Adding one
Members, then add. Name and email are the two that matter; everything else can come later.
The same rules apply whether you add someone through the form, through the API, or through an import. That is deliberate. A member created by an import is not a second-class record with different validation, so a roster does not quietly develop two kinds of member.
Email addresses are normalised before they are stored, so Jane.Doe@Example.com and jane.doe@example.com are recognised as the same person rather than becoming two members.
Finding one
The search box on the members list matches names and email addresses, and it treats what you type as literal text. Searching for o'brien finds O'Brien rather than erroring, and searching for 50% looks for fifty percent rather than matching everything.
Tiers and categories, which are different things
A membership tier is the level of membership someone holds. One per member. It is what they pay for.
A category is a label you put on members to group them however you like: committee, chapter, trade, region, interest. A member can be in several. Categories cost nothing and change nothing about billing; they exist so you can find and message a group.
Use a tier for what someone bought. Use a category for everything else.
The contact log
Every member has a log you can write to. Rang them about a renewal, met them at an event, agreed to hold their dues until March: write it down against the member and it stays with the record.
This matters more than it sounds. In most organizations that history lives in one person's memory or one person's inbox, and it leaves when they do.
Deleting, and getting it back
Deleting a member does not destroy the record immediately. You can restore one you deleted by mistake.
That is different from erasure, which is what a member is entitled to ask for under privacy law and which really does remove them. Erasure is not reversible and it is not the delete button. See privacy requests.
What you cannot set by hand
A member's status. Active, lapsed, suspended and cancelled are not a dropdown you drive. Lapsing happens because of what is owed, and reinstatement happens because it was paid or written off. See statuses, lapsing and reinstatement for why that is a feature rather than a missing control.
Directory listing
Each member has their own directory settings: whether they appear, what shows, and their logo. Members can also control some of this themselves from the portal. See the member directory.