PowerChurch Software Newsletter - Fall 2012

Welcome to the Fall 2012 issue of the PowerChurch Software Quarterly Newsletter. The years have flown by and we were surprised to find it was already issue #10. For those of you that have been around for a while, you may remember our old Tales From Tech 2 newsletter. Looking back at the archives, there were 35 issues of that, some of them being multi-part spread over a few weeks. Tech 2 isn't around anymore, but his words (nonsensical as some of them were) live on. We invite you to visit the archives and read through some of the Tales From Tech 2 issues from back in the day, as well as any of the previous nine issues of this generation of the newsletter.

In this issue, we will spend a little time talking about year-end tax filings. We will also explore a little-known feature that was added back in Version 11. In the latest installment of the Making a Difference series, you will hear from a PowerChurch Plus user and the extraordinary work she is doing.

Save Report Settings

Once you have been working in the program for a while, you find yourself in a rhythm, running the same reports each month, going through the same processes over and over again. In Version 11 of PowerChurch Plus, a new feature was added to allow you to save your report options and load them up next month to run the report or other process with the same selections. For example, if you run a First Time Attenders report every month and give the list to the visitations team, you can save your selections to guarantee that the report is run the same way each month.

1. From under Membership > Attendance > Reports - Attendance, choose the First Time Attenders report and click Run. When the Report Options screen comes up, you will see three icons in a toolbar across the top.
   
   
   
   
2. Change your report options, like the date range you want to include (i.e. This Month), select the Activities From and To, and limit the list further, if necessary, by choosing Activity Departments, Types, and/or the list of Personal Status Codes to include.
3. When finished setting report options, click the "Save Report Settings" button (floppy disk icon).
4. Enter a title and, optionally, a long description.
5. There are two checkbox options at the bottom of the screen, which allow you to share these settings with other PowerChurch users in your organization, and to set this as the default. Checking the latter of those two options will, by default, always run this report with those settings selected.
6. Click OK and you are then returned to the Report Options screen. You will see the title you assigned listed to the right of the load, save, and reset icons.

This functionality is available on all reports and processes that use these Selection Criteria/Report Options screens, like printing mailing labels, sending bulk e-mails, mail merge exports, etc.

Year-End Tax Filing

We are not quite to year-end yet, but it will soon be time to start making plans. Last year about this time, Version 11.5 of PowerChurch Plus added the ability to e-file your W2s and W3s with the state and federal governments. This dramatically speeds up the process. The service that we use can optionally send out the paper copies of the W2s to your employees as well. Currently, only the W2/W3 filing is supported, but plans are in place to have the program updated and functional in filing 1099-MISC and 941s using this same service. For more information, visit http://powerchurch.nelcoportal.com.

Our preferred supplier of checks, tax forms, and other business forms is Dynamic Systems. These forms are the ones that PowerChurch Plus is designed to work with, so your checks and forms should line up perfectly. Of course, if you purchase forms from another provider, or if something doesn't line up properly on your printer, there is a form alignment tool in PowerChurch that will let you make adjustments. Whether you choose to use the PowerChurch e-File service or not, check out all that Dynamic Systems has to offer on their web site.

Making a Difference

Sandra Lacy - Providing key resources to families in urban Delaware

Name: Pastor Sandra Lacy

Title: Founder, Rose of Sharon Family Ministries

Passion: Nurturing members of her community

Why PowerChurch: It does everything we want it to do and can still grow with us.

25 years ago, Sandra Lacy left corporate America, propelled by the idea that she was being called elsewhere. 14 years later, after slowly and carefully building the necessary resources, she started a ministry practically right out of her home.

As founder of Rose of Sharon Family Ministries in Delaware, Lacy has seen many people come and go, but her mission is unchanged: take care of the practical, emotional, spiritual and physical needs of the people in her urban community. Her activities range from family counseling and outreach to teenagers, to finding shelter and needed resources for the indigent, to being a sturdy presence for those who come in contact with her ministry. This work takes all of her time.

PowerChurch Software is proud to play a valuable role in her work by freeing her up to help the people who need her the most. "I learned about PowerChurch Plus from a daycare where I was working as a minister. I called PowerChurch's help desk to find out more, because I knew I would be starting my own ministry. When I told them that I had some information that needed organizing, and was interested in buying their software, they were able to import my data and send it back to me ready to go. That really impressed me... and was a huge help!"

Rose of Sharon is currently in the midst of a building fund campaign that Lacy hopes will help allow them to build a daycare center, where children can be ministered to directly, and larger spaces where families can receive support and encouragement.

"My major goal, my passion, is to help people understand their temperament and how they might use their gifts to serve others and know God. My vision is big! I want to open this daycare, establish a community library, maybe set up transitional housing for the homeless one day, on top of all the other things we do.

"I know that there is a business side to what I do and I do it, but what I want to focus on is the spiritual side of the lives around me. You can't box with God," she laughs. "I got my assignment from him. He's the CEO."

The time Lacy saves using PowerChurch Plus makes finding the freedom to see her vision through possible.

You make a difference all over the world. PowerChurch makes it easier. Read previous installments of Making a Difference at www.powerchurch.com/stories/.

Forum Q&A

The Support Forum on our web site is a very active online community of our users and Tech Support staff members. There you can browse through thousands of questions and answers, or post your own.

From PowerChurch Online:
Q. If you currently have the PowerChurch Plus installed, can you sync it with the online version? I travel a lot and would like to have access when I am away.
A. It isn't a good idea to restore backups from PowerChurch Plus to PowerChurch Online, since the whole point of PowerChurch Online is to serve as the master data set, accessible to anyone who needs it, eliminating the need for local copies of the software on multiple computers.

From General:
Q. We have just discovered, after launching the PowerChurch Today window, that it does not display the same birthdays and anniversaries to all users.
A. There are user-specific settings for the PowerChurch Today window under File > Preferences > User Setup Options. You can choose to include birthdays or anniversaries occurring in the next X number of days and also choose to include only certain Personal Status Codes.

From Events:
Q. Is there any easy way of changing the times of a recurring event and having the changes applied to each of the event occurrences?
A. The date and time are specific to each occurrence of the event. You won't be able to mass-change the time or day-of-week of the recurring events. That will need to be done individually on each occurrence, or you can delete the remaining occurrences of the event and add a new one.