The three check boxes on the family profile

[pcu53203]

I would like to get suggestions on how to use those three boxes on the family profile labeled:

Include in mailouts?
Include in membership module reports?
Publish address in church directory?

I am debating on whether or not to leave all of these checked for every family, and manage information another way. For instance, when choosing who gets our weekly bulletin, we have a code 1 poulated on the other tab that indicates who will get the mailer, and for any other mailers we have family mailing categories that indicate active and non-active members and non-members. With this type of configuration, why would we need to ever uncheck the Include in mailouts box?

I would appreciate any input that might cause an aha! moment before I take the time to scrub data that willl need to be re-scrubbed later due to an oversight.

Steve Morris
First Baptist Church, Corbin, KY

[NeilZ]

I would like to get suggestions on how to use those three boxes on the family profile labeled:

Include in mailouts?
Include in membership module reports?
Publish address in church directory?

I am debating on whether or not to leave all of these checked for every family, and manage information another way. For instance, when choosing who gets our weekly bulletin, we have a code 1 poulated on the other tab that indicates who will get the mailer, and for any other mailers we have family mailing categories that indicate active and non-active members and non-members. With this type of configuration, why would we need to ever uncheck the Include in mailouts box?

I would appreciate any input that might cause an aha! moment before I take the time to scrub data that willl need to be re-scrubbed later due to an oversight.

Steve Morris
First Baptist Church, Corbin, KY

Include in mailouts?

If you're also keeping visitor information in Powerchurch, as many do, you would not want to send out mailings to them until they show that they are regular attenders, in which case you would check this, and possibly change their mailing code to something other than visitor. You would also uncheck this in the case of a tranferred or deceased member, where you have to maintain their contribution records, but you really do not want to send out anything to them.

Include in membership module reports?

Again, this is used to eliminate people showing up in membership reports that you no longer need to track. For instance, in our case we need to maintain the record of any transferred or deceased members until the end of the year, when we need to report to the denomination our statistical information. We would remove the check under mailouts, but leave this checked so that they would show in reports. We would then remove the check after the end-of-year report is completed.

Publish address in church directory?

Again, mostly used to eliminate member or visitor data that you do not want to appear in the church directory. Much easier than trying to make sure the directory contains active menbers only, and so on.

[pcu53203]

Thanks for the helpful comments. In response to this comment:

For instance, in our case we need to maintain the record of any transferred or deceased members until the end of the year, when we need to report to the denomination our statistical information. We would remove the check under mailouts, but leave this checked so that they would show in reports. We would then remove the check after the end-of-year report is completed.

We manage deceased or leters transferred out by creating custom codes in which we plug in actual dates on the individuals profiles, and for any mailers or reports, we omit these codes from the selection. This way, we are able to compare lost members on a year-by-year basis. With this approach, it seems redundant to worry about the checkboxes on the family profile. Am I missing something here?

Thanks,

Steve

[NeilZ]

Thanks for the helpful comments. In response to this comment:

For instance, in our case we need to maintain the record of any transferred or deceased members until the end of the year, when we need to report to the denomination our statistical information. We would remove the check under mailouts, but leave this checked so that they would show in reports. We would then remove the check after the end-of-year report is completed.

We manage deceased or leters transferred out by creating custom codes in which we plug in actual dates on the individuals profiles, and for any mailers or reports, we omit these codes from the selection. This way, we are able to compare lost members on a year-by-year basis. With this approach, it seems redundant to worry about the checkboxes on the family profile. Am I missing something here?

Thanks,

Steve

You are ... We also use special codes, but only for a year as I mentioned. Then all you need to do is access the Integrated Data Entry, remove the check, and you don't need to do any additional changes to status codes, etc.

[Jeff]

Just a point of clarification just in case someone looks at this forum later. The "Publish address in church directory" suppresses the address only on the church directory. The family is still listed in the directory but it does not show their address. This would be similar to an unlisted phone number, unchecking this option makes just the address unlisted.

[NeilZ]

Just a point of clarification just in case someone looks at this forum later. The "Publish address in church directory" suppresses the address only on the church directory. The family is still listed in the directory but it does not show their address. This would be similar to an unlisted phone number, unchecking this option makes just the address unlisted.

Aha ... subtle difference, I've been using it for years, but never realized that it worked exactly that way.