Is there a way to resequence Envelope number?

[John Dykema]

I've been entering contribs for 12 years now and I'm thinking it's time to resequence the envelope numbers to put them into a more chronological order, giving the A's the lowest numbers and Z's the highest. Anyway I can do this?
Background: We only keep one year of contribs on the file. Each new year we create a new PC+ file for the new year and delete the old year's contribs. We do this because when someone transfers out or dies, their number is given a new series number and the original is released to assign to someone else the next Calendar year. This eliminates the numbers "creeping" up and having to buy more envelope boxes year after year. If someone's estate needs a printout for 2-3 years ago I just go back to that appropriate file and easily print one out.

[NeilZ]

FWIW ... I don't know how many members you have, but any resequencing will take a bit of time as there is no 'mass update' for envelope resequencing. There's a few good reasons for this, one of which is that not every church does their envelopes the same way, and trying to create a one size fits all resequence would be very time consuming, and other areas would not get their fixes/updates.

As I mentioned this will be time consuming, as it is a manual function. What helped is that I already had members and 'recurring contributor' non-members in one range of numbers, visitors in another, and contribution accounts maintained for archives (I believe the IRS requires data for up to 3 years) in another range.

What I did was do an extract of the member range of the contribution database to an Excel spreadsheet using a Custom Report showing last name, first name, envelope number. I then sorted by last name, with a secondary sort of contribution number to get the couples together. In the last column of the spreadsheet I entered their new envelope number, then printed it out.

Then using the new envelope number, I reassigned each current envelope to the new number but with a higher range. IE: envelope 101 was entered as 10101, in order to make sure that the new number was not already taken.

After the entire database was done, I went back to change the 10101 to 101 since all the old member range had been renumbered out to the new range. This went faster as I didn't need to consult my spreadsheet, just remember where I left off in the number list.

Again, this does take some time, and this was not done before the last Sunday of the current year so that our counters would not have a problem entering that last Sunday using the old envelopes.

[John Dykema]

Thanks, Neil. When you say "Again, this does take some time, and this was not done before the last Sunday of the current year so that our counters would not have a problem entering that last Sunday using the old envelopes", haven't you by this time already put address labels on the new buget envelopes and handed them out? We have ours ready for our congregational meeting Nov 1, each year. (This gives the snowbirds the chance of taking theirs with them.)
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[NeilZ]

Thanks, Neil. When you say "Again, this does take some time, and this was not done before the last Sunday of the current year so that our counters would not have a problem entering that last Sunday using the old envelopes", haven't you by this time already put address labels on the new buget envelopes and handed them out? We have ours ready for our congregational meeting Nov 1, each year. (This gives the snowbirds the chance of taking theirs with them.)
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As I mentioned, I had already set this up in an Excel spreadsheet, which I then used to create labels. We usually had the envelopes ready for pickup about the first or second week in December. Anyone who did not pick them up by Christmas, got a late present in the mail