Knowledge Base

Tales From Tech 2 - Issue: 9

In part 2 of our new series, Tech 2 tackles some of the lesser knowns in the Personal Profiles module.

Today I'm happy to announce that we have another winner in our "Give Tech 2 a Suggestion for an Upcoming Newsletter and if Your Suggestion is Used You'll Win a Fabulous, Limited Edition, PowerChurch Plus Mug" contest! (Contest rules and guidelines are listed in Tales From Tech 2, Volume 4.5. If you want to review Volume 4.5 or any prior issue, see the last paragraph of this newsletter for instructions on how to get there.)

Our winner today is Brenda at St. John's Lutheran Church. Let's all give her a big hand. (Hey, I'm not hearing any clapping!)

In this edition, I want to talk about a couple of things that sometimes cause users some confusion about Personal Profiles. In particular, I want to give you some things to consider about envelope numbers in relation to family members. And thinking of envelope number assignment reminded me (although I'm not really sure why) of the old saying: If you can't take the heat, lead your horse to water.

FATHER, MOTHER, SISTER, BROTHER

A question users sometimes have is why the envelope is maintained on the individual rather than the family level. The reason is simple. By putting the envelope number on the personal profile you have the ability to give individuals in one household different envelope numbers in case they want to track their contributions separately.

MAKING A STATEMENT

Another thing that sometimes causes some confusion is how the program decides what name to put on the Contribution Statement. Well, here's how it all works. If only one person in the family has a particular envelope number, then only that person's name will be on the statement. If the envelope number has been given to two people in the family, both of their names will be on the statement. If three or more people in the family have the same envelope number, then the program will put the name of the first person that has the number and then it will append "& Family."

Confused? If you're not, you can skip this paragraph and go on to the next section. If so, here are some examples. Let's consider the Giver family. The Givers are William Giver, his wife Kathryn and their son Benjamin. If the only person we give the envelope number to is William, then only his name will be on the statement. If we give William and Kathryn the same number, the statement will show "William & Kathryn Giver." If all the members of our family have the same envelope number, the statement will show "William Giver & Family."

A COOL BREEZE ON A HOT SUMMER DAY

Sometimes families or individuals may come for a while and then, like a cool breeze on a hot summer day, suddenly they're gone. Unfortunately, it seems that too often users are a bit quick to just go and delete them. Before you delete them you might want to consider what the program does when you delete a person that has given.

In earlier versions of PowerChurch Plus (those prior to Version 7), the contributions would remain in the envelope number even after the person was deleted. So, if you gave the number to someone new, they would get credit for those prior gifts. To prevent this from happening, things were changed a bit in Version 7.

Now, if you delete the envelope number from a person's record (or if you delete the person) and they are the only one in their family that had that number, then all the contributions in that envelope will be moved into an internal envelope numbered 99999. Of course, if you remove the number from a Profile, but others in the family have that number, the money stays where it is. The reason money gets moved to envelope 99999 is so no one in the future will get credit for something that someone else gave in the past. This allows you to reuse numbers that were previously assigned without passing along the prior giving history.

Of course, all of this is fine and good unless the person you deleted comes back and requests a statement or they start attending again. If someone had an itchy Delete button finger, you've lost direct access to those contributions. Sure, the records are still in the Contribution module, but they're now in envelope 99999 instead of the envelope they were originally attributed to. Of course, you can get them back to where they used to be, but you would have to restore a backup that was made from before you deleted them. And, if you've deleted lots and lots of people, there are going to be so many contributions in envelope 99999 that you may never be able to get them all sorted out. (So, the moral of this story is to be gentle with the Delete button.)

WHO'S NEXT?

If you've worked much with envelope number assignment, you've probably already seen that you can have the program pick the next available envelope number for you.

But, if there has been lots of deletions from Membership, there may be some gaps in the envelope numbers assigned. Since I don't really like gaps (and I'm assuming you don't either), I thought I'd pass along this helpful hint.

In the File Menu, click on Preferences and then choose either the Profiles or the Contributions Setup screens. Under there, you'll see a line that says "last highest envelope number assigned." If you change that number back to 100 (or whatever number your envelopes begin at), the program will fill in the gaps for you.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

Well, I've talked enough about envelope number issues and so I want to switch gears for just a second.

When you add individuals to an existing family, the program will assign something called the "Directory Sequence" number.

If you have a family of three, the first individual you add will be Directory Sequence number 1 and the second person added will be number 2, etc. Whether you add the husband first and the wife second doesn't matter to the program. But, if you add the child first and then add the parents, this can cause the child and the first parent to appear as spouses on some reports. The same thing applies in a single parent household when you add the parent as Directory Sequence 1 and the child as 2.

So, to avoid confusion, you might want to use Directory Sequence 1 and 2 for parents and 3 and above for children. Of course, it's up to you, but I think doing it this way will make you very happy.


Created: 12/17/2000
Last updated: 07/25/2021