User Support Forum

May we please know how to count the number of households? We are new at this and appreciate your support.

Maranatha wrote:May we please know how to count the number of households? We are new at this and appreciate your support.

Not exactly sure what you mean by households. Hopefully you mean individual mailing list records. You can access this count through a standard report under Mailing List Profiles.

If you can be more specific about what exactly you're looking for, we can be more helpful.

Thank you. We have Power Church Plus 10.4 since January 2008. Our denomination request statistics once a year; one of them is the number of families. I was hoping that the 'household' field would generate a report of households, but understand now that is not possible.
From speaking with others, it is clear that, like any computer, the information put out is only as good as the information input. So, to count the families, it has been suggested to me that in the integrated data entry screen, the 'mailing category' be listed as family and then that field can be sorted. I haven't tried this yet and have a few questions on how to handle variations in 'families', and those who are not considered families like widows and singles.
If you can suggest another way to count families, that would be helpful, too.
Thanks so much. Step by step. Continually improving, by the grace of God.

Maranatha wrote:Thank you. We have Power Church Plus 10.4 since January 2008. Our denomination request statistics once a year; one of them is the number of families. I was hoping that the 'household' field would generate a report of households, but understand now that is not possible.
From speaking with others, it is clear that, like any computer, the information put out is only as good as the information input. So, to count the families, it has been suggested to me that in the integrated data entry screen, the 'mailing category' be listed as family and then that field can be sorted. I haven't tried this yet and have a few questions on how to handle variations in 'families', and those who are not considered families like widows and singles.
If you can suggest another way to count families, that would be helpful, too.
Thanks so much. Step by step. Continually improving, by the grace of God.

Like you, we in the PCUSA have a yearly denominational report. We setup Powerchurch to be able to give us the categories we need for the report.

On the Family Mailing List, we have the status code as Member to reflect that the family contains at least one member of the congregation as part of the family. When we run the Family Mailing List Mailing List Count standard report, we'd get a count of all the mailing list statuses. When we do that we get a list that shows us something like this:

• Members 206
  Visitors 210
  Members, removed from rolls 20

and so on.

This will definitely work for you. Using a status of Families really won't tell you much as a visitor can be a family, but you don't want to count visitor's as part of the report to the denomination.

Along those same lines, on Personal Profiles, we have statuses of Member, Member rem'd from rolls, Friend of the Church, Family Group Member (these are usually spouses or children who are not yet members of the church), Visitor and so on. This also helps us with our denominational report, as we also have Gain and Loss codes that correspond to that data requested by the denomination.

Hope this helps.

NeilZ wrote:Like you, we in the PCUSA have a yearly denominational report. We setup Powerchurch to be able to give us the categories we need for the report.

On the Family Mailing List, we have the status code as Member to reflect that the family contains at least one member of the congregation as part of the family. When we run the Family Mailing List Mailing List Count standard report, we'd get a count of all the mailing list statuses. When we do that we get a list that shows us something like this:

• Members 206
  Visitors 210
  Members, removed from rolls 20

and so on.

This will definitely work for you. Using a status of Families really won't tell you much as a visitor can be a family, but you don't want to count visitor's as part of the report to the denomination.

Along those same lines, on Personal Profiles, we have statuses of Member, Member rem'd from rolls, Friend of the Church, Family Group Member (these are usually spouses or children who are not yet members of the church), Visitor and so on. This also helps us with our denominational report, as we also have Gain and Loss codes that correspond to that data requested by the denomination.

Hope this helps.

Being secretary for a church in the same denomination, your post is most helpful. I'm wondering: could you explain a little more fully about the Gain and Loss codes you mentioned? In fact, if it isn't asking too much would you be willing to share your list of Family Mailing List and Personal Profile codes? (I think I've covered all the bases with what I have set up; but, tending toward complication, I may have gone overboard with it! )

Your posts are always so helpful, even when you are answering a question I haven't thought to ask or help fix a situation I haven't yet run into. Thank you for your service to all of us, for His glory!

Eden