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GullySystem
Custom software · Associations and communities

Build a membership system around your bye-laws, your committee and your members.

An association is run in the evenings, by people who already have jobs. The honorary secretary keeps the register, the treasurer keeps a sheet, and both of them keep a lot of it in their heads.

Then the committee changes. Two years of records move to a new laptop, or they do not move at all, and the next secretary starts again from a WhatsApp group.

Software for a body like yours has to survive that handover. Members, subscriptions, receipts, minutes and the history of who paid what should belong to the association, not to whoever held the post last.

Who this is for

Member bodies we can build for.

A trade association and a residents welfare body keep different registers, and the build follows the constitution you work under. If you are an alumni body, a registered NGO reporting on grants, or a temple trust with a hundi to count, those three have pages of their own. This page is for the association that collects a subscription and answers to a general body.

  • Trade and industry associations
  • Professional bodies
  • Chambers of commerce
  • Residents welfare associations
  • Apartment owners associations
  • Community and regional associations
  • Caste and family associations
  • Clubs and recreation clubs
  • Sports clubs and academies
  • Cultural and arts societies
  • Cooperative societies
  • Farmer producer organisations
  • Self-help group federations
  • Youth and welfare organisations
  • Federations with local chapters
What can be built

The modules, and what each one covers.

Nothing here is a fixed package. Each module is built, left out or changed to match how your organisation already works.

The membership register

  • Member categories as your bye-laws define them
  • Life members
  • Annual members
  • Patron and donor members
  • Associate members
  • Honorary members
  • Institutional and corporate members
  • Student members
  • Membership numbers in your own series
  • Active, lapsed and resigned

Member categories are set by your bye-laws, not by the software. If your constitution has a class nobody else has, that is exactly why a build is being considered.

What a member record carries

  • Name, photograph and membership number
  • Date of joining
  • Category and status
  • Address and contact details
  • Business or profession
  • Firm and designation
  • Family members where relevant
  • Proposer and seconder
  • Subscription history
  • Positions held
  • Events attended
  • Documents

Joining

  1. Application
  2. Proposer and seconder
  3. Scrutiny
  4. Committee approval
  5. Fee payment
  6. Membership number
  7. Welcome and directory entry

Subscriptions

  • Fee by member category
  • Admission fee
  • Annual and life subscription
  • Due date
  • Part payments
  • Arrears carried forward
  • Concessions approved by the committee
  • Waivers and the resolution behind them
  • Members in arrears by year
  • Lapse rules from the bye-laws

Reminders that a volunteer does not have to send

  • Subscription due notice
  • Reminder before the due date
  • Reminder after it
  • Payment link with the notice
  • Receipt on payment
  • Arrears statement
  • Lapse warning
  • Re-joining offer

A circular to eight hundred members is not a chat message. Providers approve short templates, so the notice itself usually sits on a page and the message carries only the link.

Money in

  • Online payment
  • Cheque and bank transfer
  • Cash at the office
  • UPI
  • Receipt with your own numbering
  • Receipt sent by email or WhatsApp
  • Payment against subscription, donation or event
  • Daily collection summary
  • Bank reconciliation
  • Refunds

Donations and funds

  • Donor record
  • Donation purpose
  • Corpus, general and specific funds
  • Recurring donors
  • Donation receipts
  • In-kind contributions
  • Fund-wise balance
  • Utilisation against purpose
  • Donor acknowledgements
  • Annual donor statement

Tax treatment of donations, receipt wording and what your trust may accept from whom are matters for your auditor. The system records what you tell it to record.

The managing committee

  • Office bearers and their terms
  • Committee members
  • Sub-committees
  • Portfolio held by each
  • Term start and end dates
  • Past committees
  • Handover checklist
  • Signing authority
  • Attendance at meetings

Meetings and minutes

  • Meeting notice
  • Agenda
  • Attendance and quorum
  • Minutes
  • Resolutions passed
  • Action points with owners
  • Pending actions from the last meeting
  • Circulation of minutes
  • Confirmation at the next meeting
  • Meeting archive by year

The minute book is where most associations lose continuity. Holding it in the system means the next secretary inherits it, not a folder on somebody’s laptop.

The general body

  1. Notice
  2. Agenda circulation
  3. Registration
  4. Quorum check
  5. Proceedings
  6. Resolutions
  7. Minutes

Elections

  • Voters list from the register
  • Eligibility by category and arrears
  • Nominations
  • Scrutiny and withdrawal
  • Contesting candidates
  • Ballot
  • Counting and results
  • Declaration
  • Objections
  • Record of past elections

Whether an online ballot is valid for your body depends on your bye-laws and on the authority you are registered under. That decision is yours and your advisers, not ours.

Events

  • Annual day and general body
  • Seminars and workshops
  • Training programmes
  • Sports and cultural events
  • Health and blood donation camps
  • Felicitations
  • Trade fairs and exhibitions
  • Picnics and family days
  • Chapter-level events
  • Event calendar for the year

Running an event

  1. Announcement
  2. Registration
  3. Payment
  4. Confirmation
  5. Passes
  6. Attendance at the gate
  7. Feedback
  8. Accounts

Event details worth keeping

  • Delegate and guest registrations
  • Member and non-member fees
  • Family members attending
  • Food and preference count
  • Seating and tables
  • Passes with a QR code
  • Spot registration
  • Attendance marked at the entrance
  • Certificates of participation
  • Photographs and the report

Sponsorship and the souvenir

  • Sponsor categories
  • Amount and entitlements
  • Souvenir advertisement sizes
  • Booking and artwork received
  • Payment status
  • Sponsor acknowledgement
  • Stall allotment
  • Sponsors from previous years
  • Follow-up list

The member directory

  • Search by name, business or locality
  • Trade and profession listing
  • Contact details the member allows to be shown
  • Firm details
  • Printed directory export
  • Directory on a login
  • Corrections submitted by members
  • Version for each year

Members decide what appears against their name. A directory that publishes a phone number somebody did not agree to share costs the association more than it gains.

Chapters and units

  • Chapter or branch record
  • Members mapped to a chapter
  • Chapter office bearers
  • Local events
  • Chapter collections
  • Share due to the centre
  • Chapter-wise membership growth
  • Reporting to the head body

Where the association is a residential one

A residents body keeps a different register: flats rather than firms.

  • Flat and block register
  • Owners and tenants
  • Maintenance charges by area or flat
  • Corpus and sinking fund
  • Dues and defaulters
  • Vehicle stickers
  • Visitor entries
  • Complaints and their closure
  • Common area bookings
  • Vendor and staff records

Welfare and assistance

  • Request from a member
  • Category of assistance
  • Supporting documents
  • Sub-committee review
  • Sanction and amount
  • Disbursement record
  • Follow-up
  • Confidential handling
  • Fund balance

Assistance records name people in difficulty. Access is restricted to the sub-committee, and the system is built assuming somebody will ask for that list one day.

Scholarships and grants

  • Application form
  • Eligibility rules
  • Documents and marks
  • Scrutiny
  • Selection by the committee
  • Amount sanctioned
  • Disbursement
  • Renewal in the next year
  • Beneficiary records
  • Donor reporting

Halls, grounds and facilities

  • Facility list
  • Availability calendar
  • Member and non-member rates
  • Booking request
  • Advance and deposit
  • Confirmation
  • Cancellation rules
  • Usage record
  • Damage and deduction
  • Revenue by facility

Communication

  • Notices to all members
  • Category-wise messages
  • Chapter-wise messages
  • Email newsletter
  • WhatsApp and SMS
  • Circulars with attachments
  • Condolence and congratulation notices
  • Message history against a member
  • Members who opted out
  • What was sent, and to whom

Volunteers

  • Volunteer register
  • Interest and skills
  • Availability
  • Assignment to an event
  • Duty roster
  • Hours contributed
  • Recognition
  • Volunteer coordinators

The member portal

  • View and update own profile
  • Pay subscription
  • Download receipts
  • Register for events
  • See the directory
  • Read circulars and minutes
  • Book a facility
  • Submit a suggestion
  • Nominate for a committee post
  • Membership card

Accounts and the audit

  • Income by head
  • Expenses by head
  • Fund-wise accounts
  • Vouchers and approvals
  • Bank balances
  • Receipts and payments statement
  • Event-wise accounts
  • Documents for the auditor
  • Year-end closing
  • Records for the annual return

The statutory accounts, the audit and the annual filing remain your auditor’s work. Your records simply come out in the form he asks for.

What the secretary needs to see

  • Members by category
  • New members this year
  • Members lapsed
  • Subscription collected
  • Arrears outstanding
  • Event participation
  • Donation received by fund
  • Chapter performance
  • Pending committee actions
  • Facility usage
  • Communication sent
  • Directory corrections pending

Who sees what

  • President
  • Secretary
  • Treasurer
  • Committee member
  • Sub-committee member
  • Office staff
  • Chapter coordinator
  • Auditor
  • Member
  • Applicant

The public side

  • About the association
  • Office bearers
  • Membership application online
  • Event announcements
  • Public event registration
  • Notices and circulars
  • Photo gallery
  • Donation page
  • Contact and enquiry form

What it connects to

  • Payment gateways and UPI
  • WhatsApp and SMS providers
  • Email newsletter tools
  • Accounting software
  • Bank statement uploads
  • QR scanning at events
  • Existing member lists in Excel
  • The association website

Bringing in an old member list is usually the longest task. Two spellings of one name and three membership numbers for one family are normal, and cleaning that is real work.

The journey

One connected workflow, end to end.

Every stage below can sit in one system, so nobody re-enters what the last stage already captured.

  1. Enquiry
  2. Application
  3. Proposer
  4. Approval
  5. Fee
  6. Membership number
  7. Directory
  8. Events
  9. Renewal notice
  10. Renewal
  11. Arrears
  12. Lapse and re-joining
Built in phases

You do not have to replace everything at once.

Each phase is usable on its own, so the system earns its place before the next part is built.

  1. 1

    The register and the money

    Members, categories, subscriptions, receipts and arrears. Two evenings a month come back to the treasurer straight away.

  2. 2

    Committee and communication

    Office bearers, meetings, minutes, resolutions, circulars and the message history against each member.

  3. 3

    Events

    The calendar, registration, payments, passes, attendance at the gate, sponsorship and the event account.

  4. 4

    Portal and reporting

    The member login, the directory, facility bookings, chapter reporting and the records your auditor asks for.

How we work

How a build actually runs.

  1. 01

    Read the bye-laws

    Member classes, voting rights, quorum and lapse rules come from your constitution, and they differ everywhere.

  2. 02

    Map

    Members, categories, chapters, office bearers, funds, events and who is allowed to approve what.

  3. 03

    Design

    Screens simple enough for an honorary treasurer who uses them twice a month and will not attend training.

  4. 04

    Build

    The register and subscriptions first. Everything else in an association hangs off those two.

  5. 05

    Bring the old list in

    Existing members are imported and the duplicates resolved, usually with a committee member sitting beside us.

  6. 06

    Deploy

    Go-live before a subscription cycle rather than in the middle of one, with the office staff trained first.

  7. 07

    Hand over

    The system is set up so a new committee inherits it, including who holds the master login.

What we can build

Systems we can put together for you.

  • Membership management systems
  • Subscription and renewal software
  • Association management platforms
  • Event registration systems
  • Committee and meeting record systems
  • Member directories
  • Member portals and applications
  • Donation and fund management software
  • Residents association software
  • Club management systems
  • Facility booking systems
  • Chapter and federation platforms
  • Communication and circular tools
  • Association websites
Common questions

Questions owners ask before starting.

What does association management software actually cover?

Members and their categories, subscriptions and arrears, receipts, committee records, minutes, events, communication and a member login. The bye-laws decide the rules inside each of those.

Our members are not comfortable with apps. Is this worth it?

Often the office gains more than the members do. Even if every subscription is paid by cheque, the register, the receipts and the arrears list stop being one person’s sheet.

Can members pay subscriptions online?

Yes, with a payment link in the reminder and a receipt issued on payment. Cheques and cash are recorded the same way, so the register stays complete.

Can we hold elections through it?

A ballot can be built. Whether an online vote is valid for your body depends on your bye-laws and your registering authority, and that is a decision for your committee.

What happens when the committee changes?

Roles and logins are transferred, and the records stay with the association. That handover is the main reason most bodies stop running on personal laptops.

Can each chapter manage its own members?

Yes. A chapter coordinator sees his own members, collections and events, while the head body sees the federation.

Can we run event registration and passes?

Yes. Registration, payment, a pass with a QR code and attendance marked at the gate, including spot registrations on the day.

Is this suitable for an apartment association?

Yes, though the register is flats rather than firms. Maintenance dues, defaulters, complaints, vehicle stickers and common area bookings replace most of the trade modules.

Can it handle donations and issue receipts?

Yes, by fund and purpose, with your own receipt numbering. Tax treatment and the wording on the receipt stay with your auditor.

Can we keep the member directory private?

Yes. Each member controls what is shown against his name, and the directory can be restricted to members who have logged in.

What will it not do?

It will not collect a subscription from a member who will not pay, and it will not write your minutes. It removes the excuse that nobody was told.

Build a system the next committee can inherit.

An association outlives its office bearers. Its records should too.

Whether you need a membership register, an events platform, a member portal or a federation system across chapters, tell us how your association works today. The subscription year is usually where it starts, because nothing can be counted until that is settled.

Tell us how you work

Tell us how your associations and communities runs today.

We will tell you what can be digitised, what can be connected, what is worth automating, and what you should leave alone.

  • No obligation
  • We reply the same working day
  • Your details stay private

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