ChurchTrac News and Tips

Feb 1 Trac Tip – Personalize ChurchTrac to Fit Your Church One of the great things about ChurchTrac is that along with all of the preset fields and field entries, you can also create your own custom fields and entries to fit the unique needs of your church or ministry.  Need to create a new field to track baptism or confirmation dates? You can do that.  Need to add a new selection option for Membership Status? You can do that. ChurchTrac desktop users: To learn how to create a new User-Defined Field, click on this link User-Defined Fields. To add or edit selection options on an existing field on the People Screen, simply double-click on any blue field and a window will open allowing you to add, edit or delete the selection box options. ChurchTrac Online users: To learn how to create a new User Defined Field, click on this link Online User-Defined Fields. To add or edit selection options on an existing field on the People Screen, click the Edit box to enter the editing mode. Then click on any blue field and a window will open allowing you to add, edit or delete the selection box options. Jan 16 Trac Tip – Accessing Your Data On the Go! We are definitely a mobile society — always on the go. And ChurchTrac Software offers two ways for you to take your ChurchTrac data with you. Data Sharing – If you are a ChurchTrac desktop user, we offer a data sharing plan which allows you to download ChurchTrac on multiple computers — church, home and even a laptop — and then synchronize the information among the computers. You will then have your up-to-date information accessible on all of your computers. Sign up for a FREE 30 Day Trial. Online Access – ChurchTrac Online allows you to access your information from any internet-accessible device. No downloads required. No synchronizing. Just access your account online, and you have your latest ChurchTrac data at your fingertips. Sign up for a FREE 30 Day Trial. Jan 14 Tips on Printing Contribution Statements January is here and that means it is time for printing your 2012 Contribution Statements for your donors’ tax records.  I want to start by answering some FAQs about these end of year statements. Why don’t some of the contributions show up on my Contribution Reports? The Contributor must be assigned to a family.  If not, their contributions will not show up on a Contributions Statement.  To check this, go to the People Screen and click on the person’s name.  Under the “General Information Tab” you will need to click on the “Assign to Family” field and select a family to assign them to or click the button at the bottom of the screen that says “Click here to automatically create a new family for this individual.”  OR On the Contributions screen, the “tax deductible” box must be checked next to the entry in order for it to appear on the Contributions Statement. Here are a few other questions we have answered in the past.  Click on the link to find the answer. How do I merge family members to print just one Contribution statement per family? (ChurchTrac for Desktop only) How do I print just one Contribution statement without having to print them all? A few other tips: Make sure you have the correct date range 1/1/2012 to 12/31/2012 set before you print your Contribution statements. You do not have to erase your contributions or any other records from ChurchTrac to prepare for the next year.  When you want to view or print a report, simply change the date range to reflect the year or date range you want to track.  That way you can look at your 2013 Contribution records, Attendance records, etc. without losing your prior year’s history. For additional help check out our knowledgebase article on Using the Contributions Screen (ChurchTrac for Desktop only). Jan 11 New Easier to Use Add Name Screen! Are you seeing a pattern? ChurchTrac 9 is all about making our already great church management software even easier to use. Easier to use voice messaging, easier to use name filter, and an easier to use add name screen. Now when you Add a New Name to your church database from the People Screen or the Contributions Screen, a window opens allowing you to enter the new name, spouse’s name and as much family information as you would like. This window saves you from having to go back to the People Screen to add the address, phone number, etc. It also allows you to set up the new or existing family name. You can do it all in one step. Click here to learn more about Adding New Names. Jan 9 Trac Tip – Easier to Use Voice Messaging Have you shied away from using ChurchTrac’s voice messaging feature because it seemed to complicated? Well, ChurchTrac 9 has a new easy-to-use voice messaging option. No more automated voices or figuring out how to record your own message on your computer. In ChurchTrac 9, you record your outgoing message directly into the phone. On the Messaging screen, simply click the “Send a recorded voice message” button and enter “Your Recording Number.” Your recording number is the number that ChurchTrac will call you at to prompt you to record your voice message. When you click “Deliver Message Now,” ChurchTrac will call prompting you to record your message into the phone. Once you have approved the message, ChurchTrac will send the message to the numbers you have selected. You must purchase messaging credits (for as little as 7 cents each) before sending voice messages. Each credit will send one 60-second voice message. Click here to learn more about how easy sending voice messages can be. Jan 3 Trac Tip – Smart Lists Check out this new feature in both ChurchTrac 9 and ChurchTrac Online – Smart Lists! The new Smart List feature replaces the old Filter/Search feature, providing a faster and easier way to create a list of names meeting your specific search criteria. When you create a Smart List, the list of names will dynamically update itself as new names meet your criteria. For example, if you create a Senior Adult list with the criteria of a certain age, as new people are added in your database that fall in that age category or as existing people age into that category, their names will automatically be included in that Smart List. Each list is automatically saved and available for quick access on the People screen, saving you from having to search each time you need to specific list or group of names. Click here for information on Smart Lists for ChurchTrac 9. Click here for more information on Smart Lists for ChurchTrac Online.   Jan 2 ChurchTrac 9 Now Available We are excited to introduce the release of ChurchTrac 9 for Windows.  This new version has several new features and is even easier to use than ChurchTrac 8. If you have an active unlock code for ChurchTrac 8, you can upgrade to the new version for FREE by simply installing the latest program update. If your ChurchTrac 8* unlock code has expired, you can renew your code for $39.99 and get the ChurchTrac 9 upgrade, as well as 12 months of updates and online support for free. Click here to learn more about the new features in ChurchTrac 9. *We recommend that you upgrade to ChurchTrac 9, as we will only be able to offer limited support for the older version. Oct 17 Trac Tip – Even Small Churches Can Automate Their Attendance Check In! Spending too much time manually entering your attendance numbers from a stack of roll sheets? ChurchTrac’s Barcode Check-In and Child Security screen allows you to enter attendance data one time — directly into your computer.  Some larger churches may use this feature with multiple computer check-in stations, barcode scanners, and printers to print the Child Security and Parent Pick-Up Tags. See the Barcode Check-In and Child Security knowledgebase article for a full explanation of the feature. But you don’t have to have a large set up to use the feature and simplify your attendance tracking.  A simple laptop with ChurchTrac installed, and you can do the same thing. Set up the laptop at a Welcome station or other centralized check-in area. Have families stop by the check-in area, and mark their attendance on the Barcode Check-In and Child Security screen as they enter. You do not need a barcode scanner, you can simply check the box by their names on the computer screen. You can also add guests and new member information directly from this screen, without filling out visitor cards. So don’t think that just because you are small and don’t have lots of resources, that automated check in is not an option for your church.  It can actually save your staff and volunteers time and money (printing weekly roll sheets and entering attendance data) by using this method.  And as you grow, you can choose to add check-in stations, connect a printer and print Child Security and Parent Pick-Up Tags, or even invest in a barcode scanner. This feature can be as simple or as complex as your church wants it to be. Oct 4 Questions about Budgeting and Accounting for ChurchTrac Online Many of you have asked about Budgeting and Accounting features for ChurchTrac Online. In fact, this one thing has been requested more than anything else. Because of this, I wanted to take a moment and give you some background information on why this is not included yet, and when you can expect to see it added. We could very easily throw together some poorly thought-out screens and say, “Look, now we have accounting!” Believe it or not, programming is easy. Creating something that is both functional, easy-to-use, and that looks good (yeah, that’s important too), well, something on that scale takes quite a bit more effort and planning. And this is why we haven’t included Accounting features yet. When we do, it will be done right. As a pastor and a programmer, I think I have some unique insight into creating software that can be useful to churches. This is one of the big reasons why (in my opinion) ChurchTrac is a step above most of the other options out there. However, one thing I am not is an accountant. Because of this, I’ve hired an accountant to help me with the design process. So, how long will this take? I’d love to tell you that Accounting features will be added before the end of the year. That may be possible and we’ll certainly try to make this a reality. However, it may not be available until spring of next year. Also, because of the extra expense that we will incur with both developing and supporting the Accounting features, we will not be able to provide it to you free of charge. However, in keeping with ChurchTrac tradition, we will price it as reasonably as possible. If you have questions or suggestions relating to the Accounting features, please feel free to submit them by clicking on the Feedback link after logging in to ChurchTrac Online. Byron Oct 1 Great Feedback from ChurchTrac Online! We are getting lots of good feedback from ChurchTrac Online. We are so glad so many of you are checking out our new online version. If you do have a question or a suggestion, please click on the “Feedback” button at the top of any of the ChurchTrac Online screens. This will ensure that your information will go directly to our developer for him to respond or consider as the web based version continues to evolve. If you haven’t gotten to try our new online church software, it’s not too late to get in on the free testing period. Click here to sign up: ChurchTrac Online.