Four systems, four versions of the truth
The operations manager is asked a simple question by the finance director: how many active members do we have? The membership platform says one number. Xero has more customers with open invoices in the last month. The access system has more active fobs. The mailing list has members who left last year.
Digging in, they find a company that changed its name in the platform but not in Xero, so invoices go to the old name. A member who moved from one company's office to another is still linked to the first company in the access system. A company that left two months ago still has a direct debit mandate active.
Why the records drift
Coworking operators run a stack of systems that each hold part of the member record. Integrations between them are often one-way, partial or set up once and then forgotten.
| System | What it holds | Typical drift |
|---|---|---|
| Membership platform | Members, companies, plans, agreements | Treated as the master but edited inconsistently |
| Accounts system | Customers, invoices, payments | Names and billing contacts out of date |
| Payment provider | Mandates and cards | Mandates left active after leaving |
| Access control | People and credentials | Leavers and movers not updated |
| Wifi and network | Credentials and segments | Old credentials never removed |
| Email and community tools | Contacts and channels | Former members still included |
Each system is right on its own terms. Together they tell different stories, and nobody has the job of joining them up.
Staff turnover adds to it. Each new operations or community manager learns a slightly different way of recording changes, and after a few years the platform holds several conventions for the same thing: companies with and without Ltd, members with work and personal emails, plans renamed but not retired.
What the drift costs
Invoices go to the wrong company name or contact and are paid late. Former members keep access or keep receiving member communications. Reports disagree depending on which system they come from. Month end involves reconciling the systems by hand. And every audit, investor question or acquisition due diligence turns into a data clean-up.
Small mismatches also make integrations unreliable. When a company has two names in two systems, the next automation someone sets up between them matches the wrong records.
The reconciliation we build
- Your membership platform, such as Nexudus or OfficeRnD, is set as the master for members, companies and plans, unless your setup needs something different.
- Every night, members and companies are compared across the accounts system, payment provider, access control, network and mailing tools, matched by IDs where they exist and by names and emails where they do not.
- Safe differences are fixed automatically, such as a billing contact updated in the platform but not in Xero, or a leaver still on the mailing list.
- Differences that need judgement, such as a company with two possible matches, are listed for a person with both records side by side.
- Invoices are checked against active plans, so a company with a plan but no invoice, or an invoice but no plan, is flagged.
- A weekly summary shows how many differences were found and fixed, so you can see the records improving.
We start with a one-off comparison of all your systems. It usually shows exactly where the integrations are leaking, which tells us what to fix first.
What having one member record means
When someone asks how many members you have, every system agrees. Invoices go to the right company and contact. Leavers leave every system at once. Month end stops being a reconciliation exercise. And new integrations can be built with confidence, because the data underneath is consistent.
Due diligence for a sale, a refinancing or a new landlord partnership becomes quicker too, because the member list, the invoices and the access records already match.
Is your member data like this?
- Different systems give different member counts.
- Invoices go to old company names or contacts.
- Former members are still on access or mailing lists.
- Direct debits stay active after members leave.
- Month end involves reconciling systems by hand.