Emailing contribution statements

[John Dykema]

We are getting fired up to email (and print to those w/o an email address) contribution statements. I'm thinking if there is a printer jam or some such disaster, is the system smart enough not to email duplicates to anybody? I would of course use the "restart at a certain envelope number" feature. If the jammed printout is unreadable how will I know where to restart from? Seems like if I restart at the last printed startment, some people would probably get duplicate emails. Hope I'm clear on all of this.

[NeilZ]

We are getting fired up to email (and print to those w/o an email address) contribution statements. I'm thinking if there is a printer jam or some such disaster, is the system smart enough not to email duplicates to anybody? I would of course use the "restart at a certain envelope number" feature. If the jammed printout is unreadable how will I know where to restart from? Seems like if I restart at the last printed startment, some people would probably get duplicate emails. Hope I'm clear on all of this.

John,

As you may know you are given a few options when you're printing out contribution statements..

One of the options is whether to print all statements, or email them. If you select to email them, you are then given the options to:

A) in addition to emailing the statements also to print the emailed statements
B)Only print those statements that could not be emailed
C)Only Email Statements

What I've done is use options B & C under the email statements. I'll first email all the statements that can be emailed (option C), then I'll run all the printed statements (Option B).

In the case of a printer jam, and I'm assuming that you're using a laser printer. The printer will usually restart the printing at the jammed page, however, if not, using option B, you can then enter the number of the last printed statement as the starting envelope number, and use option B to resume printing.

Hope this helps.

FWIW ... if the moderators could move this thread to the Contributions forum, it would provide good info for other users of the Emailed options.

[John Dykema]

Thanks. I just tried to send to the screen, statements to all those who could NOT be emailed. The interface brings up an email page and insists on me putting in a subject and message. I put in a "testing" subject, etc. and then I got an error about my SMP....... (that is because I was testing from home and not at church). Shouldn't that email interface be disabled when using option B.?
Thanks.

[NeilZ]

Thanks. I just tried to send to the screen, statements to all those who could NOT be emailed. The interface brings up an email page and insists on me putting in a subject and message. I put in a "testing" subject, etc. and then I got an error about my SMP....... (that is because I was testing from home and not at church). Shouldn't that email interface be disabled when using option B.?
Thanks.

What I usually did when I had to reprint, and it only happened once where I really had to start reprinting, was put a notice in the email portion that if you received your statement twice, please disgard this email.

I just thought of another option, you could figure out which account got jammed by checking to see which got printed before and after the jam, and then checking the names or envelope numbers to see who falls in the middle of those and does not have an email address. You can then print off their statement individually.

FWIW ... we found that the printer restarted where it jammed, we had more problems with our automatic folding machine chewing up statements.

[Kristi]

Just a note...or two.
You might want to flag any e-mail addresses that go to offices.

I had people who did not want their statements e-mailed because their address was their work e-mail and they didn't want their private information sent to work.

Because of that and because so many people changed e-mail addresses on us so often, I gave up. I figured out that if I e-mailed some and then mailed some...I would not have enough to snail-mail bulk rate and the postage was going to be too expensive to use stamps.
So, I just mail all of them.

I was really excited about the possibililty of e-mailing when PowerChurch first came out with this option...it really would save me time and money. Maybe in the future.
Good luck~Kristi

[John Dykema]

NeilZ, when you run using Option C, as you said above, and then option B, you are going to send duplicate emails to those you have email addresses for. This is what happened to me last night.
Right? or am I in left field?

[tborgal]

John,

If what you're saying is true then all you should have to do is option B and you should have everything you want with one procedure. The ones that have e-mail addressed will be e-mailed and the ones that don't will be printed.

[NeilZ]

John,

If what you're saying is true then all you should have to do is option B and you should have everything you want with one procedure. The ones that have e-mail addressed will be e-mailed and the ones that don't will be printed.

Yup .. that's correct.

I haven't used this in over a year (new church does not have many email addresses and current contributions person is not thrilled with that idea), so I goofed when I explained what we did. I went back and did some testing, with only my email address setup in my test system, and what Tom said is correct, Option B will allow you to do what you want.

Mea Culpa !!

[John Dykema]

Thanks much guys. I'm not near as confused as I used to be