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Demo & discovery
60-min demo of the standard solution with your association in mind. We show member records, the dues run, and event management. You explain which specifics need to be added.
Solution · Industry CRM
Member records, dues billing, event management, newsletters, chamber-of-foreign-trade cases — all in one system. Built with a German bilateral chamber of foreign trade, hardened in daily operation.
Non-profit lever
Before you think about implementation costs, check the license lever: many professional and business associations are recognized as non-profit under §52 AO (German tax code) — registered associations with a tax-exemption notice. This qualifies them for the Microsoft Non-Profit program, with significant consequences for license calculations.
Concrete example: a professional association with 30 staff pays about €8,208 per year commercially for Microsoft 365 Business Premium. With non-profit pricing, the cost drops to around €2,052 — a saving of around €6,156 per year from the M365 switch alone. Adding member management on Microsoft Dynamics 365 multiplies the lever.
Read the "Microsoft for non-profit organizations" topic page → · Industry and business associations with a purely commercial purpose are typically not eligible — we review the statute in the initial conversation. Source: nonprofit.microsoft.com — as of May 2026.
The problem
Member addresses live in one system. Dues data in the next. Event registrations in a third. Newsletter recipients in a fourth. Anyone who wants a 360-degree view of a member — what they have paid, what they have attended, which newsletters they subscribe to, and which service requests they have made — has to open four to five tools.
We have brought these four to five tools onto one platform: Microsoft Dynamics 365 as the data foundation, a model-driven app as the standard interface for the office, Power Pages as the outward-facing member portal, and interfaces to accounting and newsletter dispatch. No magic — just consistently thought through to the end.
What distinguishes this solution from a generic CRM setup is that we know the quirks of the association and chamber world. Dues are rarely flat rates — they depend on member revenue, headcount, industry, or region. Events are not just event registrations but often mandatory events with attendance proof. Chambers of foreign trade also have an entire universe of their own case types: Carnet ATA, certificates of origin, and visa confirmations.
Capabilities
Members as accounts with contact persons, subsidiaries, industry assignment, membership status, and history. Joining date, exit date, and status changes — fully traceable.
Dues classes with calculation formulas. Annual or quarterly run, consolidated invoices, installment payment, and multi-tier dunning logic. Handoff of posting data to DATEV, lexoffice, or Business Central.
Events with capacity, registration deadline, attendee lists, attendance tracking, and follow-up mailings. Online registration via Power Pages with an approval workflow for the office.
Dynamic distribution lists from member attributes — e.g., "all members in the machine-building industry in postal-code area 6". Handoff to Microsoft Customer Insights Journeys, Mailchimp, or Brevo via API.
Case type for Carnet ATA with application data, security deposit, print template, return tracking, and fee calculation. Specifically for chambers of foreign trade. Includes expiry logic.
Certificate-of-origin applications including goods assignment, attestation workflow, and print template with stamp placeholders. Fee calculation per certificate. Handoff to the accounting system.
Members maintain address, contact persons, and communication preferences themselves. They can book events, view invoice history, and submit service requests. Power Pages, fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Standard dashboards: member development, dues income, event utilization, and service case volume. Extensible with Power BI on the Dataverse data foundation.
Approach
60-min demo of the standard solution with your association in mind. We show member records, the dues run, and event management. You explain which specifics need to be added.
Provision the Microsoft Dynamics 365 environment, deploy the standard app, configure dues classes and calculation formulas, activate AHK-specific case types if relevant, and build the accounting interface.
Import member, dues, and case data from the legacy system — typically from Access databases, older association software, or Excel lists. Then train staff and board members.
Production go-live with hypercare. Then an Application Care contract — especially important around the start-of-year dues run, where fast response matters.
Reference
The solution has been in productive use for several years at a German bilateral chamber of foreign trade. Several thousand members, an annual dues run, several hundred Carnet ATA cases per year, certificates of origin, visa confirmations, and a mandatory event series.
The office today works with a unified view of every member: dues, cases, events, and service requests. Accounting receives cleanly structured documents — without after-the-fact sorting. Members themselves maintain their master data via the Power Pages portal, which has noticeably reduced effort in the office.
Anonymized at the client's request. We are happy to introduce a direct reference on request.
Related
Course management with registration, billing, certificates. For associations with their own training business.
Read more →The platform our association solution runs on.
Read more →Application Care for ongoing maintenance — especially important around the dues run.
Read more →FAQ
For professional associations, business associations, industry associations, chambers of foreign trade (AHK / IHK), and comparable member organizations with 200 to 50,000 members. Less suitable for purely political associations without dues billing — the value-add there is more limited.
Dues classes with calculation formulas (flat rate, revenue-dependent, headcount-dependent, or industry-specific). Annual or quarterly run. Handoff to accounting software via interface. Multi-tier dunning logic with deadline escalation.
Yes. We developed the solution together with a chamber of foreign trade, so typical AHK workflows — Carnet ATA, certificates of origin, visa confirmations, attestations — are set up as case types with their own workflows. Including fee calculation and handoff to accounting.
Yes. Via a member portal on Power Pages, members update address, contact persons, and communication preferences themselves. Changes land cleanly in CRM, optionally with an approval workflow for the office.
Interfaces to DATEV, lexoffice, Microsoft Business Central, and SAP. Dues invoices, event revenue, and service fees are handed over ready to post. Payment status is returned and triggers the dunning logic.
For a standard setup, 8 to 16 weeks — member migration, adjusting dues logic, building the accounting interface, event setup, and training. For AHK setups with all special case types, typically longer, because the workflows for each case type have to be tested individually.
Implementation is quoted per project. Added to this are Microsoft Dynamics 365 licenses for the office staff (see License Cost Calculator) and an Application Care contract for ongoing maintenance.
60-min live demo
60 minutes of guided demo — member records, the dues run, the Carnet ATA workflow, and the member portal, walked through with a concrete example. Managing Director, office manager, and IT get the same overview in one session.
Strategy background · arades topic page
Why we consistently build all our apps and recommendations on a single data foundation — and when the island solution is still the better answer. 2,500 words on architecture, migration paths, and honest boundaries.
Read the topic page →