Adding layers to attributes

EthosCE Product Suggestions Course administration
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Starting this off explaining our SSO setup, in which users are actually managed through our AMS, NOT through EthosCE. EthosCE recognizes if people are members or non-members of our organization, and that’s all. In EthosCE, new users must select their user type (physician, nurse, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, other non-physician) so it knows which types of credit people are eligible to claim. Now, on to my question/request:

We often have meetings where practice staff and/or fellows-in-training (FITs) are encouraged to attend and are given a discounted rate. We usually have a member rate, an allied health member rate, a member practice staff rate, a FIT rate, and a non-member rate (for both physicians and their staff). Adding the discounts to the attribute means we’re asking for a free-for-all of people who either don’t understand what they’re supposed to do, or who deliberately select the cheaper option (we’ve had countless docs who’ve been in practice for eons trying to register as FITs to get the super-cheap rate–don’t get me started on these cheapskates!).

We don’t have the time or manpower to police all this, so we’re forced to use a system where the amount added to the carts of the member staff and FITs is the full price, and then these individuals have to contact us for a coupon code to use to deduct the difference. This means they can’t check out immediately unless they pay the full price (and then we have to refund the difference, which is a bad accounting practice and a serious pain in the neck), and it means we have to worry about phone calls and emails, and checking their member type and/or get the name of the physician member, etc.

This is really a cumbersome process, and I would love for there to be a way for Ethos to help us along in the process. I envision being able to have someone start the registration process, and after adding the meeting to the cart, enter the member physician’s name (in the case of practice staff) or the fellowship program (in the case of the FITs). This information would be saved, and someone on our end would be notified that the field was filled. That person would check the status, and respond by entering the coupon code and saving the cart, which would trigger a message to the person enrolling in the meeting that they can now check out.

I know this is complex, but it would be a huge time saver for us.

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I think this is pretty closely related to my issue here:

Except I pushed a bit further hoping Ethos could just do variable pricing like our last platform did. In which I set the price but it also allowed me to set a time for the price to change (in regards to early bird).

Though I see your specific issue is member pricing. Ethos does have the role add-on (I don’t know if DLC has ever mentioned this to you) and I believe depending on your role you will only see the price that fits your role (I’m assuming you can customize roles). But if the need is to have total control then I suppose depending how these roles are assigned, it would still be on the honor system unless you’re monitoring account creations. And also, how many roles you actually need. If it’s a small amount, it might be feasible.

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Genesis:

We have roles in Ethos, but because of our SSO and how it’s set up, we can’t use them with regard to pricing (our AMS sends ‘member’ or ‘non-member’ to Ethos, and the Ethos roles are just used to determine which credit people have access to claiming). Also, we don’t keep (and don’t want to have part of) outside organizations’ membership rolls, so that wouldn’t work for jointly-provided activities, anyway. All of our ‘people’ records are managed through our AMS, not through Ethos.

I hear what you’re saying about caps, etc., too. We have a couple of activities where we need to impose a cap because of space, but we just have to monitor that manually. Using enrollment questions has made that a lot easier, because we can download a spreadsheet of all enrollees and their breakout session selections, then sort that by the title of the breakouts and do a count from there. This isn’t awful, and not that time consuming, since the biggest meeting where I use it is about 200 people, 20 or so of whom are faculty who are enrolled on the back end and aren’t making breakout selections.

I would like to have the ability to put in an ‘early bird’ and ‘regular’ fee structure (and maybe even a ‘late’ one?) and not have to worry about going into a course to change the prices. Most of our stuff doesn’t do this, but for the ones that do, I have to set up multiple reminders so it gets changed on time (and then sometimes it still doesn’t).

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