TouchPoint Church Management System News

New SQL Recipe – User Roles Report

Karen — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 11:00:49 +0000

If you have ever wanted run a report for people in a specific Organization, or a Tag, or Search Builder results and see of all those that are TouchPoint users and see their roles, then you will be very happy about this new report.

This is one of those “Recipes” we’ve told you about before. That means that we wrote the SQL code for you and all you need to do is copy and paste it into your database. Of course this must be done by the System Admin user. However, once it is created and added to the blue Toolbar, any user with Edit role can run the report.

Sub-Group Filter for Recent Absents Report

Karen — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 13:47:53 +0000

This is a terrific new feature, especially for lay leaders. Before generating the Recent Absents Report for an organization, you can filter for a sub-group. Then the report will contain only those within that group with consecutive absences. This is so much easier than having to look through the entire class if you are a group leader and are responsible for just one group.

Remember, we also have a Recent Absents Report 2 for those of you that track individual attendance in your worship service. When you put the org ID# of your worship org in the Settings, you will get an extra link at the top of the Recent Absents report that takes you to the same type of report, but for the worship org. We blogged about this and another worship report back in 2014. Click here for that post. This new sub-group filter option will maintain that same filter when you move to the worship report.

Thank you to 2nd Presbyterian Church in Memphis for sponsoring this project!

Read more…about the Recent Absents Report

Read more…about the Recent Absents Report 2

PS Don’t assume your lay leaders subscribe to this blog… let them know about this new feature!

Replacement Code: FirstOrJoint

Karen — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 11:00:43 +0000

This new email replacement code can be used if you are emailing the Head of Household and would like the greeting to include the spouse’s name if the couple gives jointly. If the couple does not give jointly only the first name of the person in your list will be used.

EXAMPLE:

John and Mary Smith’s Contribution Statement Types are Joint. So, if you email John and use this email replacement code – {FirstOrJoint} – the greeting will be John and Mary.

George and Susan Jones’ Contribution Statement Types are Individual. So, using that same replacement code, the greeting will be just George or just Mary, depending on which one of them is in the list.

This is just the newest of many replacement codes that you can use in emails. Check them out!

Recurring Gift Notice – New Options

Karen — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 11:00:41 +0000

We recently made a change to how these notices are generated in order to give you more choices regarding the look and available content for this email. Previously, this notice was basically intended to let the donor know that his recurring gift had processed that morning and it displayed only the total amount of the gift that was processed.

Now, with this new change you can make this email look like the confirmation the donor receives after setting up or managing his recurring giving. By that, I mean that you can include replacement codes so the donor see the exact breakdown of his donation by fund.

These types of email notices are stored in Special Content > HTML Content on your database, and this specific notice is named RecurringGiftNotice. If your database already has this notice in Special Content, you can just edit it. Otherwise, you will create a new file.

Thank you to Redeemer Presbyterian in New York for sponsoring this project.

Read more…to see how to easily create or modify this notice.

Facebook Ads and your Online Registrations

Karen — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 21:04:48 +0000

Most churches nowadays have a Facebook page. Here is a great tip for making the most of Facebook when you have a special event coming up!

You can purchase a Facebook ad for a special event that has a registration and embed a pixel (that you get from Facebook) in your TouchPoint Online Registration. This lets you track how many people click on your ad, and even better, how many people actually go further and register for the event through that Facebook ad.

Our church just did this for our VBS registration. We reached several thousand people in our area with that ad, and we saw 78 people register via the ad. Those cost us only about 83 cents per person. That’s a fairly small price to pay when you consider that these could be people that otherwise might not have known about our VBS – which is where most children come to know Jesus.

I’m not trying to persuade you to use Facebook. I’m just saying that if you use it, you might want to take advantage of this TouchPoint feature (called a Confirmation Tracking Code) that pairs with Facebook.

The Party’s Over…

Karen — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 11:00:42 +0000

Whew! There is nothing like ‘VBS tired’. Whether you have 30, 300, or 3,000 in your Vacation Bible School, workers get tired…really tired. It is a bone-aching tired. However, it comes with a huge plus – knowledge that you had a chance to have a positive impact in the life of a child. Makes it all worth it, doesn’t it?

What’s next? VBS has come and gone. Now what? We have a few suggestions for you.

Followup – Check out this updated blog post with ideas for finding those you need to reach out to, and links to help articles to help you accomplish that. This is your best opportunity of the year to reach unchurched families. Don’t let it pass you by.
Express Gratitude – You have quite a few people to thank – parents for bringing their children (you might do that with ‘front-porch visits’ – see the blog post mentioned above), workers for their commitment to make that week happen, housekeeping staff for cleaning up after you all week, office staff for whatever support they gave you throughout the week. Be sure to thank them with an email, or cookies in the break room…something that lets them know their participation did not go unnoticed.
Clean up your data – Admin users, run the Duplicate Finder to get any duplicate records merged so you can minister effectively to the right people. Staff, once you’ve finished with the VBS orgs, drop everyone and make those orgs Inactive (your Admin can do that from the Org > Search page, just let him know when to do that for you). Remember – you can always find those that attended VBS by using Search Builder. See the blog post mentioned above. Children do not need to stay enrolled in VBS all year!
Rest – You probably don’t have long to do this, as some other event or program is probably just around the corner. But do take some time to get refreshed and energized so you do not get burnt out doing God’s work at your church. Read a new book; go to the zoo; have an old-fashioned picnic in the park with your spouse, your children or grandchildren…or just catch up on some sleep. Take care of yourself (and don’t neglect your own spiritual growth) so you can minister effectively to others.

Read more…in this updated blog post about effective VBS followup.

Best Practices-Managing User Accounts

Karen — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 20:16:13 +0000

Every church has a certain amount of turnover, whether it is staff members, seasonal interns, or even lay leaders. So, the questions become these:

What do you do as the System Admin when someone leaves their position?
What should you do as a staff user before a new user account can be created for your new hire?

We get questions about this (and more) from time to time, so we created a help article to offer some advice in this regard. We have a sample email you might want to use as a guide to create an email draft. Then you can send that additional email to new staff members (apart from the New User Welcome). You can give them basic information a staff member needs to know about TouchPoint, links to some help articles that pertain specifically to their jobs, and what ever you think they need to know.

The article outlines the information a staff member needs to provide to the Admin user when 1) you need a new user account created, or 2) when one of your staff members is leaving.

PS Speaking of new staff members…we are working toward creating a series of lessons for potential clients to receive when they get a TouchPoint trial database. We plan to make these lessons suitable for, and available to, your new staff members as well. Be patient, but be watching. It’s a work in progress.

Directories – New and Improved

Karen — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 16:19:48 +0000

We all know that Directory Assistance has changed dramatically through the years. Well, some of our directories (on the blue Toolbar) have changed, too. We did this in order to make these function better, look better, and, by rewriting them in Word, to give us the ability down the road (maybe later this summer) to create recipes for all of these. When we have recipes churches will be able to customize the directories.

Let’s talk about what is available on the blue Toolbar under Directories:

Compact Directory – This is the only one of the three that does not contain pictures, and it is the only one that has not yet been rewritten. Stay tuned for that.
Picture Directory – This directory uses the individual photos and will print 24 per page. Along with the names, it includes the person’s email address, birthdate (month/day), spouse’s name. and names of children in the family.
Family Picture Directory – This uses the family photos and can be run from anywhere you see the toolbar. However, it works best if you run it from Search Builder, where you can add the Condition Is Head of Household. This prints 12 per page and includes the names of the family members and the home phone number.

Thank you to First Evangelical Church, Memphis, TN, for sponsoring the Family Picture Directory!

Stay tuned! We have another directory coming shortly.

Read more…about other options on the blue Toolbar.

New Options for Editing “Campus”

Karen — Tue, 30 May 2017 11:00:04 +0000

The default requirement for editing the Campus selection on someone’s people record is for the user to have Access and Edit roles. However, we have just added a new user role with an accompanying Setting and another new Setting – all of which relate to which users can edit the Campus on a person’s record.

If you add this new role named EditCampus to your database and the Setting EnforceEditCampusRole = true, only a user with the role EditCampus can edit a person’s Campus.

If you add the Setting MyDataCanEditCampus = true a MyData user (and any other user) can edit his own Campus.

So, you have some options:

If you like the user roles as they are currently, do not do anything.
If you want users (My Data included) to be able to change the Campus on their own records, add the Setting MyDataCanEditCampus = true.
If you do not want all users with Edit role to be able to change the Campus on other people’s records, then add the user role EditCampus to your database and assign it to those few users that you want to be able perform this function. Then add the Setting EnforceEditCampusRole = true.
If you want people to edit their own Campus settings and you want to limit which staff can edit someone else’s Campus settings, then add both the new Role and both Settings.

Thank you to Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City for sponsoring these projects.

New Role for Finance Data Entry

Karen — Thu, 25 May 2017 11:00:41 +0000

Thanks to our friends at Rutgers Community Christian Church in New Jersey who sponsored this project, we now have a new user role available. It is named FinanceDataEntry and in order to use it, your System Admin must add it to your database in the Lookup Codes.

PURPOSE:
The reason for creating this role is to allow for a someone to perform the duties of creating bundles and posting individual contributions, but without having other Finance permissions. This user cannot view bundles that are closed and he cannot view an individual’s contributions other than those he is currently posting.

This is a great way for you to have a separation of duties in the finance office without giving extra staff members or volunteers access to sensitive financial information. Thank you again RCCC!

New Optional Setting Affecting My Data Users

Karen — Tue, 23 May 2017 11:30:58 +0000

We have several clients that use TouchPoint for a ministry which is not a church per se. These would be considered para-church organizations. Therefore, there is no need for the membership information on the Profile tab of the people record and it might be confusing for My Data users. So, we have added a new option that allows you to prevent a My Data user from even seeing that tab.

When this Setting – HideMemberStatusFromMyData – is added to the database and set as true, My Data users will not see the Profile tab. This is the tab where we store membership information,

Thank you to Community Impact for sponsoring this project.

Master Pager List Report – SQL Recipe

Karen — Thu, 18 May 2017 11:30:37 +0000

You don’t use pagers? Keep reading, as you may have other uses for this new SQL recipe that uses Extra Values.

This script was created for and sponsored by our friends at Salem Alliance Church in Oregon to provide a list of children enrolled in the nursery, name of the child’s mother, her Bible Study leader and the pager number. Both the leader’s name and the pager number are Extra Values on the mother’s record.

You can use this for any Extra Values that are on the record of a child’s mother by just changing the EV names in the script.

Thank you Salem Alliance for sponsoring this report!

All Digit Option for Check-In Security Labels

Karen — Tue, 16 May 2017 11:00:21 +0000

Some of you have asked about having a Check-In Security Label that prints only digits, instead of the default that is a 3-character code with at least one number and at least one letter. Now you have that option!

Add the Setting UseFourDigitCodeForCheckin equals true to your database and the codes will then be all numbers and will be 4 digits long. This will affect all Security Labels for Check-In whether you use the TouchPoint Mobile Check-In version or the standard TouchPoint PC Check-In.

This is great for those churches using a messaging system that allows only numbers when you want to display a message on-screen for a parent during a church service.

Replacement Code for Drop from Org

Karen — Tue, 09 May 2017 11:30:33 +0000

Thank you to our friends at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York for sponsoring this new email replacement code. The code can be placed in an email to an individual, a Tag, an organization, or Search Builder results. The code itself has the org ID# in it, so you do not have to use it only when emailing from an organization. When someone clicks on the link he will be dropped from the organization indicated.

Use Case 1: Send an email to everyone enrolled in a newsletter organization and insert this code so people can very easily remove themselves from the org, instead of using the unsubscribe link.

Use Case 2: If people have signed up for a work day and you want to remind the members about it. You can insert this code and ask them to please click the link to drop themselves from the org if they will be unable to participate.

You are creative people! I’m sure you will find other use cases for this new code. Thank you again, Redeemer, for sponsoring this. Remember, every new feature goes into the open source project so all TouchPoint churches will benefit.

By the way, this is not the same format as our normal email replacement codes, so you will need to read more about this so you will know the correct form.

Attendance Comparison for a Division

Karen — Mon, 08 May 2017 11:30:47 +0000

TouchPoint has a recipe for a sweet SQL script that will let you look at one or more Divisions and compare the average attendance in each organization with the previous 365 days. It lists the number of people present for each period (current and previous 365 days), the number of meetings for each period, and then the average attendance for each period.

Here’s a sample report showing just a few organizations in the same Division.

If this is something you are interested in keep reading.

This is not a script that I would add to the menu. But that’s just my opinion. The reason is that if you have a lot of Divisions you would probably be better off declaring(in the script) the specific Division(s) you need just before running the report each time. That’s very easy to do and will always give the minister what he’s expecting.

For example: the Young Married minister would like to see the report for all 3 of his Divisions, the Senior Adult minister just needs to see his 1 Division, and other ministries only are interested in their own Divisions. I would rather run the report for each ministry as needed, changing the Division each time, than to create a monster report including all of our Life Group Divisions. That would be more than 350 Organizations, each having one line in the report.

Like all our SQL & Python scripts, we have the code in the help article for your System Admin to copy and paste into your database.

Deceased This Month Report-SQL Recipe

Karen — Thu, 04 May 2017 11:30:20 +0000

This report is not just showing those that have passed away during the current month and year. It is a report that finds everyone in your database that has a deceased date with the current month – for all years. It it for a specific type of ministry.

The purpose is to give you a list of those whose deceased anniversary is in the current month, so that you can reach out to any surviving family members to let them know you are praying for them. The report itself has the deceased person’s name and a link to the people record (so you can find their family members) as well as the deceased date month/day/year. It sorts by the most recent date. So, it will include any people that have passed away in the actual current month/year.

This may not be something that every church will be able to use, but we know some churches really try to reach out to those surviving spouses or children somewhere around the first anniversary date of their loved one’s passing.

If you are interested in this report, just follow the instructions in the help article. We have everything you need – just copy and paste. As with all SQL and Python scripts, these must be added to your database by someone with the Admin user role at your church.

New Support System

Karen — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 23:19:51 +0000

If you have submitted a Support Request in the few weeks you will have noticed that our replies have a different look. That’s because we were testing a different support software. Well, after trying it for a few weeks we decided to go with yet a different product. That means that you will see an even different look. Same service; slightly different look.

Why?
We value our clients and really try hard to provide outstanding service. That’s why we are doing this – so we can keep providing excellent support as we grow our family of churches. As TouchPoint grows, our support system needed to grow as well.

As always, let us know when you need something – and please use the Help? icon in your database when sending requests of any kind.

Thank you for your patience as we go through these changes.

Check-In Activity Chart

Karen — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 11:30:49 +0000

A picture is worth a thousand words, so a chart is probably worth quite a few as well. This chart (really a line graph) shows how many people checked-in (using TouchPoint Check-In) during 20-minute segments on a Sunday morning. You might be surprised at how many people are checking in during a very short period of time.

Take a look at this chart. You can see very clearly when our check-in kiosks are the busiest.

Why would you want to see this? One reason is to know when you will need to most volunteers. Also, this clearly shows you what time of the morning you should probably observe what’s going on, in order to determine if things are going smoothly. You might find that you need another check-in station.

How can you add this to your database? It’s very simple. Take a look at the help article and follow the instructions. We have all the code right there for you to copy and paste into a Python Script in your database.

Giving Percent Report for Organizations

Karen — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:30:35 +0000

The OrgGiving report is a SQL script for which we have a recipe in our documentation. It is designed to give your finance leadership (it is locked down to only Finance users) an overall view of what percent of members in specific groups of organizations, such as adult Life Groups, are givers to the church. This is also a nice report to use for a Division containing orgs that teach financial planning, such as Financial Peace University.

You determine which Division(s) to include and you determine the criteria for a Status Flag to use in the script to denote givers. For example: Those who have given more than $1000.00 in the past 365 days.

Here’s a sample:

This is very simple to create in your database – just follow the recipe!

Family Events and Online Registration

Karen — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 11:30:56 +0000

As we get closer to spring and summer, you will probably be planning family outings for your church. If so, you will probably use an online registration to get everyone registered and collect the fees. And, you may want to collect a Family Deposit fairly early so you can better secure the facilities you will need.

In that case, TouchPoint has just what you need – an option to collect only a family deposit (the same amount per family), and still get everyone in the family registered early so you will know how many people for which to plan.

Most families plan ahead for events that have fees, especially families with several children. By offering a registration for which the family initially pays only a family deposit is really a nice feature.

Normally, a Deposit for an online registration is on a per person basis. You have a set per person Fee, you allow for a Deposit, and you might even have other fees based on extra options the person selects during the registration. But for a Family Campout or another type of family event, you really just need the same deposit regardless of how many family members are planning to attend. That’s when the Family Deposit feature comes into play. It allows someone to register both adults and all 5 children in the family and pay the same deposit as a family with only 1 child. They will pay the full amount per person later using a paylink, but they do not have to do it at the time they register.