Member Management Portal for an Architects’ Association: IAB Case Study

A national association of architects with more than 10,000 members was running on an old portal that handled about 10% of its real work. Everything else happened by phone, email and Excel, and a membership application could take months. We rebuilt the whole system: a public website, a member portal and an admin portal with its own accounts system. Applications now close in days, every member record is one search away, and the association's fees, invoices and payments live in one place instead of a spreadsheet.

The association is the Institute of Architects Bangladesh (IAB), the professional body for architects in Bangladesh. We have worked with them since 2023.

At a glance

• Client: Institute of Architects Bangladesh, a professional association with 10,000+ members and several regional chapters
• What we built: a public website, a member portal (web and mobile) and an admin portal with an accounts system
• Replaced: an old portal that did about 10% of the job, plus Excel for member data and fees
• Connected to: the aamarPay payment gateway, and RAJUK, which verifies architects against the IAB database through our API
• First launch: four months, with a team of six
• Since then: new features every year, including events, chapter admins and accounting
• Stack: React, Django REST API, PostgreSQL, WordPress

The challenge: a portal that did 10% of the job

IAB already had a portal. The problem was that it only handled about a tenth of what the office actually had to do. The rest was manual.

• Applications took months. Joining IAB, or moving up a membership grade, meant documents, verification, an interview or a written exam, and a fee. Each step went back and forth over phone calls and emails until it was done.
• Member data lived in Excel. More than 10,000 records, across student, associate, full, 8-year and fellow grades, were kept in spreadsheets. Finding one member's history, or counting members by grade, was a job in itself.
• Fees lived in Excel too. Membership fees, late fees and event fees were tracked by hand, invoice by invoice.
• Changes never came. The office found it hard to reach the previous vendor and harder to get features built when they needed them.

Every membership body has the same core loop: people apply, get verified, pay, and renew. When that loop runs on phone calls and spreadsheets, the office's whole year is spent chasing it.

So IAB decided to start again with a new vendor. That was us.

What we built: one system in three parts

• Public website, for the public, clients and RAJUK: news, events and a live directory of registered members
• Member portal, for 10,000+ architects and students: apply, pay and request online without visiting the office
• Admin portal, for the IAB office, board and chapters: review, approve, report and run the accounts

All three run on one database. When the office approves a member, the change shows up in the member's portal, in the admin reports and in the public directory at the same time.

For members: apply, pay and request without the office

The member portal turns every trip to the office into a few taps:

• Apply or upgrade online. A member picks the grade they want (student, associate, member, 8-year or fellow), sees the requirements, uploads the documents and follows the status. When the office sets an interview or exam, the date appears on the application.
• Pay online. Membership fees, event fees and other dues are paid through aamarPay, and every receipt stays in the member's payment history.
• Request ID cards and certificates. A request is one form, and the member sees when it is approved.
• Keep their profile current. Education, experience, documents and contact details, with each change reviewed by the office before it goes live.
• Register for events, including family members, with the fee worked out and paid in the same step.

For the board and the office: review, don't chase

The admin portal is where the months became days. The office no longer collects an application; it reviews one. Every applicant arrives with their details and documents already attached, and the reviewer checks them side by side, then marks the application verified or denied. From there the portal handles the rest of the process:

1. Application review, with information and documents checked one by one
2. Payment, confirmed through the gateway
3. Interview or written exam, scheduled from the portal and shown to the applicant
4. Eligible for membership, and the member's grade updates everywhere

The same approach covers everything else the office used to do by hand: ID card and certificate requests, printing, profile change approvals, notices, events and contract documents. An audit log records who changed what.

Every member record, one search away

The member database that used to be a spreadsheet is now a dashboard. The office can search any member, see their full history and download whatever analytics it needs: members by grade, new applicants, pending interviews, upcoming events. Exports go to Excel or PDF with the fields the office chooses.

Each chapter sees its own members

IAB runs through several regional chapters. With chapter-based admin roles, a chapter's admins see and handle only the applicants and members of their own chapter, while the central office sees everyone. The chapters work in the same system without seeing each other's data.

Accounts: every fee in one ledger instead of Excel

In 2026 we added an accounts system to the admin portal, and it replaced the last spreadsheet the office relied on. IAB now manages membership fees, late fees, event fees and any other payment it needs from members in one place:

• invoices, including dues that have not been paid yet
• payments, including a member paying several invoices at once
• transactions and payment history for every member
• reports the treasurer can export
• yearly subscription pricing, which the office sets itself

The website: a public directory RAJUK checks against

We also rebuilt IAB's public website in WordPress: news, notices, events, awards, publications and job circulars that the office updates itself. The most important page is the directory. It reads live from the portal, so anyone can check whether an architect is a registered IAB member.

That directory has a second user. RAJUK, Dhaka's capital development authority, pulls and verifies architect data from the IAB database through an API we built. The member record an architect keeps up to date in the portal is the same one the regulator relies on.

How we built it

We redesigned a screen rather than slow the system down

Halfway through the build, it became clear that the approved design for the requests section did not fit the way the data was stored, and building it as drawn would have made it slow. We redesigned the screen to match the data instead, and kept to the timeline.

We migrated 10,000 members without the old database

We could not get direct access to the old portal's database. IAB exported its members to a spreadsheet instead, and we wrote an import script with validation checks, so every record was checked before it went into the new system.

We built it to keep growing

The first version launched in four months with a team of six. IAB has kept building with us every year since:

• 2025: new features across the portal and the website
• Early 2026: a rebuilt events module, payment history, chapter-based admin roles and a mobile-friendly member portal
• Mid 2026: the accounts system

Each addition went into the same system rather than a new tool beside it.

The results

IAB's admins also surveyed their members in 2024, across three surveys that more than 90% of members took part in:

• 91% rated the new portal more effective than the old system
• 87.95% of members had adopted it
• 96.1% valued being able to do things themselves
• 93.7% valued its efficiency
• 87.5% valued the improved communication

What we'd do again

• Map the office's real work, not the old system's features. The old portal was a poor guide because it only covered 10% of what IAB did.
• Put the whole process in one system. Application, payment, interview and approval in one place is what turned months into days.
• Design the permissions early. Chapter admins, reviewers and the central office all needed different views of the same members.
• Stay for the next phase. An association's needs grow every year; building on one system beats adding tools beside it.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to build a member management portal?

IAB's first version took four months with a team of six, covering the member portal, the admin portal and data migration. Accounting, events and chapter roles came later, as separate phases.

Can a member portal replace Excel for an association?

Yes. IAB moved its member records, and later its fees and invoices, out of Excel into the portal. The office can now search any member and export any report it needs.

Can different chapters or branches share one membership system?

Yes, with role-based access. At IAB, chapter admins see and manage only their own chapter's applicants and members, and the central office sees everyone.

Can other organisations verify our members through the system?

Yes, through an API. RAJUK verifies architects against the IAB database this way, and the public can check any member in the website directory.

Running your association's members on spreadsheets and phone calls? Book a 30-minute call and we'll tell you what it would take to put the whole process in one system, or read how we approach custom software development and process automation.