tax receipts.
AMS is usually sold as software as a service (SaaS), rented by subscription and used over the internet, because most associations have small offices and no IT team of their own.
How is AMS different from a CRM? A CRM tracks customers and sales. An AMS tracks members: their dues, their credits, their certificates and their standing in the profession.