1. Create the organization
Go to app.sembr.co/signup. You give us your organization's name, your own name and email, and a password.
You also pick a plan and a billing interval here. Both are recorded against the organization from the start, so there is no surprise about what you signed up for later. You can change the plan afterwards.
2. Choose your address
Every organization gets its own address, like yourgroup.sembr.co. Sembr checks it is free while you type.
This is not cosmetic. Your staff sign in there, your members' portal lives there, and your public directory is served from there. Pick the short obvious version of your name. You can put your own domain in front of it later with a CNAME.
3. Verify your email
We send a code to the address you gave. Enter it, or click the link in the mail.
Nothing else happens until this is done. That is deliberate: the email address is how you get back in if you lose the password, and how every notice about the organization reaches you.
If it does not arrive, check spam, then use the resend link. The resend is rate limited per address, so if you hammer it you will be asked to wait.
4. Sign in
You land on the dashboard at your own address. Bookmark it.
app.sembr.co/login will not work for you, and that is on purpose rather than a fault. Staff sign-in only resolves on an organization's own address, so there is no shared front door for someone to guess at.
What to do next, in order
- Connect Stripe. Until this is done Sembr can produce an invoice but cannot take money for it.
- Set up your membership tiers. The levels of membership you offer.
- Set what those tiers cost. A dues schedule prices a tier and says how often it renews.
- Bring your members across.
- Invite your staff.
You can do 2 and 3 before or after the import. Doing them first means imported members can be put on a tier as they arrive.
Things worth knowing on day one
Your timezone matters. Set it in settings before you schedule anything. Renewal dates, invoice due dates, and the nightly jobs that chase overdue dues all read it. It is not a display preference.
Add your mailing address. Settings has a field for the postal address your organization sends mail from. Sembr will refuse to send a campaign without it, because commercial email law in Canada and the US requires it. Transactional mail such as an invoice still goes.
Nothing is charged to your members until you send an invoice. Importing people does not bill them.