custom report: children with two sets of parents
Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:35 am
Hi there,
This is a rather complicated question, so hopefully I can explain it correctly.
The children's ministry at our church has parents fill out informaton sheets every year, at the start of the fall ministry calendar, for each of their children. However, the children's pastor would like to help the parents/guardians by tracking as much of this information as possible using PowerChurch, and then handing out prepopulated forms to the parents. That way the children's ministry staff know that the only data they need to change in PC is what the parents change or add to the form. (Using the old way, they had to go through all data in each form and compare it to what was in PC.)
The CM department has an existing Word document they have used as the child info sheet. By exporting to an Excel file through a PC custom report, I can create a mail merge Word document that contains some of this child information. However, at this point, I can really only include the child's contact information.
Where it gets complicated is where we have children that come from broken homes. On the child information sheet, the CM department wants to have two parents/guardians listed for contact in case of an emergency. However, if a children comes from a divorced home, and lives with one parent, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to track this in PC.
For example, there could be a child who lives with his biological mother, who is remarried. The household name would be under the step father, but we would prefer to list his mother as the parent/guardian. And then for the second parent/guardian we would like to list the biological father. When I grab the data for the custom report, I can only grab the household name to populate an address, and the stepfather will be listed as head of the household. And I can't tie this child's record to the biological father (who is listed as another household).
Do I need to tell the CM department that their idea is just not possible with PowerChurch, or is there a way to handle this? Any thoughts you have would be greatly appreciated.
Blessings,
Graham
This is a rather complicated question, so hopefully I can explain it correctly.
The children's ministry at our church has parents fill out informaton sheets every year, at the start of the fall ministry calendar, for each of their children. However, the children's pastor would like to help the parents/guardians by tracking as much of this information as possible using PowerChurch, and then handing out prepopulated forms to the parents. That way the children's ministry staff know that the only data they need to change in PC is what the parents change or add to the form. (Using the old way, they had to go through all data in each form and compare it to what was in PC.)
The CM department has an existing Word document they have used as the child info sheet. By exporting to an Excel file through a PC custom report, I can create a mail merge Word document that contains some of this child information. However, at this point, I can really only include the child's contact information.
Where it gets complicated is where we have children that come from broken homes. On the child information sheet, the CM department wants to have two parents/guardians listed for contact in case of an emergency. However, if a children comes from a divorced home, and lives with one parent, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to track this in PC.
For example, there could be a child who lives with his biological mother, who is remarried. The household name would be under the step father, but we would prefer to list his mother as the parent/guardian. And then for the second parent/guardian we would like to list the biological father. When I grab the data for the custom report, I can only grab the household name to populate an address, and the stepfather will be listed as head of the household. And I can't tie this child's record to the biological father (who is listed as another household).
Do I need to tell the CM department that their idea is just not possible with PowerChurch, or is there a way to handle this? Any thoughts you have would be greatly appreciated.
Blessings,
Graham