As I reflect on the coming of Christ during this Advent season, I am reminded of God's great promises and blessings to His people. What a privilege for us at ParishSOFT to be able to combine our careers with service to God and His Church! Thank you for your support and encouragement in 2007.

This parish e-newsletter is designed to help you prepare for year-end. Plus, we provide a summary of our new parish software update. The update is packed with new features requested by you, our users, as well as many improvements to make our software even easier and more useful.

You have been a great blessing to us in our work at ParishSOFT. We now have over 3,000 parishes using our software, and our software and web solutions have become a vital part of parish operations. We have relied on the advice and feedback from hundreds of users of our software, and we are grateful for each one of you.

I'd like to commend the outstanding staff of ParishSOFT. Because of continuing growth in ParishSOFT, we have added new technical support representatives, software developers, and sales and marketing staff. We focus on recruiting to identify great prospects—people who have a servant's heart (care about our users and each other), talent, and passion about their work. As a result, ParishSOFT is filled with great people whom I love to work with every day.

May God bless you, your work, and your loved ones, especially during this Advent season!

Year-end processing can be a breeze with our popular Tips & Tricks Refresher Course and End-of-Year-End Essentials Courses.

Each course is a fast-paced, 90-minute hands-on session led by a certified instructor. Topics covered will help parishes take the stress out of year-end processing and manage more efficiently all year long.

Classes are expected to fill quickly, so register today at www.parishsoft.com/training to get your first choice of available December and January teletraining dates.

• End-of-Year Essentials Course: 90 minutes $75
• Tips & Tricks Refresher Course: 90 minutes $75

Due to the fast pace of this course, prerequisites apply (see registration info on www.parishsoft.com/training for details).

Our development team is currently putting the final touches on our fall software release, which is packed with new features suggested by our users and AIM Fall Focus Group members. Look for this release to be available before Christmas. Update instructions will be available soon in the v3.6.20 Update Guides for Parishes on www.parishsoft.com/support, under the User Guides and Update Guides links.

— FAMILY DIRECTORY MODULE —

One-Step Envelope Export/Send
You can now create an envelope data export file and attach it to an email for Our Sunday Visitor or other envelope provider in one step using the Export Envelope File utility. This new feature is available from the Utilities menu when you click the Export Envelope File menu option. Envelope data are exported and attached automatically to the email. Simply populate the email address and send.

New Formal/Informal Name Fields
The Family Information screen now has fields for Informal Name, Formal Salutation, and Informal Salutation. Use these options to tailor your Mail Merge communications, email, reports, and labels with titles and names appropriate for your formal and information communications to the family. Populate these as you like or click the Auto Fill button to populate them using the system defaults.

Set Display & Report Preferences for Name Fields
The new Preferences screen is available from the About > ParishSOFT System Info button. Use the settings on this screen to change the default display of the mailing name type. Certain reports will also reflect this preference setting. Your Family Directory User Guide, v3.6.20, will document which specific reports are affected.

Auto Fill Name Fields
Auto Fill is available from individual family records (to automatically populate the new formal/informal name fields for the selected family) and from the Preferences screen (to automatically populate name fields in the entire database). If you run a report that is affected by a new preferences setting, the system will notify you if your database has records that have no data in the field being used to populate the report. You will then have the opportunity to run the Auto Fill on the database before creating your report.

Member Envelopes & Offering Tab Now in Member Records
The Offering tab interfaces with ParishSOFT's Offering & Pledges Module and gives you a place to assign individual Member Envelope #s and view a member's contribution history via the Giving History button. As with the family Giving History, users must have permission to View Giving History to access these records from the Family Directory Module.

— SACRAMENTAL DETAILS —

Matrimony History in Sacramental Details
ParishSOFT lets you track history for the sacrament of Matrimony. Historical records are added the same way you add current Matrimony records, and all current and prior marriages are stored as a part of the member's permanent sacrament records. Matrimony records can be updated using the standard ParishSOFT edit functions.

Faster Matrimony Data Entry
The Matrimony functionality within Sacramental Details has been modified to make data entry faster than in prior versions.

— OFFERING & PLEDGES MODULE —

Multiple Pledges Allowed
Use this procedure to create multiple pledges for a given combination of family and fund or member and fund. Just select the fund and the family or member name in your Membership Pledge Records screen, and click the new Add Additional Pledge button. Populate the pledge details as usual and save.

Choose Pledge when Posting Contribution for Multi-Pledge Family/Member
When a family or member has multiple pledges for the selected fund, and you are posting contributions to that fund, you must choose the pledge to which the contribution should be applied.

Post by Member
The family list in the Contribution Postings screen now includes individual line items for the entire family and for each individual family member. Members are grouped within the list by family last name. To post a payment from a specific family member, just select the member's name from the list.

New Fund Manager
The new fund manager, which is available to users who have Parish Administrator privileges, offers better controls over the fund details from the Fund Add and Fund Edit screens. To enter the fund edit mode, just select the fund name, and click the Edit button. As you update the information in the Fund Details, the field names will change from black to red text to alert administrators to the changes that are ready to be saved.

Enforce Pledge Requirement
The new fund manager includes a checkbox called Enforce Pledge Requirement. Parish Administrators can check this box from either the Fund Add or Fund Edit screens to designate this fund as pledge-based and require all contributions to be posted to a pledge. No contributions may be posted a to pledge-required fund without a pledge.

New Check # Field
In addition to the Memo field, the Contribution Postings screen now has Check# field, so that you can store both a check number and any special payment memo information for a posting.

Added Security for Contributions and Banking Information
Giving history records for families and members are now protected by login privileges that your Parish Administrators control. Only users who have the View Giving History privilege assigned to their logins can view giving histories. Family Banking Information is available only to those users who have the Edit Bank Accounts privileges assigned to their logins. In addition, family and parish banking information and credit card data are encrypted within the database using strict security protocols.

New Posting Preferences & Auto-Populate Amount
When posting a contribution for a selected family, their last contribution amount will automatically populate the Amount($) field on the Contribution Postings screen. You can disable the automatic contribution amount by choosing your Preferences menu. Click on the Default to last contribution amount for the selected family menu option to deselect it.

New 5-Year Projection Report
This report creates a 5-year revenue projection for a selected fund. Projection amounts are provided by family/by period, and totals are listed for each period. To run this report, click ParishSOFT Reports > Pledge Reports Menu.

IRS Disclaimer on Contribution Statements
Periodic Contribution Statements now include a checkbox that lets you Include IRS Disclaimer in Footer. When checked, the text "No goods or services were provided by the church or its organizations in return for these contributions" will display in the footer of the statement.

— RELIGIOUS EDUCATION WITH TUITION —

Tuition statements have been updated so that the system will generate statements only for those families that have a remaining balance.

— FOR SYNCHRONIZING PARISHES —

Workgroups Synchronize Improved
All Family Workflow groups that you create in your synchronizing parish database now synchronize properly up to the diocese.

New Data Fields Stored with Diocesan AIM Data
The envelope numbers for families and members, Family Group, and several other fields that were previously not synchronized to the diocese will now be synchronized into new AIM data tables that will store these family/member records for the parish of registration and for any other parish that might have a record for the family or member. Although these records are not viewable from the ParishSOFT application interfaces that your diocesan staff members use to manage their records, this change provides better diocesan reporting for families that are involved in multiple parishes (e.g., registered in one parish but attending religious education programs in another).

— DUPLICATE CHECKER —

New Duplicate Checker Search Filter
You can now use the sDiocesanID number with your other search criteria in Duplicate Checker. This update gives you another way to detect potential duplicate records in your database. The sDiocesanID, however, does not appear on reports.

Well, there's really no need to check it twice. Just be sure to do the following things before you run your end-of-year statements. These simple steps help to ensure that your statements are as accurate as possible, and that they're delivered to the right place.

1. Update Snowbird Addresses. From your Family Directory, click the Utilities menu > Update Snowbird....
2. Audit Family Names and Addresses to find and fix blank fields:
1. Click Reports > ParishSOFT Reports > Census Menu > Family Filtering and Sorting.
2. Set the Registered and Envelopes filters to Both.
3. Click Show Results.
4. Click the Mailing Name column, and then click Sort Ascending A-Z button to sort records alphabetically. You must use your Family Directory (NOT the query view) to correct any blank Mailing Name records. Repeat this step for the Address_1 and ZIP columns.
3. Print Populated Registration Forms to Send with End-of-Year Statements. Click ParishSOFT Reports > Census Menu > Other Reports > Family Registration Forms. Ask your families to review their information and return any updates to the parish office.
4. Audit Funds to ensure that fund names and tax-deductible status settings are accurate. Parish Administrators can update any fund details as needed. From the Offering & Pledges Module—click Add/Edit/Delete Funds, select the fund, and click Edit.
5. Post Contributions for the Previous Year. Any postings that should appear on 2007 tax statements must be posted using a 2007 calendar date before you prepare end-of-year statements.

Changes for this tax year affect you and your parish families!

Families now need Detailed (not Summarized) end of year statements in order to claim their tax-deductible parish contributions. ParishSOFT provides this level of detail in the Detail Statement option available from your Periodic Contribution Statements screen. To create your own Detail Statement, choose ParishSOFT Reports > Contribution Reports > EOY Contrib Statement for Families.

Version 3.6.20 and later users will also have a checkbox that lets them add the phrase "No goods or services were provided by the church or its organizations in return for these contributions" to the footer of the statement.

Access your ParishSOFT Software 24/7, any time, from any location, with ParishSOFT Remote Solutions, powered by Right Networks.

With Remote Solutions, your programs will operate just as if you were sitting at your desk at work. The only difference is that your calculations and data run on our secure servers instead of yours. So all you have to do is log on and go to work, and leave the backups, hardware and software maintenance, and updates to us. For more information, visit www.parishsoft.com.