Managing Church Connect Users
Your Connect app can be used as a stand-alone church website, but there's additional functionality available when church members or donors create a profile and sign in to your page.
A person who has signed in can view and edit their profile (and the profiles of family members), view upcoming public events, their giving history, and more.
If you use Online Giving, donors who have signed in will be able to set up recurring gifts, securely store cards for future use, give via ACH (e-checks) or SMS (text giving). When a donor signs in before giving, ChurchTrac automatically updates your Giving screen, assigning the contribution to the correct person in your database.
Creating a Connect Account
When a person first visits your Connect or Online Giving page, they'll have the option to create an account.
They will be asked to provide their email address to get started. If the person's email address is already stored in a profile on your People screen, they will be asked to validate their identity by emailing them a temporary passcode. This person will immediately be able to view and edit their profile and giving history. ChurchTrac automatically matches the registrant to the person on your People screen with the same email address.
If the email doesn't match
If the person provides an email address that does not match an email on your People screen, we will prompt the person to "register" before allowing them to log in. They will provide their name, address, and phone number (along with their email).
Matching Registrants
Once the registrant completes and submits the form, they will automatically be sent a temporary passcode to validate their identity. Since the email this person provided does not match any records on your People screen, you'll need to match them. You can do this from the People screen, or in the "Connect Users" tab in the Church Connect screen.
For example, when there's an unmatched registrant, the People screen will prompt you with an alert, like this:
Selecting this alert will display a dialog with all the registrants that must be matched. Select the "Match" button for each registrant in the list:
If the name provided by the registrant is a match or close match to a name that already exists in your database, you'll be able to match the registrant to that person.
If the registrant is new, or there is no matching or similar name already in your database, you can add this name to the People screen.
After you manually match the registrant, or create a new People screen profile for the registrant, they will be able to view and edit their profile and view their own giving history.
Notify a User When a Profile Changes
Your members can log into their Church Connect account and make changes to their profile, which will reflect on their profile in your database. You can select a user to be notified when a member makes changes. Watch our Pro Tip video on how to notify a user when a profile is updated.