How to categorize non-church contacts?

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pbumc
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:28 pm
Location: San Diego, CA

How to categorize non-church contacts?

Post by pbumc »

Our church uses PowerChurch 11.55 to track members and donations, but not for full accounting. I'm working on cleaning up records created over the years with no Personal Status. I'm seeing that many are not related to church members or visitors:
  • Facilities users, bake sale (fees/proceeds tracked as contributions)
  • Vendors
  • Community contacts (homeless services etc.)
  • Other churches and church bodies
I'd be interested in what others are doing to handle non-church contacts. Since most of these are not really individuals, I'm thinking of adding a few Mailing Categories to categorize them at the Family level. For Personal Status, I might distinguish "Financial" from "Other". In fact, if there are no contributions, I could remove the Personal Profile altogether, right, just keep the Family?

Thanks for your thoughts,
Mark Berry

NeilZ
Posts: 10209
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:20 am
Location: Dexter NM
Contact:

Re: How to categorize non-church contacts?

Post by NeilZ »

pbumc wrote:
Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:16 pm
Our church uses PowerChurch 11.55 to track members and donations, but not for full accounting. I'm working on cleaning up records created over the years with no Personal Status. I'm seeing that many are not related to church members or visitors:
  • Facilities users, bake sale (fees/proceeds tracked as contributions)
  • Vendors
  • Community contacts (homeless services etc.)
  • Other churches and church bodies
I'd be interested in what others are doing to handle non-church contacts. Since most of these are not really individuals, I'm thinking of adding a few Mailing Categories to categorize them at the Family level. For Personal Status, I might distinguish "Financial" from "Other". In fact, if there are no contributions, I could remove the Personal Profile altogether, right, just keep the Family?

Thanks for your thoughts,
You can setup any status you want, not to mention Mailinig List status. As they do go together. Basically, you use what works for you.

So create statuses of "Vendor", "Community Contact"< etc. but I'd also create a Mailing List profile with the same status to help filter them out there too.
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

pbumc
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:28 pm
Location: San Diego, CA

Re: How to categorize non-church contacts?

Post by pbumc »

Thanks Neil. Any reason to keep Personal Profile records at all when there is no contribution history to maintain and no people to track? Say if they want a way to keep the phone number and address of restaurants, appliance repair shops, etc. It looks like it is possible to delete the last Personal Profile in a family though I haven't tried it yet.

I could also tell them to store vendor contacts elsewhere (Google Contacts, Outlook). It gets fuzzy with other churches and church bodies, some of whom are included in our church's mailings.
Mark Berry

NeilZ
Posts: 10209
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:20 am
Location: Dexter NM
Contact:

Re: How to categorize non-church contacts?

Post by NeilZ »

pbumc wrote:
Thu Jan 28, 2021 12:04 pm
Thanks Neil. Any reason to keep Personal Profile records at all when there is no contribution history to maintain and no people to track? Say if they want a way to keep the phone number and address of restaurants, appliance repair shops, etc. It looks like it is possible to delete the last Personal Profile in a family though I haven't tried it yet.

I could also tell them to store vendor contacts elsewhere (Google Contacts, Outlook). It gets fuzzy with other churches and church bodies, some of whom are included in our church's mailings.
Yeah .. you really don't need to have a personal profile in these cases at all. I suspect that you've been using the "Add Family Assistant" to enter these exceptions as it will create the personal profiles records. What you should do to add these types of records is UNCHECK the use add family assistant.
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

pbumc
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:28 pm
Location: San Diego, CA

Re: How to categorize non-church contacts?

Post by pbumc »

NeilZ wrote:
Fri Jan 29, 2021 12:37 am
Yeah .. you really don't need to have a personal profile in these cases at all. I suspect that you've been using the "Add Family Assistant" to enter these exceptions as it will create the personal profiles records. What you should do to add these types of records is UNCHECK the use add family assistant.
Perfect, thanks for the confirmation!
Mark Berry

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