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Beginner Family Suite Track Workshops

Family Suite Overview (Beginner)
ParishSOFT Family Suite’s solutions have modern, intuitive interfaces that make them easy for everyone to use, from staff to parishioners.  Plus, they are packed with features specific to the needs of a Catholic organization.  While any of these products can be used on their own, they really shine as part of a fully integrated suite!  This workshop will highlight some of the key features and functionality offered within the ParishSOFT Family Suite modules.

Family Suite Tips & Tricks (Beginner)
Attend this session to learn tips & tricks from our knowledgeable staff on ways to more effectively leverage ParishSOFT Family Suite to increase your efficiency in doing your daily work.  You will learn how to save time on data entry, research, and reporting.  This is sure to be an information-packed session you won’t want to miss.

Getting the Data You Need from Family Suite (Beginner)
Explore the various ways you can use the power of ParishSOFT to get the data you need for your pastor, co-workers, volunteers, and parish groups.  Learn how export functions, quick reports, Intelligent Query (IQ), and workgroups can empower you to enhance your ministry.  Discover how tools from ParishSOFT can help you reach and address your members, and get the right information to the right people.

How to Effectively Manage Staff & Permissions in Family Suite (Beginner)
Learn how to grant the appropriate level of access to your staff and volunteers based on staff role and needs.  We will also explore some best practices for making sure you are maintaining an accurate staff list to ensure you are keeping your parishioners’ data secure.  Learn why understanding equals greater security for your organization.  This session is a must for all administrators!

Managing Mail Merge from Family Suite (Beginner)
Walk through the nuts and bolts of creating mail merge templates from ParishSOFT Family Suite.  In this workshop you will learn the various ways you can export information from the ParishSOFT Family Suite modules and use the export results to link to a MS Word merge document to create a mail merge template.  The tools you learn in this workshop can save you time and help you be more efficient when you need to communicate with many parishioners at once.

Ministry Management (Beginner)
Ministry Scheduler is for more than just generating schedules.  Learn how this tool can help you organize any service, special event or ministry and keep track of all your parishioner’s involvement in the life of your parish.  From liturgical volunteers to your annual festival, and everything in between; Ministry Scheduler supports effective, detailed management of the various ministries within the church!

My Own Church (Beginner)
Your ministries and communications rely on accurate parishioner information and tools that support full engagement in parish life.  ParishSOFT’s My Own Church is a secure parishioner portal that eases administration and improves the accuracy of your parishioner records while connecting members to places they interact most with the Church.  In this workshop learn more about the My Own Church (MOC) parishioner portal from the point of view of both a parishioner and an administrator. Become familiar with processes such as getting your parishioners to sign up, approving suspense activity and leveraging the information you receive to engage your parishioners in ministry and more.

Offering: The Process from Bank to Basket (Beginner)
Many churches have varying processes in place regarding the handling of contributions. What is the right process?  What risks are associated with the process currently in place?  This open discussion will focus on the many varying steps involved with accepting contributions, and the necessary controls to ensure financial security and the avoidance of risk throughout the entire process.  We’ll identify points of inefficiency and potential risk and discuss techniques to ensure security.

Offertory Management Best Practices (Beginner)
This workshop will focus on the best practices for offertory management from the receipt of the donation through the entry into the system to the reporting.  We will discuss tips to help you be more efficient and effective in your data entry process and how to build in good internal controls to your process to reduce risk and improve data accuracy.

ParishSOFT’s Next Generation of Online Giving (Beginner)

ParishSOFT Giving is our next generation of online giving software. During this workshop you can see how it integrates with the rest of your ParishSOFT Family Suite; saving you time and money. Learn about how much more parishioners are willing to give when it is made easy for them to do so. With features like Text to Give, Kiosk Giving, Online Event Registration and Payments; your parish can truly engage your parishioners and encourage them to give their time, talents, and treasures to serve so that they can be true stewards of God.

Quality Data That Works for You (Beginner) General Session 1.5 hours
ParishSOFT Family Suite contains a wealth of information.  Discover how ParishSOFT tools can help you reach and engage your members and get the right information to the right people.  Understanding export functions, quick reports, and workgroups will empower you to enhance your ministry.   Having good data standards can make your data more useful.  In this workshop we’ll show you how to leverage the powerful reporting features in ParishSOFT, as well as how to begin crafting data standards for your parish.  We want to remove some of the barriers that are preventing you from fully leveraging your data, so that you can discover what pieces of data are the most useful for engaging your parishioners and growing your parish.

Query Your Way to Better Ministry with IQ (Beginner)
Learn how to effectively use the ParishSOFT Intelligent Query (IQ) tool to better understand your parishioners and their engagement with your parish.  Build custom queries that can help you make better strategic decisions that support your mission.

Sacramental Recording & Reporting (Beginner)
In this workshop you will learn best practices for entering sacramental records and maintaining them for reporting purposes.  You will learn tips such as how to avoid entering duplicate matrimony records and how to manage sacraments for non-registered parishioners.  If you are responsible for the sacramental management at your parish this is a must attend workshop.

What’s New with ParishSOFT Family Suite (Beginner)
In this workshop we will explore some of the newer features in the ParishSOFT Family Suite.  We will review high-value features that may be new to you and discuss ParishSOFT’s strategy and priorities for planning and new development.

Intermediate Family Suite Track Workshops

Duplicate Records Management (Intermediate)
In this joint session the Diocese and ParishSOFT staff will provide information on the benefits of a single-family record throughout the system, the impact of duplicate records, best practices for avoiding duplicate records and the process to address existing duplicate records. This workshop will build on the quality data standards information provided in the first general session of the day.

Expand Your Reach with Parish IQ (Intermediate)
In this workshop you will learn ways to utilize the ParishSOFT Parish Intelligent Query (IQ) tool to mine your data to expand your ministry. We will share tips and tricks to minimize the time you spend manually compiling data. Come explore real life query examples with us in the areas of Family Directory and Religious Education. In addition to learning how to query more complex data, we will also explore ways to leverage that data outside the system to better understand and reach your parishioners. We will discuss some Excel functions that can be useful as you work to leverage the data you are capturing. For example, how do you add a leading zero or splitting out a field such as First and Last Name. You will also learn how to create some basic pivot tables that can help you combine one or more lists to get the data you need to target specific demographics in your parish for outreach and programming. Those that attend will receive a list of the queries covered during the presentation so that you can recreate them in your own database.

Family Suite Ask the Expert (Intermediate)
Our expert staff will be available to take questions from the audience about our Family Suite products.  This is your opportunity to ask those questions you may have but have not yet asked about the Family Suite products you use.  You will have the opportunity to submit your questions ahead of time during registration or ask them during the session.  Please note that questions related to specific user issues may not be able to be answered during this general session.

How to Maximize Your Outreach & Church Growth (Intermediate)
ParishSOFT Family Suite contains a wealth of information and data. Although there are many options available to gather, filter, sort, and report the data, which pieces of data are most useful for building the Church? This workshop will explore data mining options geared towards reaching new and ‘fringe’ participants, and how to successfully integrate them into the daily life of the parish.  During this session we will also explore the variety of communication tools ParishSOFT offers to help you more deeply engage your parishioners and grow your parish.

Implementing User-Friendly Standard Operating Procedures SOP (Intermediate)
Are you lacking standards for your ParishSOFT users?  Does the lack of centralized standards limit your ability to leverage your data effectively? Come join our workshop to learn how to create, train, and maintain an effective SOP.  We will explore the key elements of a SOP, best practices for training users on the SOP, and ideas for maintaining the SOP as policies and applications change. Leave this workshop with the tools you need to successfully implement data standards throughout your organization that will help you achieve greater data accuracy.

Leveraging Complex Features in IQ (Intermediate)
Learn how to leverage the ParishSOFT Intelligent Query (IQ) tool to better understand your parishioners and their engagement with your parish.  Our knowledgeable staff will demonstrate how to use more advanced features that can help you make better strategic decisions that support your mission.  During this workshop we will cover Subqueries, Aggregate Functions, using Query Tags to manage your queries, Group conditions, and using the results of a query in another query.  If you are already familiar with the basic functions of IQ and want to take your query building skills to the next level, this workshop is for you!

Mentoring to Advance God’s Kingdom: Building a Mentorship Program (Intermediate)
For lack of guidance a nation falls, but victory is won through many advisers. (NIV) Proverbs 11:14. Do your parishioners have someone to turn to when faced with life’s challenges and decisions that can bring believers closer to God? We all can benefit from someone else’s faith journey. Many of us have gifts and life experiences to share with others. Do you currently have a mentoring program that can help advance the Kingdom of God?

In this workshop, we will cover the benefits of having a mentoring program at your parish. Takeaways that you will receive include: How to start a program or take an existing program to the next level. Different forms and structures of a mentoring program. The benefits to individuals, members and the community. You will also leave with resources that will guide you on developing and maintain a mentoring program that is beneficial to your parish and those that are participating.

Online Event Registration & Payments: It’s Possible with ParishSOFT! (Intermediate)
Learn how to better utilize ParishSOFT Giving forms to allow your parishioners to register and pay for events online. Here you will see how to custom build online forms that allow parishioners to submit payments. These forms can be used to take an online census, allow parishioners to register and pay for religious education, and give your parishioners the opportunity to register and pay for events, such as summer camps, online — all while giving you access to the information needed in an easy to use format.

ParishCast: Powerful Group Communication Tool (Intermediate)
Learn more about one of our newer add-on products.  The ParishCast communication platform can be used to rapidly alert and notify members of your parish, religious education department, or parochial school.  Quickly and easily communicate via voice calls, text messages, email, push notifications to smart phones, social networks and more – all within moments!  We will also share some best practices for engaging your parish community in both emergency and non-emergency situations.

ParishSOFT Giving: Beyond the Basics (Intermediate)
ParishSOFT Giving provides predictable income, easy set up and ways to connect with your parishioners.  This session is designed for those already using ParishSOFT Giving and will take a closer look at Reporting, Virtual Terminal, Text Giving, and Forms functionality within ParishSOFT Giving.

Religious Education: Beyond the Basics (Intermediate)
Learn how to go beyond the basics and take advantage of all the tools ParishSOFT Religious Education has to offer. We’ll look at topics such as online registration, attendance tracking, and communication with parents and students.

Religious Education: Electronic Forms & Payments (Intermediate)
Learn how to leverage ParishSOFT Giving Forms feature to streamline your Religious Education payment process.  With ParishSOFT Forms you can allow your parishioners to register for Religious Education and submit payments all through the same interface.  We will demonstrate how you can custom build online forms that allow parishioners to submit payments when they register. In addition to Religious Education, these forms can be used to take an online census or pay for other events, such as summer camps or vacation bible school, all while giving you access to the information needed in an easy to use format.

The Truth Behind Increased Giving Campaigns  (Intermediate)
Although resources vary from parish to parish, the need for financial viability remains constant.  Whether funding short term projects, such as a building campaign, or desiring parishioners to amplify existing gifts long term, this workshop will focus on various initiatives to increase giving.  We will also discuss some of the common obstacles and pitfalls associated with such campaigns.

User Round Table Discussions (Intermediate) General Session
We will facilitate a set of user discussions during a round table session where ParishSOFT users can network with others in their same role or area to learn and share best practices and ideas.