Tales From Tech 2 - Issue: 5

Today I am thrilled to announce that we have our first winner in the "contest" I announced in my last newsletter. Our winner is Elouis3428@aol.com! Give her a big hand.

Yes, Elouis3428@aol.com, you are now the proud owner of a fabulous, limited edition, PowerChurch Plus mug. And since we're on the subject of the winning, that reminds me of the old saying: Winning isn't everything, but it sure beats getting poked in the eye with a stick.

By the way, I did a little snooping around and guess what I discovered. Elouis3428@aol.com is actually Elouise Murphy, our Authorized Teaching Consultant in the Dallas, Texas area. Teaching Consultants are people scattered around the globe (well, just the United States, actually) that know PowerChurch Plus and have been given our seal of approval to teach it. So, when you need help that goes beyond Technical Support, you might consider contacting one of our Teaching Consultants. For a list of our Authorized Teaching Consultants, just give us a call at (800) 486-1800.

Anyway, Elouis3428@aol.com gave me an excellent suggestion about things to do in PowerChurch Plus when an individual passes away.

HEADING ONE
(BECAUSE I COULDN'T THINK OF ANYTHING FUNNY AND TASTEFUL)

When a person in your database dies, there are several things you may want to consider. Please note that these are just suggestions. If you already
have something that works for you, then just remember the old saying: If it ain't broke, get out of the kitchen. But, if you haven't given it any thought yet, then here are some things to think about.

HEADING TWO
(SORRY, BUT I'M STILL NOT COMING UP WITH ANYTHING FUNNY AND WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF GOOD TASTE)

One of the first things to do is consider the family situation. Was the person the only member of the family or were they part of a family of two or more?

If the person was the only member of their household, one of the first things to look at is whether you will want any further mailings to go to their address. One way of preventing mailings from going to a household is to uncheck the "Include in mailouts" box on the family record. You might even choose to uncheck the other boxes on the family record.

If the person wasn't the only person in the family, unchecking the "Include in mailouts" box will prevent you from printing labels for anyone in the family. So, you probably would not want to uncheck it, but would instead want to consider how the "Salutation" and "Mailing name" fields are listed on the household record. If they include the name of the deceased, you may wish to change that.

Next, you'll want to take a look at the Activities the person was involved in. If you go to the Maintain Activities & Skills screen, you will be able to bring up the individual and remove them from any of the Activities they were in. This will prevent them from appearing on future Attendance Register Forms and other reports in Attendance and Activities and Skills.

The next thing you may want to look at is if there has been a Custom Code
defined under the Personal Profiles to indicate that a person is deceased. If so, you can go ahead and change their code so you could exclude them from reports or mailing labels.

Another thing to consider while in Personal Profiles is whether or not you want to use one of the date fields to indicate the date they passed away. I had never really given this any thought before, but Elouise indicated that many churches like to send cards to the families on the anniversaries of a family member's death.

AND THE ENVELOPE (NUMBER) PLEASE...

After these issues have been considered, you might consider the envelope
numbers assigned to the members of this family.

Heading 3, Section A

If the deceased had the same number as another person in the family, you could simply remove the number from the deceased person's record. This will change the name as it appears on the contribution statement.

Heading 3, Section B

If the deceased was the only individual in the family, print the final contribution statement for their estate and then uncheck the "Include in mailouts" box so no further mailings go to their address. If you print a statement after unchecking "Include in mailouts" then the church's address will print so it comes back to you if you put it in the mail. After you've printed the statement, you can give it to their estate at any appropriate time thereafter.

Heading 3, Section C

Another possibility is that the deceased individual had a different envelope number than anyone else in the family. This situation is a little more complicated. If you remove the envelope number from their Personal Profile, then the money in that envelope would be moved into envelope number 99999 and you will no longer be able to print a contribution statement for them. (By the way, envelope 99999 is used by the program to prevent you from losing contribution money if you delete someone that has given.) Since the law states that you have to print a statement for the deceased individual's estate at the end of the year, we'll have to consider a different approach.

Heading 3, Section C, Subsection 1

If you only print statements at the end of the year, you could leave the number just as it is until after the statements are printed. Afterward, you could reassign the number to a higher range and free up the envelope number for a new member.

Heading 3, Section C, Subsection 2

If you print statements more often, you might consider changing the number
they had to a number in a higher range. That way, when you print statements, you can chose to exclude the statements for those higher envelope numbers. Or, you could print them separately.

Now, whether you choose Option One or Two (or neither), one additional thing you might consider is to make a change to the "Title" field on the Personal Profile. If you change the individual's title to "Estate of" then that title will print on the Contribution Statement when it is printed. For example, "Estate of Tech 2."

PLEASE NOTE

Now I want to note a couple of things. First, keep in mind that envelope 99999 is a Version 7 feature. In prior versions, the contributions contained in an envelope aren't handled the same way when you delete the envelope.

And, as always, I would certainly advise making a backup before changing the records for your families or individuals.

IN CLOSING

In closing (and I know you were thinking that we'd never get there), I would like to thank everyone that sent in suggestions. I am still looking through all of them trying to decide which to use next. There have been a lot of great suggestions sent in, but that doesn't mean that you should stop. In other words, keep those suggestions coming! Just drop by http://www.powerchurch.com/tech2 and put your 2 cents in. (You can find previous issues there, too.) Just remember that the form you find on that page is for suggestions. If you have technical support questions, see the next section for information on where to send them.