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User Manual Version 2

1. H Read scan data Import Attendance Close From this screen choose the service type for which you want to import then select your scanner Currently only the Symbol CS 2000 is supported Select the COM port that your scanner cradle is connected to Also enter the date of the service as well as the time if you are interested in tracking the time You may leave the time blank Next hit the Read scan data button to read the scanner You should see the attendance data listed in the window If you do not see any attendance data then either the scanner is empty or the scanner is not connected correctly to your computer Make sure the COM port you chose is the correct one After the attendance data appears hit Import Attendance to import that data into Excellerate You should now see church attendance records in the member s edit screen and should be able to use views and reports to analyze the information 143 Appendix Appendix Browse Columns The column arrangements for the browse screens in the different modules are actually stored in ini files in the program directory and can be edited and copied just like any other file Each entry in the file contains the fieldname the column title and the width of the column You can actually display any field contained in the table for the module you are viewing The default column layouts are stored in the same type of file but named new instead of ini
2. You may also Preview a report before printing it by using the Preview button Saving Reports From the report preview screen you can save the contents of a report to a text file for use in another program Choose the save button select Text files in the Save as type field then type the name of the file to save the report to Important You must type the TXT extension on your filename when saving reports to a file example C MEMBERS TXT 99 Reporting Report Styles Another valuable feature of Excellerate s reporting is the ability to select different styles for many of the reports This allows you to print in a variety of formats from labels to lists to letters For example in the Member Lists Labels report you can choose from the following styles Member List Ea Report Title Member Information Curent View Cell Leaders for District 1 C Curent Membe Cindgy bed Exclude thisMailCode Report Member Family fEachMember ssi Report Styles New Name_Phone Labels_Avery_5160 Modify Delete Web Print Preview Change Selection Cancel These styles can be completely modified by the user to meet their needs You can modify an existing style and save it as a new style You can also download new styles from our web site www msdweb com See the appendix for instructions on creating and modifying report styles 100 Reporting Member Reports
3. ccccecceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeettaees 68 Updating Cell Meeting Totale 70 Example of a Typical Cell Week 72 Chapter 6 Classes sic sts sist Siete tins ets Sh wees ete iib 73 Chapter 7 Organizations cccccccecesseeeneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeeeeeeeeeseeeeeaeeeeeaeeeseeeeeaeeeeennes 77 Chapter 8 Church Attendance ccsscccsssssessnsnecssseeeseeeaaeeeeaaneeeaseeeseneees 79 Chapter 9 Contributions 33400650540 Aine Sekai An aia 81 Contribution Security eur ae aber atts eaten al beled 82 Contribution Ty EE 82 Contribution ACCOUNS i 2 c ieee eet ieee Md in iene ei ie aaa 82 Contribution Recordsissa acetates ete Ben Hines ei 83 SE EE EH 84 Entering Contributions Batch Processing cecceceeceeeeeeecenceeeeceeeseeeessees 85 EOOSO CaS EE 88 Updating Bathe Sarie cade desde aaa eee ee ee ee 89 Re verse Updating Batches cides cdsnticedaccsaticatacatecatedactcaancadnendteaeatadecadeencacadecadeen 89 Viewing Editing Member Contributions 89 End of Period Processing aiaia a a cteadedatig se sagesddaavntaets 90 Exporting Reef dee 90 Resetting Contribution Tote 91 Removing Old Contributions 91 Removing Old LOCKS E 91 Chapter 10 Views cis icieciteceeete ce iaiatedi cet KAES SEENEN AE 93 What are ENEE ites eel te ce dee 93 Selecting EE 94 Creating a New View deed Ee 94 ENG ASV EE 96 Importing Exporting and Downloading Views from the Web 97 AGVANCEd EE 97 Chapter 112 Reporting s4c0e40cesncsancaancaanceadG
4. Phillips Rushing Taylor Members Who Missed Cell Meetings The Members Who Missed Cell Meetings report allows you to list those members who have missed a certain number of consecutive cell meetings This is a tool to quickly spot members to follow up on Missing Cell Report List The Missing Cell Report List provides a list of cells who have not yet turned in their cell leader report form These are the forms that are used to report the attendance in your cells This report is a handy way to follow up with these leaders Cell Tree Diagram See Cell Tree Diagram in the chapter on Cells Cell Growth Graph See Cell Growth Graph in the chapter on Cells 107 Reporting Class Reports Class List Report The Class List Report is a generic report for your classes sessions and attendance This report uses different styles to produce the information you need Again you can modify these styles to show different items in the report Class Members Report The Class Members Report allows you to report on members who have either already taken a class or are scheduled to take a class This report can be used to print out a roster to record attendance The option in this report allow you to print for your current class view or a specific class and which sessions to report You may also specify a date range for reporting on previous attendance Organization Reports Organizations List Report The Organizations List Rep
5. C e mi rj E f uneer of members reported x po sch alba H hs The Text toolbar is used to define the text and how it appears on a your report You can choose the following options Font size bold italic and underline Justification Left Center Right Text color Background color Framing around the text Auto size the text to the length of the particular value Choose a data field or expression or text to appear View or change the exact x y width and height of the item 147 ppendix The Layout button is used to select the paper size orientation columns and other layout options Report Settings SSE 148 Appendix To insert text shapes or data fields into your report first choose a band that they will be placed into Then use the abi button and click in the band where you want the item to appear Now using the text toolbar you can type in the text to appear Or you can use the zl expression builder button to choose an expression or data field Field Editor OF x Field Value Query Lastname Enter text an expression or a database field Expressions Table AVERAGE Io COPY s start length COUNT Master This screen lists the expressions as well as the fields that are available for you to use The table called Query1 is the table returned from your SQL statement when you selected yo
6. lt FORM ACTION http www yourwebsite com cgi bin exclsrch pl gt The look of the actual cell listing is also based on a template The template is read in by the script then outputted to a web page with the cell s information included Cell Group Search results template EXCLSRCH HTM Note All INPUT NAME s and field names are case sensitive Wrap the results section in comment tags like lt ExcCellSearchInfo gt You put the individual cell fields you want to display in here This entire section will be repeated for each cell that matches the query string lt ExcCellSearchInfo gt The actual cell information fields you want to display should be have the form AField_Name For example to show the Cell Description field use ACells_Description 127 Internet Integration There are two default styles of the cell search results templates Exclsrch listing form htm Exclsrch paragraph form htm The first one lists the found cells in a table one row at a time The second template lists each cell in a paragraph format To use one of these styles copy it to the default name of exclsrch htm before uploading your scripts to the web site Primary Primary Cell Name Leader Phone GE Meets Meets a y Time Description Frequency This cell is made up of mostly young married couples with ver Joe 222 222 150 West small children Childcare is provided by our KidsLife pane Adam
7. E T Envelope 9237 Annivers i2m57930 Bitnjotrornaso FAX C ro E Addresses IV Split family addresses Comments Age bs 1 Home Available for filming User1 0585502 l 4 17700 North Blvd Apt 3 sunday morning usse ooo cell services Cell Member gt A AP Baton Rouge LA 70808 1148 User3 er Sponsor User4 Brown Cindy L d 01 06 1998 Completed Water baptized at the cell group 03 11 1998 Completed 05 22 1998 Completed Cindy feels a calling into the ministry 08 11 1998 11 28 1998 01 14 1999 The Member screen as well as the other edit screens in Excellerate is divided in half The top half contains all of the general information about the member and the bottom half contains the associated information tabs Most of the fields in the member screen are self explanatory but we will highlight the fields with special meaning or that are not apparent Member ID A members ID number is automatically assigned when the member is entered into the system This number is unique to this member and is used to link all other related information to the member Last The Last name field can be used for a member s last name or a business name Prefix The Prefix has a user definable pick list that can be modified in program options For business choose Bus 35 Pre Members Members and Pastors Relation Family Status Picture Member Type Pastor Type Mail Code Envelope Spec
8. Member Info Report KiC New Life Cell Church Page 1 Member information Abed Cindy M Family Abed Cindy 13795 Envelope 9237 MemberID 9237 Member Type GSMA Occupation Camera Operator Home 123 456 7890 User 0585502 Pastor Type Employer NCC Communications work 123 456 0988 User2 Mail Code H Student Mobile User3 Sex M Anniversary 125990 Pager User4 First Visit 09 07 1993 Birth 01011960 FAX Date joined 10 03 1993 Age 39 Relation Spouse EMAIL Celi Group 1 A Home Address 17700 North Blyd Apt 3 Comment Baton Rouge LA 70808 1148 Member Follovwup Contacts Date Type Response Date of first visit 0974993 1 09 094993 PhoneCall More Info Date joined 10034993 2 09424993 In Home Visit Interested How heard about Friend 3 Follow up from Visitor 4 Follow up sponsor Katie Odom Cell sponsor Cindy L Brown Family Members Spouse Cindy Abed Profiles Jason Sarver Pastoral Care Update ap Kitchen Interest Clerical Interest Community Outreach Interest Music Interest Member Development Steps 017 06 98 Completed Water Baptism O3 11 98 Completed Christianity 101 057 22 98 Completed Encounter Retreat 08 11 98 Discipleship 201 11 28 98 Discovery Seminar Ol l4s99 Leadership 301 037 29 99 Champions Retreat Organizations 10 01 95 Choir Alto 10 14 97 Prayer Shield Prayer partner Visits Counselings 10 17 98 Hospital
9. c nome root username then the filesdir variable would look like this Sfilesdir DataFiles If the data directory was c nome root username DataFiles Excellerate then the filesdir variable would look like this Sfilesdir DataFiles Excellerate Again each host is different but if you are having trouble with the script look at the error message generated when trying to execute the script It will give you an idea of where it is trying to find the data then you can adjust your filesdir variable accordingly One advantage of putting your data files in a separate directory is that you can set the access rights of that directory so that the data can not be accessed by anyone except by using the scripts See your web site administrator for information on how to restrict access to that directory Modifying the HTML templates for a different look Cell Meeting Reporting There are two ways to log into cell meeting reporting You can use the EXFORM PL file or the EXLOGIN HTM file The perl file allows choosing a cell group from a picklist whereas the html file does not So if you want the picklist functionality you will need to modify the perl file to change the look If you dont need the picklist then modify the html file and the users will have to type in the cell name or the leader name exactly as it is entered in Excellerate The leader name will have to be entered like Lastname Firstname Cell Leader Report F
10. xeelterate Cell Church Management Gees User Manual Version 2 3 Micro System Design PO Box 1401 Cordova TN 38088 1401 phone 888 371 6878 web www excellerate com email info msdweb com COPYRIGHT Excellerate Copyright 1999 2002 Micro System Design All rights reserved Other company names and product names are trademarks of their respected companies PROGRAM LICENSE AGREEMENT CAREFULLY READ THE FOLLOWING TERMS AND CONDITIONS BEFORE USING THIS PROGRAM USING THIS PROGRAM INDICATES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS IF YOU ARE NOT IN AGREEMENT RETURN THE PROGRAM UNUSED AND YOUR MONEY WILL BE REFUNDED LICENSE You are granted a non exclusive license to use the enclosed program subject to the terms of this agreement SINGLE USER LICENSE With a single user license you are allowed to use one copy of the software on one machine If you wish to use the software on multiple computers you must purchase the multi user version MULTI USER LICENSE With the multi user license you are allowed to use as many copies of the software as needed as long as they are used within your organization LIMITATIONS OR REMEDIES Micro System Design will replace defective diskettes which are returned to Micro System Design with a copy of your invoice or receipt IN NO EVENT WILL MICRO SYSTEM DESIGN BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES INCLUDING ANY LOST PROFITS LOST SAVINGS OR OTHER INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISIN
11. Member Pictures Member pictures are not stored in the database This would increase the size of the database to an unmanageable size Therefore the pictures are stored in a directory having the same name and location as your database with the word Pictures appended to the end of it This is would usually be called C Program Files Excellerate Database_Pictures unless you installed Excellerate into a different directory on a network or used a different name other than Database for your database The pictures are named the same as the member number they identify So member with Member ID 100 could have a picture stored in the pictures directory called 100 BMP or 100 PCX etc Excellerate can read the following formats PCX BMP TIFF and JPEG file formats For TIFF and JPEG use the following file extensions TIF or JPG When acquiring member images with a scanner or digital camera save them in Excellerate s pictures directory Report Styles Report styles allow you to design and choose different report styles for a report For example a Member list report could look like a mailing list or a contact list or even labels To create a new report style choose the new button on a report screen that uses styles You see the report editor screen with a default or possibly blank report style 145 ppendix Report Editor OF Xx E nlala all ajala Layout TT Pgheader V Title JM Colheader V De
12. New members may be assigned to a District and Zone for example to be followed up on by that zone pastor but they may not yet be in a cell When they do join a cell these fields are updated to reflect the divisions of the new cell These fields can be automatically assigned when entering the membere zip code See member addresses below The Cell Member sponsor field is used when the member joins a cell If one of the existing cell members were responsible for the new member joining their cell then that person would be recorded here This way you would know to keep these members together when multiplying the cell You may find other uses for this field as well 37 Pre Members Members and Pastors Member Addresses To add a membere address use the button on the left side of the screen next to the address window The member address screen will appear Addresses EN RE Address Type fitiome 7 z Use the ZipCode to automatically assign thi Address line 1 117700 North Blvd Apt 3 pelna gesch Address line 2 PC O O Auto Assign Zip 70808 1148 City Baton Rouge State LA Country OK Carrier Userl o Phone User2 Cancel Zi Address Type allows you to specify whether this address is the home address work address etc If you have already setup the zip codes under the options menu then as you type in zip codes the city and state will automatically be entered for you Also by
13. Print cell meeting report to print a report for those entries Again w indicates a meeting from the web Continue with your normal weekly cell routine but now many of your weekly totals will already be entered for you Modifying Web integration to fit your web site All of the included web integration files can be modified to meet the needs and look of your church web site The following information will help any web developer in modifying the PERL or HTML files The online cell meeting reporting and the cell search and listing scripts use HTML templates to display the pages so these files can be modified to look like whatever you want The PERL files can be modified if you need to change the functionality of the scripts Modifying the scripts for a different data directory Use the buttons on the Web Server Configuration tab Edit EXFORM PL and Edit EXSUBMIT PL for editing these files The line that needs to change is the one that contains Sfilesdir This line needs to be changed to hold the directory name of where you want to store your data files All web servers are not standard so the exact file specification may be different from host to host but the general rule is to put the path of the data directory starting from the web user s login root directory So if 121 Internet Integration the actual data directory is called c home root username DataFiles and a web user s root directory is
14. Topic Attended DateTime_ D Lisa Achee Building Foundation 09 16 1998 Roger L Brumfield Building Foundation Lynette Adams Building Foundation Prescott Building Foundation Elysia E Armold Building Foundation Adams Building Foundation Waltman Building Foundation The top section of the screen shows basic information about the class including the class name leader and when where it meets The next section lists the sessions that make up this class For example if a class has three parts to it maybe with three different topics you would enter each part in this section Members can then be assigned to a specific session or to all sessions To add edit or delete a class session use the add edit and delete buttons in the scheduled class session window Notice in the window the number of attendees This number reflects the number of members signed up for this session of the class As a member completes the session this number is decreased The bottom half of the screen is for the class associated information In this case the only associated information is the current attendees of the selected session 74 Classes To add a member to a class simply hit the add button in the attendees tab Attend a class ES Ne DR Session fi Building Foundation OI Note Date amp Time 27 6 1999 12 00 AM Attended Assign to all sessions Cancel From this screen you can choose the member to add to a spe
15. Website s FTP Hostname or IP address tpyouwebsitecom Port jar Use Proxy Server Username fusemame Proxy Server O O Password Ir Proxy Port o Web site s FTP Hostname or IP addres This is your web site s FTP hostname or IP address It will look something like FTIP MYCHURCH COM Port This is the FTP port and is almost always 21 Username Password This is the user name and password assigned to you for logging into your web site or FTP host for making changes Proxy Server If your local computer is behind a firewall or other layer before you get to the internet enter that information here See your network administrator Next the Web Server Configuration tab holds information about your site Cell Meeting Results Web Host Settings Web Server Configuration FTP Utility Directory name for CGI files eai bin Install server scripts on website Directory name for data files cgi bin Install cell report form template If you store the data files in a different directory than the CGI z x directory you must modify EXFORM PL and EXSUBMIT PL Edit EXFORM PL Edit EXSUBMIT PL Directory name for CGI files This is the directory where your scripts will be stored Most of the time this is called cgi bin but could be called scripts or some other name This directory must have Execute rights to run the scripts Directory name for data files This is where you want Excellerate to store the da
16. e If your cell leaders are considered members of the cell they lead and should be counted there as members then check the second box A member may be a leader of as many cell groups as they want e f you wish to have your cell groups named by the combination of divisions they represent then check the third box in this section For example if Matt is a cell leader in District 1 Zone A Section 5 Cell B then you may choose to name his cell 1 A 5 B In this case you would check the use divisions in cell names box If you don t want the divisions included in the cell name for example names like Teen Life or Matt s Cell you would leave the third box unchecked What is a division Essentially division is the generic term used in Excellerate to describe the levels within your cell structure such as District Zone Section etc Some churches may include Congregation or City as one of their divisions 17 Getting Started e If you wish to allow your members to join more than one cell group check this box The next field in this section allows you to specify the day of the week that your church has designated as the beginning of the cell week This may differ depending on the specific situations of each church This option is used when displaying the pop up calendars for entering dates referring to cell weeks e You can also specify how you want to default the cell member attendance You can
17. may leave this field blank Next choose a name for your new field All flex fields must start with FF_ so if you may have a field like FF_SchoolName Next choose the type of field Text Number Date Currency Yes No Memo For Text fields you will also need to specify the length 1 255 for the field If the field will need a pick list choose the pick list type Use F for a forced pick list which means that the entry must come from the pick list only Use O for an option pick list which allows other entries besides the values of the pick list Use N for no pick list Entries for these pick lists can be added in the Options Pick lists menu just like other pick list values The next section allows you to specify a title to appear on the screen for the field and positioning of the field You may enter the X Y W width H height values for the field or leave the X and Y blank Once the field has been added you can reposition within the screen later Also choose the location for the field For Member fields they can be placed in the main screen the Follow up tab or the Member step tab For the other modules you can only choose the main screen Finally specify any special display format for the field such as Bold If you wish you may add titles without fields or fields without titles Just leave the title or field blank The first flex field must have a title You may also edit or delete flex fields using the corresponding b
18. option in the Contributions menu Contribution Records Excellerate can track many types of member contributions including cash checks credit cards etc Tax deductible as well as non tax deductible items can be recorded A description can be entered for more detail such as specifying a particular missionary etc 83 Contributions Member Contribution x Member Adams Joe R zl Batch 4 Amount 200 00 Date 027247 999 Receipt 20 Check 124 D Description Period 199910 Account General Fund OI Tax Deductible JV Print Receipt Cancel Each contribution is tied to individual members but can be reported for their whole family This allows contributions to follow a child who gets married etc The Check field allows you to enter a check number or you can enter one of the other contribution types such as cash Different types can be added using the Options Picklists menu Each contribution must be designated for a specific account or fund which can be chosen from the pick list Also the date batch number receipt number and accounting period are recorded Pledges Pledges can also be entered for members This can help during contribution entry and allow you to get an idea of what your projected income will be for the different accounts Each pledge must be designated for a specific account Pledges can be actual amounts or allocated as percentages They are not entered automatically into Excel
19. so that you wont have to have several views one for each city To do this instead of specifying Memphis for the Value use the Ask user for value option in the Value field Now anytime you use this view it will first ask for what city you are interested in The answer to the last question is specified in much the same way Choose Add in the Sort section and specify the Table and field you want to sort by You can also choose Ascending or Descending sort order You will notice that as your are answering these questions the SQL statement is being built in the SQL window at the bottom of the screen This is for those who have experience with SQL and want to see the details of the view This SQL statement can also be modified to create an Advanced View See Advanced Views later in this chapter Once you ve built your view and are satisfied with it you can save it for future use Just choose the Save current view button and the view will be saved in the list of saved views This view will now be available for you and other users to use at any time Editing a View To modify a new view that you ve just created use the Edit current view button This will bring up the same screen that you used to build the view To modify an existing saved view use the Edit saved view button Any changes to a saved view will be seen by all other users as well You may want to make temporary changes to a saved view maybe for a quick report To do t
20. 1 4 2 B Murray Mitchel EN 1 4 2 C Roger Corley E 1 4 2 D Louis Wang d 1 4 2 E Dallas Holmes 1 4 2 E H2 John Bricksome Ss A 3 Hank Sinclair 1 4 3 4 Hank Sinclair 1 4 3 B ese 1 H 4 Charles Payne Zei 4 4 4 Charles Payne iS 1 B Tom Gess e 2 1 R 1 Gren Samrnuil E Ze Organizational Parent Child el ole D al Double Click to go to group d member Right Click to show cell members The cell tree will show all of the cells in your current view and how they appear in your cell organizational structure The cells that fall under another cell are underneath and indented You can collapse and expand different sections of the tree to focus on different areas by clicking on the or icon next to the cell The cell tree is not only for viewing your cell structure but also for maintaining it From this screen you can actually drag and drop entire sections zones etc from under one district to another You can move cells around to keep your cell structure balanced Double click a cell to go to that cell s edit screen to make any changes 65 Cells When you right click a cell the cell s members will be displayed Cell Tree 29 cells or s Cell John Maxwell Keith Buchert SES 1 A Chip Montana 7 SS 1 4 1 Tina Logan 2 898 1 4 1 4 Adam Brighton A Pete Singleton Kristi Singleton Jeff Gorman Faye Dunham Dan Dun
21. 1998 Pace Walter A am 123 456 7890 06 30 1998 This screen allows you to enter the name of a new cell group a new leader and to indicate which members will move to the new group After hitting Create Cell the new group will be created the selected members moved and the new cell s parent field will be set to the appropriate cell depending on the parent option you checked To indicate which members will move double click their record and the move field will change to Y If a cell is multiplying into more than two cells repeat the process for each new cell group 61 Cells Viewing Cell Growth Once a cell has been meeting and has weekly cell meeting totals entered for it you can view its growth in several ways From cell group edit screen choose the button This will bring up the following screen Cell Growth Graph x aemesvbae Lt This screen is asking you what information you want to graph The first question is for what date range You can enter a date range by hand or use the calendar button to select a range of dates Select Date Range To select a date range you left click the starting date and right click then ending date Or you can select a week by clicking the week number in the left column or the month or year 62 Cells Next you can choose to graph each cells one at a time beginning with the current cell or you can choose to include a
22. Cell Members Lists all cell members and their member development information Activities List any activities that the cell group is involved in e Member History Lists past members that have moved out of the cell Cell Meetings Lists the cell meeting totals that have been entered for the cell e Cell History Lists any changes that have been made to the cell Cell Attendance Lists the cell members attendance history The Cell Members tab allows you to see the cell members that belong to this cell along with their member development information As you choose different members on the left side of the information tab their member steps or classes appear on the right You can choose Member Steps or Classes to view on the right Cell Members Activities Member History Cell Meetings Cell History MemberType MembeName Phone__ Datelained Member Carruth Yaney 225 529 5120 10 23 1998 gt Water Baptism 09 09 1998 Compl _ Member Corona Tammy M 123 456 7890 06 30 1998 _ Christianity 101 11 01 1998 Compl gt Member aA 123 456 7890 06 30 1998 LI EncounterRetrest _ Member Dossey Beth 225 775 5995 10 15 1998 Discipleship 201 _ Member Dossey Mary 225 775 5995 10 14 1998 Discover Seminar Member Faust Thomas 123 456 7890 06 30 1998 MIE Be You can jump to a cell members screen by double clicking their name To add new members to this cell simply hit the
23. Cells did not meet Cells 20 Cells not reported Mtgs 47 Cells did not meet Cells 61 Cells not reported Mtgs Sp Cells did not meet The Cell Meeting Report by Division gives you a weekly report of the attendance in your cells This report can be configured to show each cell s meeting totals or a summary like this for each District Zone or whatever division names you use Cell Meeting Report by Date 2 1 99 9 25 44 AM New Life Cell Church Page 1 Cell Meeting Report by Date District 1 Zone A 09 01 1998 10 31 1998 September 1998 October 1998 Parameters by Month and Div zU and Div2 A The Cell Meeting Report by Date provides a breakdown by Month or Year of your cell growth This report lets you look over a period of time to see if and where your cells are growing if attendance is increasing etc 106 Reporting Cell Member Attendance Chart The Cell Member Attendance Chart can chart cell member attendance to easily observe their faithfulness or look for signs of continued absence This can be reported by date range for up to 20 weeks of history You can also report for specific districts zones etc EEN New Life Cell Church Celi Member Attendance Chart All Cells 12 01 1999 12 31 1999 Pastor s Cell Leader Pete Maxwell Phone 123 456 7890 X Attended meeting NiM No meeting NR NoReport Cell Members Meetings va 1207 12 S Tina dams
24. Export under the file menu This will look similar to the Mail Merge screen since they both basically do the same thing You can choose to exclude members with a mail code if desired and you can specify the format of the export table as either text or Access When exporting you can choose a map file to use to map Excellerate fields to other names or to exclude fields Excellerate comes with a map file for exporting your members to Microsoft Outlook then even to your hand held computer or PDA To export contributions see that section in the chapter on contributions 141 Utilities Importing Church Attendance with Barcodes Tracking church attendance for a large number of people can be difficult and time consuming One way to speed up that process is to use barcodes and scanners Excellerate can print barcodes for your members in many formats including cards nametags lists etc Then you can simply scan their barcode to track their attendance This can be used for tracking any type of church service most commonly Children s Church Excellerate s church attendance system can track the service date time in and time out Or you can just record their attendance without times Excellerate currently supports the CS2000 handheld scanner from Symbol Technologies This is a portable scanner that can read several hundred scans at once Then the scanner is placed into its cradle and the data is read into Excellerate The first
25. Preferences Any time a new database is created you will immediately be taken to the Preferences screen Preferences EN Church Information Church Name EA Address fi 100 Germantown Rd Address2 Cancel City Cordova State Province TN PostalCode 3801 8 Help Program Options Database Name Je projects excellert 2 database mdb S Email options Contribution options Word Processor C Program Files Microsoft Office Office E Web options Euan ace Use Preven Trey First F M Allow State Province field more than 2 letters Open to module Members 7 Format for phone s 999 939 9998ccece 0 _ Enter your names for User definable fields Cell division 1 District Members Cells Activities Addresses Organization Classes Cell division 2 E vision one User 1 Pes Fz Cell division 3 Section User 2 User2 fo x Cell division 4 ieee 3flses ks Cell Intern 1 ES User 4 User F DI Cell Intern 2 later Cell Intern 3 Iintem3 re Supervisor Picklist options F Forced picklist O Optional picklist N No picklist The Preferences screen allows you to define the specific requirements and attributes of your church Church Information You may begin by entering your church name and address information This information will appear on reports and other printouts from the program Database Name You can create several databases within Excellerate This is useful if y
26. Tammy M 123 456 7890 06 30 98 Member Cox Anita 123 456 7890 06730798 Member Dossey Beth 225 775 5995 10 15 98 Member Dossey Mary 225 775 S99S 10 14 98 Member Faust Thomas 123 456 7890 o6 30 98 Member Fleming Jewell 225 554 4005 10714798 Member Haddox David Wayne 123 456 7890 067 30 98 The Cell Info Report like the Member Info Report shows detailed information for a cell group or a list of cell groups in the current view The following associated info tabs will also appear on this report Cell Members Cell Activities Member Change History Cell History Cell List Report The Cell List Report is another report that uses different styles to produce a wide variety of printouts You can choose a view that shows just the cell groups or the cells with their members or activities etc This report also can be printed for any cell view or for just one cell 104 Reporting Cell Leader Form The Cell Leader Form is the form you print out each week for your cell leaders This form provides the leader with a list of members their phone numbers a place to check off if they ve contacted them or not etc This report can also remind your leaders of upcoming cell activities and members birthdays This is another report that uses styles which can be modified by the user to meet the cell group reporting needs of your church New styles will be available at our web site www msdweb com New Life Cell Chur
27. White 02 10 1999 6 General Fund 25 43 Check Joe Adams General Fund 78 39 Check Kathy Smith General Fund 250 00 1343 Kieth Neal General Fund 25 00 Cash Kerri Smith Mis s ions 52 11 323 Peter Johnson General Fund 144 90 3223 Peter Johnson Batch Total 825 84 Contributions Calculated Batch Total 825 84 Difference 0 00 02 10 1999 02 10 1999 23 02 10 1999 7 0210 1999 2 7 Batch 2 SubTotal Hash Total Calculated Hash Total Difference 15 2 2 02 10 1999 2 24 2 2 2 a lelolalolo ojo KI DEE ooo 111 Reporting Contribution Graph The contribution graph will graph contribution income and pledges for each of the accounts These can be grouped by week month quarter or year Member Contribution Report The Member Contribution Report can be used to report on a specific view of your members You may want to see how much members in a certain zip code are contributing or compare different age groups etc This report also allows you to compare a member s pledged giving with their actual giving Member Contribution Chart The member contribution chart allows you to see your member s giving history over a whole year 42 20 99 12 05 29 AM New Life Cell Church Member Contribution Chart All Members 01 01 14 999 12 31 1999 Top Contributor Report This report will allow you to report givers who contributed over a certain amount for any date range The list of givers w
28. add button while viewing the cell members tab To delete a cell member you could use the delete button or you could move the cell member out of this group By moving members you can give a reason for the move 51 Cells To move a cell member highlight that member and hit the Moves button in the cell edit screen Cell Member Move EN Membe Cox Anita z Moving FROM cell IA z Moving TO cell z Date of move 027027 999 Reason for move RE e From this screen simply choose the new cell to move the member to and the reason for the move If the cell member is not moving to a new cell then leave the To cell blank The Activities tab allows you to assign different activities to a cell group These may be things like community outreach or prayer for a missionary Cell Activity Ea uw sss Objet Date Time Leader o d Other Info Cancel When you set a date for these activities you can automatically be reminded of them on the Cell Leader Report forms that get printed each week This form will show any activities that are coming up in the current month 52 Cells The Member History tab simply lists former members that have moved out of this group and why The Cell Meetings tab shows the cell meeting totals that were entered for this group You can see from this information how the cell is growing You can edit these entries by highlighting the entry and usin
29. addresses allowed on many servers is 50 If your server only allows more or less you can enter that number here The default is 25 If you want your users to be able to send emails with their own return address on it you can enter their email addresses in the user id setup screen Then the user will have a choice of sending the message from their own email account or from the church email account Excellerate only allows sending emails so any replies or returned emails will have to be received by your normal email program Using EMAIL To send an email you must be in one of the people modules members pre members or pastors Simply highlight the member you wish to email and hit the email button on the right side of the toolbar The email screen will appear with that person s email address entered if they have one Otherwise it will be blank You can also send an email for a member within their member edit screen by hitting the Email button next to their email address New Message lolx E eile alejaja fic adclglzlalsssl Heel zel Ges Ru Bcc GE Subject To select other members to include on this email use the To or CC buttons This will bring up a screen that will allow you to type in additional email addresses choose other members or to select the current view of members Addresses can 130 Internet Integration be added to the To CC or BCC list by using the appropriate buttons Email add
30. anniversary to show up if they occur during the next two cell weeks use BIRTHDAY or AANNIVERSARY You can also use both in the same field like ABIRTHDAY 4ANNIVERSARY 4 Cell Searching and Listing There are two ways to use the cell searching and listing functionality You can use the EXCLSRCH PL file or the EXCLSRLG HTM file The functionality of both methods are the same Cell Group Search form html EXCLSRLG HTM Search for a cell group By zip code C Search on cell description Type in search string or blank for all Search Note All INPUT NAMEs and field names are case sensitive The cell group search page should contain the following input tags There should be a radio group named group for each of the field elements you want to give the user the ability to search on The VALUE of each individual radio button should be its 126 Internet Integration corresponding field name For example if you want the user to be able to search by the cell description field or address the radio group will look like lt INPUT TYPE radio NAME group VALUE Cells Description CHECKED gt Search by cell description lt INPUT TYPE radio NAME group VALUE Cells PriAddress gt Search on address The form needs a text input tag like this lt INPUT TYPE text NAME criteria VALUE _SIZE 40 gt The form tag should have the METHOD attribute set to the location on the server of the file named exclsrc pl such as
31. batches to accounting system button This will export the account totals for the batch one record for each account These exports might represent deposits being made to a checking account and can be imported into your financial system The second export is the account export This will export the current account totals for all of your accounts You may choose which total to export such as week month quarter etc Currently Excellerate exports in text format or Quicken QuickBooks QIF format When exporting to Quicken Excellerate will use the information in the account s Other Account Info field as 90 Contributions the Quicken category to post to If using some other financial software this field may be used for a similar purpose such as general ledger account numbers Resetting Contribution Totals If you ever experience a power outage or other computer problem during contribution entry you may find that a member or account total does not match the contributions entered in the system If this happens you can use the reset contribution totals menu option which will cause Excellerate to go through all of the contributions and recalculate each membere totals and the account totals Removing Old Contributions Excellerate can store years of contribution data even after all of the reporting has been done for those years This allows you to continue to report and analyze giving history for those years Although it is convenie
32. com cgi bin exclsrch pl finds and lists cell groups There are also two HTML files that can be used for the above functions and can be modified to look like your web site The above perl files can be modified as well but the HTML files may be easier and the exform pl supports the picklist for choosing a cell group whereas the HTML form does not These files are www mychurch com cgi bin exlogin htm logs into weekly cell meeting entry www mychurch com cgi bin exclsrlg htmfinds and lists cell groups You will probably want to add a link to your web site that takes your users to the cell meeting entry form and cell finding form so they don t have to type in www mychurch com cgi bin exform pl etc Using web integration Now that the site has been setup you can begin using Excellerate s web integration features Your cell leaders will be able to pull up their weekly report forms by entering their cell name and a password The default password is the last four digits of the leader s phone number or the phone number located in the Primary meeting phone field in the cell record If you want to use a different password enter that password as the last four characters in that field or change the exform pl script Also visitors to your web site will be able to find groups based on zip code or description of the cell For zip code searching the zip code for the cell group needs to be entered somewhere in the Primary meeting address f
33. district pastor 72 Classes Chapter 6 Classes The classes module allows you to enter the classes your church offers These may be classes that elevate your members to a higher step in their member development or any other type of class where you need to track attendance Excellerate s classes module can manage classes that are made up of multiple sessions allowing members to sign up for all or some of those sessions To view the class module use the button or hit the F7 key Excellerate 1 0N2 c Program Files Excellerate database mdb File Edit View Reports Options Utilities Help Classroom Every Wednesday night 2 Leadership 301 Office meeting room Every Wednesday night 3 Youth Next Step Rear Auditorium Every Wednesday night To add a new class hit the add button on the right side of the toolbar To edit or delete a class use those buttons as well 73 Classes Class Information Isi x Class info 4 Name Discipleship 201 VWhere Meets classroom VA Save Leader Abed cindy m When Meets Every Wednesday night al x Number of sessions per class 12 Notes ps Class Sessions BER User fields User 1 Ges Foundation e 6 1998 12 00 op 47 User2 E 2 Pray Effectively 09 16 1998 12 00 4 29 User3 o o 3 Studying the Word 09 16 1998 12 00 4 26 User4 IT E 4 Walking in Faith 28 iee 5 Overcoming the Enemy 37 E 6 Releasing Hurts A d Attendees al _ MemberFirstname Lastname
34. member s file to the batch At this point you can continue adding editing or deleting contributions until you are finished Now the batch can be exported if necessary and updated again Batches from earlier accounting periods can be reverse updated and modified and the changes to the batch will be counted in the accounting period of the batch not the current period Viewing Editing Member Contributions Once a contribution batch has been updated those contributions are posted to the members file To view those contributions choose the Contributions Pledges associated information tab in the member s edit screen Member Change History Cell Groups Cell Attendance Contributions Pledges Church Attendance Member Family Pledges Date Amount __ AcctDescription Type Checkt TaxDeducta J Report separately from family D 08 12 1999 555 00 General Fund 234 Deductable Last contribution 12420 1993 1 42 20 1999 100 00 General Fund Other Deductable Year To Date 0 00 112 20 1999 50 00 Missions Other Deductable Last Year 705 00 To Date 705 00 Last updated 06 30 00 by M Z 89 Contributions This screen allows you to see the member s giving summary along with their contributions their family s contributions or the their pledges These different views can be selected by choosing the appropriate button on the left of the screen If the program options allow users to modify contributions after they h
35. menu option You could also use that same view of Cell Leaders and print a Member Development report to check on their development progress Users can easily create their own views and save them for future use Views can even be imported from our web site and exchanged with other users See the chapter on Views for more information 29 Getting Around Quick Searches In any module you can quickly search for a record just by typing a few letters of the name To search for the first Smith just type Smith and the Search for dialog box will appear This will also work for Cells Classes etc Status Bar All Members Actives 50 Records The status bar is located at the bottom of your screen and shows your current view for the records in a given module This could be All Members or Cells in District 1 for example The right side of the status bar shows the number of records in the current view The left side of the status bar is used for displaying status messages during program operation Getting Around in Edit Screens 4 While editing a record from any module you can jump to the previous or next record in the view without having to exit the record by using these buttons While in an edit screen for any module you can hit the following hot keys for easier navigation Hot Key Function Double click blue Jump to that edit screen underlined text 30 Getting Around Associated In
36. of zone 1 A and has a cell called 1 A So his cell would be linked under Brandon s cell 1 by setting his cell s Organizational Parent Field to cell 1 E SS Senior Pastor Pete Maxwell 2 SS 1 Brandon Ellis Johnny Colbert 1 4 Grant S Samuel 1 4 9 Thaddeus D Holmes 1 4 11 Robert Hayes Foo Bao 1 B Lewis Taylor EN 1 C Hogan Moore 1 C 2 Robert E Sulcer H 1 D Ron Craighead In this example all cells are real cells not control cells Here you see the senior pastor has a cell and Brandon Ellis the District 1 pastor is a member of it We also see Brandon s group of 12 where the first three members have not started their own cell yet but the other members have 55 Cells Each cell can actually have two different kinds of cell parents Organizational Parent This is the parent cell from an organizational point of view It answers the question Who is responsible for my cell in terms of an organizational or administrative hierarchy Birth Parent This is the parent cell from a birthed from point of view It answers the question What cell was my cell birthed from This will usually be the same as the organizational parent but a new cell may have been birthed from district 1 but because the new leader really lives in district 2 that cell may be put under district 2 It is still good to know which cell the new cell was birthed from When setting up your cel
37. or your default view which is defined by your default view parameters assigned to your user id Most views have prompts built into them These views will ask you for a view criteria such as what district what member type etc By prompting the user for these values you don t have to have a separate view for each district or member type etc Creating a New View Excellerate comes with several common views built in but undoubtedly you will want to create your own This can be done by using the Build new view button in the Select view screen When you build a new view you are actually building a query or an SQL statement for the access engine to process Instead of having to write this statement by hand the Build new view screen builds it for you by asking a few questions Build new view EN View for Tables Description Selection Add Edit Delete J Ask for specific Member Type Cancel Views The Build new view screen asks the following questions What module is this view for and what kind of information should we get What do you want to call this view Which records do you want to select How do you want them sorted AON The first question is answered by choosing an entry from the pick list For the member module you have the following option Members Members and their Addresses Members and their Classes Members the Cell they re a MEMBE
38. r 2 John Bivona d 1 4 2 Hank Sinclair 1 4 4 Charles Payne 1 B Tom Gess E Bob Neal 2 4 Tony Costanza 2 B Sandy Kealy 2 C bezu Gorman i F pe 54 Cells We use cells to represent the district zone and section leaders for three reasons 1 It makes more sense to put cells under the position District 1 than the person District 1 Pastor The person may change but the position will not 2 By creating district zone and section cells you can assign activities to these cells track history and other information that applies to the whole district zone etc 3 Inthe Groups of 12 structure the district zone section leaders have real cells where their group of 12 are their cell members These G12 members are encouraged to lead cells themselves and those cells would be under the district zone or section cell In the Groups of 12 structure the pastor cell district and zone cells are real cells with the cell leader s group of 12 as members These cells would meet therefore they would not be considered control cells Also in the G12 structure each cell leader is a member of someone else s G12 For example In the G12 example below Brandon Ellis is the district 1 leader and has a real cell called cell 1 Brandon s group of 12 are his cell s members one of whom is Grant Samuel Grant is also a zone leader
39. s Weekly Leaders 12 14 Wednesday 10 00am Monthly Family 15 Tuesday 7 00pm Weekly Family 9 Thursday 6 30pm Weekly Family 6 Wednesday 7 00pm Weekly Family 7 Monday 6 30pm Weekly Womens 0 Tuesday 11 00am Bi Weekl Family 18 Thursday 5 30pm Weekly Family 23 Friday 6 30pm Weekly Family 8 Saturday 5 30pm Weekly Family 9 Monday 7 00pm Weekly Work 5 Tuesday 11 30am Weekly Family 13 Friday 7 00pm Weekly Family 7 Thursday 5 00pm Weekly Family 3 Wednesday 7 00pm Weekly Family 0 Monday 7 00pm Sch L All Cells All Statuses 361 The cell browse screen shows the cell groups of your church From this screen you add edit and delete cells and can see different subsets of your cells by selecting other views Next we will take a look at the Cell Screen and the information it contains 47 Cells Cell Screen Cell Information OP x Cell Group Info ee Status Active Inactive Active C Inactive Active Inactive District Section g C lh z E Type Sub Family D DI Lead er Adams Tina A E SS is fout h BEER Celiservan Landry Terry F gt Emphas reac To Mulitply 0404 1999 tern rx Childcare fres Meets on Tuesday v x TET User3 Intern3 X o IR Frequency leet D Members S User Te su ervisor IT Description 6 p User5 F P n Parent Cells ett Jour cell focuses on reaching people in our 4 DE EE S Tree 1 4 1 Primary mtg phone Address Organizational 2
40. these fields it will email everything from that field until it sees another one to that person For example in a cell leader report form each page would go to a different leader So in the top of the report style in the detail band you would place an EMAIL field then the report engine would email each page to the appropriate person See the section on creating report styles for more information on modifying these reports Basically the report engine converts the report to text then emails it So you will probably have to modify your styles to fixed text font and spaced out enough so that the conversion to text looks correct See the included cell leader report form for an example 132 Utilities Chapter 13 Utilities Change User Password Your users may want to change their passwords occasionally This can be done from the Utilities menu option You must know your current password in order to change it When entering a new password you must enter it twice to be sure you typed it correctly Set Database Password This option allows you to specify a password for the entire Excellerate database This password will protect your database from being opened from another program such as Microsoft Access unless that user knows the password When you set a database password Excellerate will still be able to open the database without prompting your users for the password Only when an attempt is made to open the database from any oth
41. totals for it and the cell will not show up on your reports This is useful for student cells that only meet during the school year Inactivating a cell is better than deleting it because you dont loose any history The cell remains in the database but is hidden from most cell maintenance functions Type Sub The Cell type field lets you classify your cells into categories This could be categories such as Family Work Groups of 12 Youth etc The Sub field allows you to further categorize your cell by using a sub type These choices are defined in the pick lists menu option There is one type of cell that is handled differently than other cells If a cell has the type Control then this cell is excluded from cell meeting totals entry and reporting A Control cell is a cell that is used to identify a leadership position in the cell hierarchy such as the District 1 Zone A Leader We create a cell with the name 1 A and assign the District 1 Zone A leader as the leader of this cell In a traditional cell structure such as the 5 X 5 structure the 1 A Leader may be a full time staff member and not a cell leader In this case the cell 1 A would not have any members and would not have any meetings but it would have cells under it in the cell hierarchy Therefore we set the cell type to Control so that it is not included in cell meeting total functions The Control cell type and overall cell hierarchy is discussed furthe
42. use pick lists or not Since these fields are added to the database they can also be used in views reports and even exported to your website for use with Excellerate s internet integration Your flex field definitions can be imported and exported so that you can add new groups of fields that may be offered by our support staff or even other churches Adding Flex Fields To add flex fields use the Utilities Setup Flex Fields menu option You will see the following screen Sc ltl x Use this screen to setup user definable Flex Fields for the member or cell modules Once the fields have been cteated they can be positioned within the Member or Cell screens by right clicking a field then dragging into place Module Order FieldName Je Je Lenath Titex Title Fick Field H gt Add Field Edit Field Delete Field Import Export Close 137 Utilities Hit the Add field button to add a new field Flex Field xj Module Tab Order Field Name Field Type Length Picklist Type Ir Text D N Di F Forced picklist 0 Optional picklist x y VW H N No picklist Title Location Main Di Field Ir 50 20 Format Di Cancel Module specifies which module to add the field to You can choose members cells classes or organizations Tab order allows you to specify the order in which you tab through your fields Enter 1 for the first field 2 for the second etc You
43. usually weekly after all cell information changes have been made and after the received Cell Meeting Reports have been entered Even if you are not recording cell meeting history run the update every week to record historical cell information and to have the ability to report the growth of the number of cells over a period of time Last update ran for period beggining 5 1 98 Adding No Report for cell mise The update asks you what week you want to run it for This will be the same week that you ve just finished entering cell meeting totals for It is possible to run the update for a previous week but remember it will look at your current list of cells to determine if there was a missing cell report So if you have added new cells since the week you are trying to run this for it will record NoRep entries for those new cells They can be deleted in the cell edit screen if necessary There is no harm in running the update more than once for the same period Even if you decide not to enter meeting totals you should run the update weekly This way it will record the number of cells you had that week and will allow you to graph your cell growth even if you can t graph member visitor and other meeting totals You probably don t want to run the cell meeting update before you ve made all of your cell meeting totals entries This would cause every cell to show NoRep when you go to enter your totals T
44. you will see when starting Excellerate Excellerate 1 3b C Program Files Excellerate sample mdb ioj x File Edit View Ee Contributions Options Utilities Help h iber Adams Spouse 11 2 2 m Child 112121 Child 112121 Head 1359H Head 15954 Child 112121 Head 1987 Spouse 112121 Spouse 100Bo Head 100 Bo Head 67585 Spouse 112121 Head 6987 B Spouse 112121 Head 2898 P Member Member Adams Member Adams Member Johnson Member Jones Member Landry Jimmy Member Landry Tery Member Landry Theresa Member Maxwell Kristi Member Maxwell Pete Member Neal Kieth Member Neal Leslie Member Pearson Jason Member Pearson Melinda Member Perkins Rose SC mv gt Drz r mnnr or z E New Life Cell Church All Members The Member module will be the first module you see when you start the program Remember however that you may change this initial module to Cells Classes or any other module by setting the Open to module field in the Preferences screen 27 Getting Around Members The Tool Bar allows you to navigate within the program quickly The first six buttons on the left side of the tool bar will take you to the different modules of the program These button also have function assigned to them which can also be used F4 Pre Members F5 Members F6 Cells Groups F7 Classes F8 Organizations F9 Pastors F10 Contributions F12 Change Views The buttons on the right side of the toolbar are for working
45. 22 222 2222 fi 00 West Blyd Birth 1 A 1 J E Multiply H Growth Adams Joe 222 222 2222 07 15 1999 Member Adams Mary 222 222 2222 02 12 1999 E Member Landry Jimmy 222 222 2222 02 12 1999 Member Landry Tery 111 369 8569 02 12 1999 Member Landry Theresa 222 222 2222 02 14 1999 E Member Robins Jeff 111 587 9874 02 12 1999 x 4 Last updated 03 09 01 by M The Cell Information Screen shows all information relating to this cell group The top half of the screen shows details on the cell and the bottom half shows the associated information tabs Division Fields The top section of the cell screen lists the division codes that this cell belongs in Remember a division is the generic term used in Excellerate to describe the levels within your cell structure such as District Zone Section etc Some churches may include Congregation or City as one of their divisions In this example we are using District Zone and Section We will explain more about using these fields in the section on Adding Cells The values for the division 48 Cells fields can be chosen by using the pick lists These pick lists are defined in the pick lists menu option Status This field indicates whether the cell is Active or Inactive You may want to inactivate a cell for a period of time and then re activate it later When the cell is inactive you will not be able to record meeting
46. Broken Arm In field Teddy Long 10 15 98 Counsel Ministry Church Teddy Long IClasess 08 04 97 Discipleship 201 1 Building Foundation Yes 087 11 97 Discipleship 201 2 Pray Effectively Yes MO 4190 09 Ni nnivtambin 701 Reporting The Member Info Report produces a detailed member report including all associated info tabs such as family members profiles cell groups etc Member List Labels The Member List Labels report is a report with different styles With this report you can print a member list of names and addresses mailing labels etc This report also allows you to exclude certain members from mail outs If you indicated that certain members should not receive mailings by setting their Mail Code to N or some other value of your choice you can specify not to report for that mail code here Just specify the code to exclude from the report If you are printing mailing labels for your members and you don t want to send the same mail out to the husband wife and children of a family you can choose one of the family options for your report By choosing one of the family options only one label per family will be printed The way the label is addressed depends on the family option you choose For example you could choose Family Mr and Mrs Last name or The Lastname Family etc Currently the labels are the only style that take advantage of the family salutation but you could change any style to use the FamilyNam
47. G OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE SUCH PROGRAM EVEN IF MICRO SYSTEM DESIGN HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES OR FOR ANY CLAIM BY ANY OTHER PARTY WHILE MICRO SYSTEM DESIGN HAS MADE EVERY EFFORT TO ENSURE THE ACCURACY AND COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE PROGRAM IN NO EVENT WILL MICRO SYSTEM DESIGN BE LIABLE FOR ANY ERRORS OR OMISSIONS IN THE PROGRAM OR ADD ON PRODUCTS Technical Support Micro System Design offers free technical support through email and our online resources See or web site at www excellerate com Our complete annual support plan includes free software updates telephone support including help with designing and modifying reports or views and a subscription to our newsletter Our data conversion service can convert data from your existing systems Our support phone number is 901 754 0315 Contact us at 888 371 6878 for more information about these services Comments Suggestions Micro System Design is committed to perfecting and improving Excellerate Send comments suggestions support questions to info msdweb com Excellerate Team Design Programming Pete Sciacchetano Dylan Robbins Design Testing Kevin Tingle Andrew Silver Technical Support Pete Sciacchetano Dylan Robbins Web site Pete Sciacchetano Dylan Robbins Graphics Design Keith Neely Marketing Crystal Tingle Manual Erin Kealy Prayer Cell group 1 A 2 C Special thanks to the staff of Bethany World Prayer Center
48. Getting Around Views A view is basically a subset of the records for a particular module Views allow you to look at the records your interested in This can make working with the database much easier because you are only looking at the information relevant to your task Use the Select different view button to choose or create a new view Select View EN C My Default View fal Members My Current View fal Members Ze Saved Views Description D Cell Leaders for District Zone New Edit Views Cell Leaders for District Build new view Cell Members in District Zone Edit current view E Cell Members in District Zone with no completed step E Member Birthdays for Month Saved Views Member in Dist who ve completed a step on date E Members completed step 4 not B E Members in a District E E Members of Type E Missionaries E Non Cell Members with a completed class or step Save curent view Edit saved view Delete saved view Import Export Load view from web Import view from file Export current view Export saved view Views are not only for viewing information but for reporting as well This can be very powerful when combined with the reporting and mail merging capabilities of Excellerate For example to print mailing labels for your cell leaders you would simply choose the view for Cell Leaders then choose the report for Member Lists Labels from the Reports
49. R of and their Cell Activities Members the Cell they re a LEADER of and their Cell Activities Members the Cell they re an INTERN of and their Cell Activities Members the Cell they re a SUPERVISOR of and their Cell Activities Members and their Meetings Counseling Members and their Organizations Members and their Profile Codes Members and their Member Steps Members and their Contributions Members and their Pledges Members and their Church Attendance Which item you choose depends upon what information you want to select or sort on For example if you want to view members that live in Memphis you would need to select on the city field of the member s address Therefore you would choose Members and their Addresses For the second question simply enter a description for the new view such as Members that live in Memphis The third question is answered by adding selection criteria To select members that live in Memphis hit the Add button in the Selection section You will see the following Selection Criteria screen Selection Criteria Eg AND OR Table Condition Value 95 Views We want all members where their City equals Memphis In the Table field choose Addresses for Field choose City the Condition is and the Value would be Memphis That s it Hit OK then OK again and you will see a list of members that live in Memphis Now a better view would be to ask the user for the city
50. Saved Views E Description D Cell Leaders for District Zone E Cell Leaders for District E Cell Members in District Zone E Cell Members in District Zone with no completed step E Member Birthdays for Month E Member in Dist who ve completed a step on date Members completed step not B E Members in a District E E Members of Type E Missionaries E Non Cell Members with a completed class or step New Edit Views Saved Views Save curent view Edit saved view Delete saved view Import Export Load view from web Import view from file Export current view Export saved view If you wanted to use a cell view you would have to be in the Cell Module to see a list of those views Views also play an important role in reporting If you want a report of all members who have a birthday this month you would first select the view Member Birthdays for Month then specify the current month The member browse will then show all members woe birthday is in the current month Now you can report on these members in several ways by choosing the appropriate report labels or mail merge from the reports menu 93 Views Selecting Views To select a view simply use the Select different view button from the toolbar or the Select different view option under the view menu and choose the desired view You can choose the current view one of the saved views that are available to all users
51. ach Community 2 23 96 7 Kid s Life Church 6 18 96 6 Orchestra Church 1 1 96 4 Prayer Shield Church 10 1 97 All Organizations To add a new organization use the add button on the right side of the toolbar To edit or delete an organization use those button as well 77 Organizations Organization Screen Organizations OY x Organization info A Name non lt S Save Il Type church z al x Leader adams Jason z User fields User1 Date Started 017011984 use Meets on Thursday uses Time 730 PM User uses Location aech A OrgMembers al _ MemberFirstname MemberLastname Date joined Position P Cindy Abed 10 01 1995 Alto 123 456 7890 i Achee 01 01 1999 Tenor 123 456 7890 Adams 08 12 1998 Piano 123 456 7890 Smith 08 12 1998 Alto 123 456 7890 Weatherspoon 03 05 1998 Baritone 123 456 7890 Davis 01 14 1998 Tenor 123 456 7890 In the organization screen you can specify the type of organization by using the pick list configurable from the pick lists options menu You can also specify other information such as leader meeting times and up to five user fields which you setup in the program preferences screen The only associated information tab in the organization screen is the organization s members This tab lists the members that belong the organization the date they joined and a position if applicable Members can be added by using the add button deleted with
52. again Pre Members are the people you are interested in following up with or mailing out marketing information to These may be first time church visitors or an area of your city that you may be targeting Pre Members contain all of the same information fields as a member because at some point you are hoping to move a pre member to the member module The main difference between pre members and members is that pre members can not join cells classes organizations or other associated information tabs They can have family members and follow up information Pre Members are actually stored in a separate table to avoid slowing down accesses to member information At any time you can transfer pre members to the member module When you select the Pre Member module the i Move Pre Members button appears in the toolbar This button will move pre members from the pre member module to the member module This process will actually move the pre member s entire family assigning a new family number and member numbers The addresses and follow up information is transferred along with the pre member 45 Cells Chapter 5 Cells The Cell module is probably the most important module in Excellerate This module manages all the members meetings activities growth etc of your churches cell groups To access the cell module use the El cell button or hit the F6 key After selecting the Cell Module you will see the Cell browse screen gege 9
53. alents or interests but can be used for any purpose Member Profiles EN Code Description e Clerical Clerical Interest Computer Computer Interest Cooking interest Electrical Interest Add Profile z Music Interest Change Pond E Nursery Nursery Interest z Sewing Interest Delete Profile Gardening Interest afl Cancel With member profiles you can search for members with a specific interest when a need arises in that area This may include everything from locating seamstresses willing to sew costumes to identifying people interested in bicycling that could assist in planting a special interest cell group Check for Duplicate Members When adding new people to Excellerate the program can automatically check to see if the person has already been entered To enable this feature make sure Check for Duplicate Members is checked in the Options menu As you type in a new person s first and last name Excellerate will search to see if anyone with that name has already been entered You will then see a list of matches to determine if the new member has already been entered To disable the feature un check this option 25 Getting Around Chapter 3 Getting Around Now that you have installed and configured Excellerate for your church we will take a look at getting around within the program and introduce some of the screens and toolbars Main Screen This is the main screen that
54. ancel Members as well as if you have the Network Version Now that you are successfully logged on and have entered your registration continue with the program setup menu by choosing the following under the Options 21 Getting Started Pick lists Before using the program it is important to set up your churches values for the pick lists to be used within the program Pick list setup is located in the Options Menu Show picklists for Field Divi d To add new entries to a pick list first choose the field for which the entries apply using the Show picklists for Field selection Then use the Add Hem button to add the entries for that field Change item The same procedure is used for Delete Item changing or deleting entries except you would use the appropriate button Pick lists are handy lists that pop up when entering information into certain fields For example when you need to enter a district for a cell report you can choose it from a list instead of typing it These pick lists are defined by first choosing the field for which the pick list belongs and then Add Change or Delete the values for that list Most pick lists will already have some common values entered You may just need to review these values to make sure they are appropriate for your church Although the full use of many of the options will become clearer once you begin using the program completion of the Div
55. and the Bethany Cell Church Network BCCN for their ongoing commitment support and labor in the design testing and enhancement of Excellerate Table of Contents Chapter 1 Installation cccceceeeeeeeeeeeee ee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeseeeeneneeenenennes 9 System HReouirements ttnt ttnt k rrr Entsttt trr nntatttnrrEnnnennnt 9 Ela e Re EEN 9 Chapter 2 Getting Started cccteccceceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeeseseeeeaeeeeeeeeneneees 11 Creating your New Database cccccccccceeeeeeeenceeeeeeeeeeeenccaeeeeeeeeeesestsneeeeess 11 dee 12 Users aper gees aaa aa aaa aA araa aT aaa EE 19 LOOQGING ON PEA E EEE ST O A ET A oc 21 Program Registati o n s s Ase Ae cee ERRER ER AERE eet ate RERE tate aide tates A 21 e E 22 ZIPICOGSS ETE Ee SEN EE EE AAEE ATE 23 Member EEN 24 Member Profiles osare ir nie rA EE EE E E A RE 25 Chapter 3 Getting Around ssssssssssserssnnnnnrennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn 27 Man Oee a A A A A A A tiene E i 27 Tool Bab 2 s2esesctstsezistyigagsstsssagisteadasazesagegcaseadazageacaiga vagusagasasia evgagesage sassatssatenvages 28 ee 28 KA 29 EE DEE ee eebe Ee 30 Status Bafia eee eee a I oe Ne ell 30 Getting Around in Edit Screens cccccccceeeeeeeececeeeeeeeeeeececneeeeeeeeeeeesnnneeeeeees 30 Associated Info Tabe iin ie i iii ii nennerennneneneennenenennennenes 31 Chapter 4 Pre Members Members and Pastors cceccceesssesseeee
56. art their own cells we see that four of them have These are denoted by the picture of a member with a cell around them One of them even has groups under him Lewis Taylor The Cell Organizational Chart The cell tree is a helpful view of your cell structure but sometimes is easier to look at the traditional organizational chart that we are used to seeing These charts can be impossible to create by hand especially with a large number of groups The cell tree can be viewed as an organizational chart by simply pressing the D button Organizational Chart Bisi x 2 2 99 New Life Church Celi Group Organizational Chart 2 C Wesly Gorman 2 B Sandy Kealy 2 Bob Neal 2 4 1 2 4 Tony ere a Pastor s Cell John Maxwell 1 C Greg Samrow 1 B 2 Wanda Horne 1 B Tom Gess 1 B 1 Greg Samrow 1 Keith Buchert 1 4 4 4 Charles Payne 1 4 4 Charles Reegel 1 4 3B 1 4 3 Hank er 1 4 3 4 Hank Sinclair 1 4 Chip Montana Sort ascend d Level width 150 Item Height 20 H Bi 4 Landscape V al x The organizational chart can be viewed on screen or printed You can adjust the width of each level as well as the height of each item to get the best fit You can also change the sort order so that if you turn the chart on the side to look like a real vertical organizational chart the cell groups will be in order from left to right 67 Cells Entering Cell Meeting T
57. ate Web Integration The web integration feature allows you to integrate data from Excellerate with your church web site Specifically you can upload data and web scripts to your site using Excellerate s built in transfer utilities so that your cell leaders can fill out their weekly cell group report forms online instead of turning in paper forms Then once a week you would retrieve that information into Excellerate where it automatically gets entered in to the Cell Meeting Total Entry screen for review Also by uploading data to your site you can provide the users of your web site with the ability to view information about your cell groups To take advantage of the web integration features you will need FTP access to your web site You will need your userid and password Your web server must support PERL 5 004 or later to take advantage of the cell lookup and cell meeting entry scripts we provide Setting up Web Integration Setting up web integration basically involves two steps Entering your web server information Uploading Excellerate s perl scripts and support files To setup web integration use the Web Integration screen in the utilities menu option or from the preferences screen Start by entering the following information about your web site and how you access it in the Web Host Settings Tab 117 Internet Integration Cell Meeting Results Web Host Settings l Web Server Configuration FTP Utility
58. ave been updated you will be able to add edit or delete contributions here within a member s edit screen Typically contributions are reported for the entire family in one statement If you want certain family members to receive their own individual contribution statement separate from the family you can check the Report separately from family box This is useful for adult children living with their parents Remember this information is only displayed if the user has the proper security access End of Period Processing In order for Excellerate to calculate periodic contribution totals it must use an accounting period This period tells the program what month and year you are working in and calculates weekly monthly quarterly and yearly totals accordingly Excellerate will automatically prompt you when it is time to reset these periodic account totals when the Computers date advances to the next month Before resetting these totals you should print your accounting reports so you have a copy of these numbers These totals are just for your information and do not affect how the system functions You can choose to have Excellerate automatically update these totals without prompting you using the settings in the program preferences Exporting Contributions Excellerate can export contributions in two ways First you can export the contribution batches as they are updated When updating contribution batches choose the Export
59. ber sti Export f Access Database Text File Quoted amp comma separated Map field names using Je projects excellert 2 default map El Exporting Change View Cancel Help Since we are in the Member module we have the choice of excluding certain mail codes and we could limit the records to one per family instead of each family member Select output format You can also choose what format to export the data Access format would probably be preferable but some older word processors may not recognize that format In that case use the text format When you hit Create Mail Merge Database Excellerate will ask you for a filename then export your view to that file If you setup the path to your word processor in the program options screen your word processor can automatically be loaded for you See your word processor documentation on how to create a mail merge document but make sure you choose the file that you just created from excellerate for your data source 116 Internet Integration Chapter 12 Internet Integration There are two parts to Excellerate s Internet integration Web Integration and Email Web Integration allows you to transfer data between Excellerate and your web site to provide features such as searching or listing groups and entering weekly cell group report forms on your site Built in email allows you to easily send email messages to your members from within Exceller
60. c You can double click the top of any bar to see the specifics of that bar You can choose different representations of this graph by using the tools in the toolbar Since we chose to graph our cells one at a time we can use the Previous and Next Cell buttons to graph those cells These buttons will display the previous and next cells in our current view So if we wanted to look at the groups in zone 1 A in detail we would choose that view first then view the graphs for each cell one at a time We can also produce this graph for an entire selection of cells This way we could look to see how a district or zone was doing as a whole This is done by un checking the Graph individual cells and entering our cell selection criteria This graph can also be accessed from the H button in the cell browse 64 Cells The Cell Tree A Better View of your Cell Structure Once you ve entered your cell groups and assigned their parent fields you will be able to get an overall view of your cell structure by using the cell tree The cell tree list your cells in an outline or tree diagram similar to that used by Windows Explorer Cell Tree 29 cells OF x Pag Pastor Cell John Maxwell es 1 a Buchert B ese 1 4 Chip Montana S 1 A 1 Tina Logan 38 1 4 1 4 Adam Brighton EN 1 4 1 C Jim Chapman d 1 4 1 D Sandra Kennedy 1 4 1 E Brian Sullivan EI ese 1 Kg 2 John Bivona S 1 4 2 4 John Bivona EN
61. cccccccccseececeeseeeeeeeaeeeeeeeaeeeeeeeaeeeeeeeaeeeeeeeaaeess 136 Importing and Exporting arar r nari arer EENT EEEN AAA 140 Importing Church Attendance with Barcodes 142 AppendiX E 145 Browse Columns ttt ttttt ettr tnne ttnt EEE EESAASE EEE EEEE E Sstt nE EEn EEnnnnt 145 Member Pictures 145 See 145 TECHNICAL Support sccssessicenassssssnsdensensnansedesennsssinssed sencnanassntasandsensnanedensnansest 150 Installation Chapter 1 Installation System Requirements Minimum requirements Pentium 233 Mhz or higher PC compatible running Windows 95 98 NT 100MB free disk space 32MB RAM Screen resolution of 800 X 600 or better Recommended requirements Pentium 300 or higher PC compatible running Windows 95 98 NT 100MB free disk space 64MB RAM Network Multi user requirements Any network environment such as Novell or Windows NT that supports workstations running Windows 95 or above where the main database file can be stored in one central location accessible by the users Installing Excellerate Close any running programs before installing Excellerate Single Computer Installation To install Excellerate simply insert the CD into your CD ROM drive and the setup program will start automatically If Autorun is disabled on your computer then from the Start Menu Run command type D SETUP where D is the letter of your CD ROM drive After the installation program completes Excellerate will be loaded on to your comp
62. ccording to their willingness and gifting Your cell leaders may wish to have a worship leader intern a cell leader intern and an outreach intern simultaneously The cell supervisor is a field that can be used for another individual besides the cell s district and zone pastors that is responsible for the cell This could be your children s pastor if you have children s cells Those cells may be overseen by the district and zone pastors in one way but also by the children s pastor in another Parent cells are the key to how the cell hierarchy is represented in Excellerate By assigning a parent cell to a new cell you have connected the new cell to the cell hierarchy See the section below on representing your cell structure in Excellerate for more information on parent fields The generation fields show what generation the cell is in relation to the associated parent field whether it be Organizational or Birth parent The generation is automatically calculated any time a parent field is changed Use these fields to track other cell information you church may be interested in These field names can be set up in program preferences 50 Cells Cells Associated Information Tabs Associated Information Tabs appear in the bottom portion of each cells s screen and contain various information associated with the cell group The following five associated information tabs are available from within the cell edit screen
63. cells Those cells may be overseen by the District and Zone pastors in one way but also by the children s pastor in another 13 Getting Started User Definable Fields Although Excellerate is designed to track many aspects of your church members cells classes and organizations there may be items specific to your church that are not already included in the program This section allows you to specify your names for the user defined fields throughout the program You may want to know if a member has any pets for example and could designate the Members User field as Pets The user fields can be setup as regular text entry fields or pick lists To specify that a user field is a pick list select the appropriate pick list type next to the user field For example F means forced pick lists or that the user can only choose a value from the pick list O means optional pick list so the user can choose an item from the list or type in their own N means no pick list See Pick lists under the Preferences menu option for setting up values for your pick lists Contribution Options Before using the contribution module you should verify several program options within Excellerate to ensure they are set according to your church operation Contribution Program Options OF x Calculate Hash totals using MemberlD v Next available receipt number 735 Default contribution account code GF e F Use same code until
64. ch Celi Leader Report Form Cell Type Family Cell Leader Cell 1 A 1 District Brandon Ellis Cindy Abed y Mecingdwe Zone Grant S Samuel Sun Mon Tue Wed Thur Fri Sat Circle one For week ending 1 9 1999 Missionary Pray for Kevin Graves 1 14 99 1 00 00 PM Nursing Home SouthHaven Retirement Ctr Indicate any of the following below Idem Intern2 Intern3 Do not include the cell leader in totals Carruth Yaney 225 529 5120 Corona Tammy M 123 456 7890 Cox Anita 123 456 7890 Dossey Beth 225 775 5995 Dossey Mary 225 775 5995 Faust Thomas 123 456 7890 Fleming Jewell 225 554 4005 Haddox David Wayne 123 456 7890 Maggio Steven Keith 123 456 7890 Pace Walter AlSam 225 573 4271 Smith Linda 225 775 2440 Zimmerman Wilmot 123 456 7890 Zito Judy 225 557 9102 TOTALS Salvations chicren Members Visitors Total Present e Evaluations Testimonies Problems OOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOO INEXT WEEK MEETING INFO Day Sun Mon Tue Wed Thur Fri Sat circle one Location 105 Reporting Cell Meeting Report by Division New Life Cell Church Celi Meetings Summary Report District 1 09 27 98 10 03 98 Zone Cells 4 Cells not reported SubTotals Mtgs 4 Cells did not meet Cells 13 Cells not reported Mtgs 1413 Cells did not meet Cells 13 Cells not reported Mtgs 11 Cells did not meet Cells 14 Cells not reported Mtgs 14
65. changed Default contribution type Cash X Default member lookup field Member D X Accounting Period YYYYMM 2001 01 V Show member name when entering contributions M Allow editing member contributions after they have been posted IV Prompt before resetting account totals TI Canadian receipt number generation and tracking on contribution statements 31 2000 Date last contribution statements printed updated IRS Message to appear on Member Contribution Statments No goods or services were exchanged for monies received Your Message to appear on Member Contribution Statments OK Cancel Help 14 Getting Started Hash totals While entering contributions Excellerate can calculate hash totals for you to ensure that all of the contributions have been entered correctly Hash totals are either the sum of the member IDs or envelope numbers that are entered into a contribution batch You would compare your pre calculated hash total to the one generated by the program to verify all contributions have been entered You can choose to calculate hash totals by Member ID Envelope or None Next available receipt number Excellerate assigns unique receipt numbers to each contribution so that a receipt can be printed if necessary This option allows you to choose the next available number Default contribution account code When entering contributions Excellerate can set the default account c
66. chart Then add your district cells or whatever you call your first level cells and set their organizational parent to be the head cell Continue with your other cells in this manner until you have them all entered and assigned parents 56 Cells When adding your cells you start by entering their division fields Your church may choose not to use all four of these division fields This is defined by the names you ve chosen for the division in the program options screen If you left a division blank that field would not appear in the cell screen To enter cell 1 A 2 B you would set District 1 Zone A Section 2 and Cell B If this were a District cell 1 you would only enter District 1 The Cell field would be blank unless you wanted to make it clear that this was a district cell by putting the word District in the cell name field The cell field identifies this cell within the given division hierarchy This can be a letter number or up to an eight character name The actual name of the cell will be the combination of the division and cell fields unless you chose not to use the divisions as the cell name in the preferences screen Then the cell name will appear as just the value in the cell field Here are some example cell names e 5 A 1 B e MyChurch 5 A 1 B 5 A 1 Teens e Chicago East 1 B If you choose not to use the divisions in naming a cell then you may designate a simple name similar to the following Kevin s T
67. choose to default member s attendance to Present Absent Use last weeks attendance or to turn off cell attendance The Prompt for meeting updates option specifies when you would like the program to remind you to run the update for cell meeting totals In order to be able to track your churches cell growth you will enter weekly cell meeting totals into the system This usually consists of entering the number of members visitors etc for each cell You must also record that certain cells did not meet or did not turn in a meeting report The update for cell meeting totals option goes through your list of current active cells after you ve made any cell information changes and entered your meeting totals and makes sure you ve made an entry for each cell If not the update will automatically make an entry for you indicating that the cell did not turn in a report You can then print a list these cells if you need to follow up with them It is OK if some cells don t turn in a report but the system must have an entry for each cell every week and the update ensures this Email Options Excellerate has the ability to send email messages You will need to have an SMTP outgoing mail server to take advantage of this feature See the section on setting up email in the Internet Integration chapter of this manual Web Options The web integration feature allows you to integrate data from Excellerate with your church web site See the secti
68. cific session or you could add the member to all sessions of the class by using the Assign to all sessions button If a class session has already been assigned a date and time that information will be filled in automatically for you If the member has already attended this class or session check the Attended box As members complete each session of the class you can simply double click their record in the Attended column This will change their status to Attended for you and remove them from this list of current attendees You will still be able to look at the members screen to see the classes and sessions they have completed but this screen will only show current or future attendees Adding members to classes can also be done from within the members screen 75 Organizations Chapter 7 Organizations The Organizations Module is used to keep track of church organizations such as the choir orchestra prayer teams or other committees You could use organizations for any group that does not require tracking detailed attendance With organizations you basically just assign members to them and print out member rosters and other lists To view the organizations module use the button or hit the F8 key Excellerate 1 0N2 c Program Files Excellerate database mdb File Edit View Reports Options Utilities Help Organizations E a IO Name e a D ate Started User REES TE WE S 3 DS 3 Choir Church 1 1 84 5 InnerCity Outre
69. computers are upgraded to the same version of the software 10 Getting Started Chapter 2 Getting Started Creating your New Database The first time Excellerate is started you will see the First time setup screen First time setup EN M The following database has not been created C PROGRAM FILES EXCELLERATE database mdb IF this is your first time running excellerate you will need to create a new database Choose the Create new database button below If this is your first time running excellerate and you will be using it over a network the database may be located on your network server Choose Open other database and locate the database on your network server If you are trying to open an existing database the one specified above does not exist Choose Open other database or create a new one Open other database Cancel This screen appears when it cannot find the Excellerate database For a single user setup choose Create new database If this is a multi user network setup and the database has already been installed on your file server choose Open other database and locate the database on the file server The ID and password for your new database is MANAGER and the USER ID is SETUP This ID gives you full access to all program functionality You may and should change the password to prevent unauthorized users from having full access 11 Getting Started
70. d Send to website V Cells V Members J Meeting history Export and Send to web Allow web entry of cell meeting reports for dates in the past 14 days Retrieve Retrieve from web View cell meeting screen Print cell meeting report First choose what data you want on the site You will need to choose Cells and Members if you want to use online cell meeting reporting Meeting history can be uploaded for those who wish to write their own scripts to take advantage of the past 12 weeks of cell meeting history Also choose the number of days back from today that you want to allow for entering meeting history By default it is set for 14 which will allow entering meeting history for the past two weeks Now you can use the Send to web button to export your cell and member data and upload it to the web site By default all non sensitive member information fields are uploaded to the web site To see what those fields actually are look at the website map file located in the Excellerate folder You can modify this file to remove any other fields that you do not want to be uploaded to your web site 119 Internet Integration Now your web site is ready for web integration By default the following URLs will run the scritps Of course replace WWW MYCHURCH COM with your web site and cgi bin will be the name of your CGI directory www mychurch com cgi bin exform pl logs into weekly cell meeting entry www mychurch
71. der report form These tags must appear in the report form If you do not want input tags displayed for user input set their TYPE HIDDEN Display cell information tags required Cell Name for the cell s name Cell LeaderName for the cell s leader s name Input tags for cell information required These fields will be validated when the form s script is called DATE gt text TOPIC gt text LEADBY gt text DIDNTMEET gt checkbox Input tags for cell meeting information and totals required These fields will be validated when the form s script is called MEMTOTAL gt text VISITORS gt text CHILDREN gt text SALVATIONS gt text USER1 gt text USER2 gt text USER3 gt text USER4 gt text 125 Internet Integration The following tags are optional To display cell member information on the form wrap the member section in comment tags like this lt Exc MemberInfo gt Include in this area the html you want to use to display member information tables are usually used Keep in mind that whatever is between these comment brackets will be repeated for each cell group member lt Exc MemberInfo gt If you want a specific member field to show up in the cell member information area include the field name with delimiters such as Field_Name For example to show a member s first and lastname use Mem_FirstLastName The delimiters are crucial If you want the birthdate and
72. der screen then modify the SQL statement in the SQL window to meet your needs You should have a pretty good understanding of SQL before attempting to create or edit advanced views For views to be able to prompt the user for a value in an expression use the parameter notation Dn where n is a value between 0 and 9 For example to select Members by MemberType and have the view ask for MemberType use the following SQL statement SELECT DISTINCTROW Members FROM Members WHERE Members MemberType P0 The PO will actually get replaced by the value you are prompted for There is one special parameter call the Attendees Parameter PA This parameter prompts the user for the number of attendees in a cell meeting This value is usually compared to the Total field in the Cell Meetings Table for finding the cells with less than a certain number of attendees The following are some guidelines that must be followed when working with advanced views 97 Views Always use uppercase letters for the SQL keywords For example SELECT WHERE ORDER etc Always place the ORDER clause at the end of the statement Any expression containing a parameter must be enclosed in parentheses and must have spaces around the operator for example SELECT DISTINCTROW Members FROM Members INNER JOIN MemberSteps ON Members MemberlID MemberSteps MemberID WHERE MemberSteps Step P1 ORDER BY Members Lastname Remember Excellerate uses the Micr
73. e field Member Development Report The Member Development Report shows your members progress through the Member Steps and Classes It is useful in seeing how far along they ve come in their development process This report can be printed for the current member or the current view of members Member Counseling Meetings Report The Member Counseling Meetings Report lists details of your members counseling sessions or meetings These could be prior or future meetings You can specify a specific counselor if desired and the meeting date range to print This report uses report styles which can be modified to suit your needs Counselor s Report This report is very similar to the Member Counseling Meetings Report except that the member report is grouped by member and this report is grouped by counselor This is helpful for a senior pastor to review the meetings of his counselors Again this report can be modified 102 Reporting Follow up Report The Sponsor s Follow up Report allows you to print a lists of people that someone is responsible for following up with This report finds members woe follow up sponsor ID matches the person your printing the report for This may be for a district pastor section leader or cell leader This report can use different report styles to produce a variety of results Visitor Report The Visitor Report allows you to print a lists of visitors from both the member and pre member modu
74. e inactive for a period of time before re activating it then inactivate the cell by choosing the inactive status within the cell s edit screen Assigning Members to Cells Members can be assigned to a cell group from either the member edit screen or the cell edit screen To add a cell member from the cell edit screen choose the cell members associated information tab and hit the ZE button to add a new cell member Cell Member E Member of Cell 1 4 1 4 Member _ D2 Date Joined jor 26 2000 Make this their Primary cell Cancel From this screen simply choose the member you wish to add to the cell from the member pick list The members must already be entered into the member module before you can add them to a cell You can also specify the date the member has joined the cell 58 Cells To assign cell members from the member screen choose the Cell Groups Associated Information Tab from the members edit screen Use the E button to add the member to a cell group Join a Cell Group E Member Joe Adams S List only 1 4 1 Geier aA peer TI List All Cells Date Joined for 26 00 Make this their Primary cell Cancel Help From the screen use the drop down pick list to choose the cell to join By default this pick list will show the cells in the division that the member has been assigned to For example if the member has been assigned to 1 A 1 or District 1 Zone A and Section 1
75. e Jamison ph 323 4231 Erin brought her sister Amy Adam was sick so we prayed for his health Good meeting Everyone participated 29909m Member Taylor Bob Yes 4 D 4 gt al z gt Change Selection Cell Members Add Edit Delete Save Cancel Delete There is a lot of information on the screen at first glance but we tried to put all of the functionality you need while entering cell meeting totals in one screen This way you won t have to get out of one screen into another to add a cell member etc Basically the screen works like this All of the cells that you are responsible for are listed in the window on the left This will be the cells in your current view so if you work with district 1 cells these will be the only ones you see here The middle window lists the current cell members of the cell highlighted on the left The window on the right is where you record the totals for the meeting 68 Cells To start entering totals you simple specify which cell week you are reporting for You can do this by typing in the dates or by using the calendar button Then you just fill in the fields for the meetings You only have to enter the date and topic one time and they will be carried over to each cell meeting for you The person who led the cell meeting will already be set to the cell leader but you can change that if another member led the meeting Enter the totals from the cell leader report form and
76. e distribution window Notice the Pledge window on the right side of the screen This window lists any pledges for the selected member If the pledges are active their dates are current you can use the Post using pledges button to post these amounts as a contribution When you are done entering contributions into the batch use the Done button This will exit the entry process and take you to the batch screen Editing a contribution From the batch screen you can add edit or delete contributions To edit simply double click the contribution or highlight it and press enter The contribution will appear as if you were entering it All of the member s contributions will appear in the Posted for this member window and you can click on any one of them to change them To delete an entry highlight the entry in the batch screen and click delete Loose Cash Loose cash contributions can also be entered into Excellerate even though it is not posted to any particular member This is helpful so that you can track and report the total amount of income received regardless of whether or not you know whom it was from To enter loose cash during batch entry just choose a member ID of zero This will post the contribution to the Loose Cash Contribution screen These contributions will not be reported on the Member Contribution Statements because they are not assigned to any member but will be included in any contribution reports These co
77. e last contribution statements that were printed Excellerate will then prevent generating new receipt numbers for these same contributions You can reprint those statements by using a re print report style This style will use the same receipt number that printed on the original statements Basically Excellerate will prevent the use of a report style that generates a new receipt number for contributions earlier than this date IRS Message to appear on Member Contribution Statements This allows you to enter the required IRS message that should appear on the Member Contribution Statements Your message to appear on Member Contribution Statements This allows you to enter your own message on the statements 16 Getting Started Cell Group Options Next in the Cell Group Options box you must answer several questions about how your cell groups are organized Cell Group Options Bisi Xx T Include children in cell meeting totals TI Cell leaders are also members of the cell ER Cell week starts on Monday ad Default Cell Attendance Absent OI Prompt for meeting updates After entering meeting totals Before printing summary report Don t prompt Cancel Help e If you want children included in your cell group meeting totals then check the first box There is a separate total for children as well but if you want them totaled with the member and visitor counts then select this option
78. eate a Control cell group for Zone 1 A and assign the zone pastor to be the leader of that cell Now to show that cell 1 A is under cell 1 set cell 1 A s Organizational Parent Cell to the district cell 1 You would also create a cell 1 B and set it s Organizational Parent Cell to district cell 1 You would continue in this manner until you get to your actual cells which would be placed under the section control cells By setting the cell s parent field you are placing it under another cell 53 Cells Remember control cells are for district zone section and cells that do not have any members To make a cell a control cell you set the cell s type field to Control Control cells do not meet and do not have any members These cells will not appear on weekly meeting total reports The control cells appear as pastor icons in the cell tree below In the following example we have created these control cells in district 1 District cells 1 Keith Buchert Zone cells 1 A Chip Montana 1 B Tom Gess Section cells 1 A 1 TinaLogan 1 A 2 John Bivona 1 A 3 Hank Sinclair 1 A 4 Charles Payne Now we can assign real cells 1 A 1 A 1 A 1 C 1 A 1 D and 1 A 1 E to section cell 1 A 1 Tina Logan E SS Pastor s Cell John Maxwell t 1 Keith Buchert 1 4 Chip Montana S 1 4 1 Tina Logan 88 1 4 1 4 Adam Brighton E 1 4 1 C Hm Chapman d 1 4 1 B Sandra Kennedy 1 4 1 E Brian Sullivan 13
79. ed with the member The following nine associated information tabs are available from within the member edit screen Family Follow up Profiles Member Steps Organizations Visits Counsels Classes Member History Cell Groups Cell Attendance Contributions Pledges Lists any family members and their vital information Includes date member joined how they heard about the church and other follow up information Hobbies interests or any other member attribute Steps in the members development cycle such as water baptism becoming a participator or becoming a leader Organizations within the church in which the member participates such as worship team or children s church Records any visits or counseling sessions with pastors Including time location and any notes from the session List of classes that the member has attended or is scheduled to attend History of any changes in member information such as address changes or name changes Notes name of cell group a member is in along with cell type and date the member joined the cell Lists each cell meeting that the member has attended Lists member contributions and their pledges Church Attendance Lists each church service that the member has attended 39 Pre Members Members and Pastors The Family Member tab allows you to see all of the members of a family Double clicking a family member will bring up their screen Family membe
80. eeeeesenees 33 Member Sree Ee 35 Member Addresses ss s s Jeecc se Soeasennee ssdadayedasivanccudacesadssatacesudageseds setageessabebeeasicen 38 Members Associated Information Tabs cccccccccccccceceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeteeeteeeteess 39 Adding RO Me 42 Adding Family Members 43 Editing Member Information 0c ccccceeceeeeeeneeeeeeeeeeeeecaceeaeeeeeeeeesenncnineeeeeees 43 Deleting Members csc ite ahaa EE E EE Aen 43 Searching for Members 44 Pes MGMbersizctn state ne eC at ee eg 45 Chapter Zellerie edd 47 Cel S ChE EE 48 Cells Associated Information Tabs c ccccccscccsseeseeeaseeaeeeaeeeaseeaeeeaeeeaeeeaees 51 Representing Your Cell Structure in Excellerate ccceccecceeeeeseecteeeeeeees 53 et ue Wer TEE 56 Editing Cell Information cccccccceecceeeeeeeeeeccneeeeeeeeeeeeccnaaeeeaeeeeetesnnnneeeeeess 58 Deleting Cell sie dees eegrergtererersdege erger 58 Assigning Members to Cells 58 Primary and Secondary Cells cence aaeeeesetececeeeeeeeeeeetenneas 59 Searching for Cells ccccccecceeecceeeceeeeeeeeeeecceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeeeeeeeseneieeeeeeeeeeee 60 Multiplying a Cell 61 Viewing Cell Growth cccccccecceeceeeeenceeeeeeeeeeccccaaeeeeeeeeescccaceeeeeeeeeeeeeenceeeeeees 62 The Cell Tree A Better View of your Cell Structure cccceceesceeeseereeeeeees 65 The Cell Organizational Chart 67 Entering Cell Meeting Totals and Attendance
81. een Life Singles Remember if the cell is a district zone or section cell and does not have any members it s type field should be set to Control so it will not ask for meeting totals or show up on weekly reports Also assign the cell leader by choosing a member from the pick list Again if this is a district 1 cell the leader would be the district 1 pastor and so on Next assign the cell s Organizational Parent field by picking the parent from the drop down pick list This parent may be a district zone or section cell or in a G12 structure it may be any cell that this leader belongs to Now you will add the members of the cell This is done by simply clicking the add button in the cell member associated information tab and picking the member from the pick list You can also enter any activities that this cell is involved with 57 Cells Editing Cell Information To edit a cell record simply double click it press enter or use the edit button Once you ve made your changes save them with the V swe save button or cancel your changes with the X cancel button Deleting Cells There are two methods of deleting cells If the cell was entered by mistake or you do not wish to keep any history of the cell and wish to delete it use the button from the cell browse This will remove the cell from the database If you wish to delete the cell but want to keep history on it or it is really only going to b
82. embers You can send emails to an individual member or to an entire view of members Email messages can be formatted with different fonts and colors as well as include merge fields and file attachments Excellerate s report styles can be modified to include email addresses and automatically emailed to those members Setting up EMAIL To setup Excellerate s email feature go to the Options menu then Preferences and choose the Email options button Mail Settings of x SMTP Server mail yourmailserver csom SMTP Pott 25 User ID Jusername Default Return Email Addr pete youmai com Default Return Name Pete Maxwell Maximum email addresses in the TO or CC fields 25 SMTP Server This is the out going email server name or IP address A typical server name might be MAIL MYCHURCH COM or SMTP MYCHURCH COM SMTP Port This is the port number for the SMTP server and is usualy 25 UserID This is the userid for the SMTP server assigned to you when you set up your email Default Return Email This is the default return email address that can appear on your messages Default Return Name This is the default name of the sender that canl appear on your messages 129 Internet Integration Maximum email addresses in the TO or CC fields When sending emails to a list of members Excellerate will try to put as many email addresses in the TO or CC field of a message that it can The maximum number of
83. embers option in the Utility menu This option can not be recovered from unless you have a backup so use caution The remove option requires database security to perform The other choice in the member status field is Inactive This is similar to delete but you can not remove inactive members This option would be used to hide 43 Pre Members Members and Pastors members that are no longer active in the church but may have given contributions this year The system will need to keep these members until all contribution reports are printed At that time those members can be deleted Searching for Members find button There are two ways to search for members First is to use the Lastname Firstname MemberlD Envelope Phone I Or Find In field Status d Cancel This method allows you to quickly search by several fields This type of search will return all members matching the search criteria in a search results view Hit escape to return to the previous view The other way to search is to simply start typing a few letters of the members name Search for EN The Search for window appears This method will take you to the first occurrence of the last name that matches the search criteria in the current view You can also search for the last name comma first name This will not find a member that is not in the current view 44 Pre Members Members and Pastors Pre Members Once
84. enient to have that data on hand you may be able to improve performance in the contribution module by removing those old contributions The remove old contributions option allows you to first make a copy of your current database to a backup file then to delete contributions for previous years that have already been reported This way the size of your 134 Utilities current database is reduced improving performance and you can always open the backup copy of the database to access the removed contributions After removing the old contributions it is a good idea to run the Reindex Compact utility Re Index Compact Database When Excellerate removes deleted records from the database the space they took up on the hard disc is not necessarily recovered If you have deleted a large number of records from the system you could run the Re Index Compact Database utility option to recover that space This operation requires DATABASE security level 135 Utilities Remove Old Locks Excellerate will periodically put locks on information that is being updated by users In the event of a power failure or some other reason for improperly exiting Excellerate there may be a lock left open If you receive a message indicating a user has something in use and you know for sure this is not the case you can use this option to remove that lock This should rarely happen This option requires DATABASE security Edit History Fields The Me
85. ent numbers c for characters and for parentheses Enter your names for The next section will allow you to specify your choice of names for your cell divisions cell interns and cell supervisors Cell divisions refer to the method you use to organize your cell groups For example you may divide your area or city into Districts Zones and Sections For larger organizations it may be necessary to label the divisions as Congregation District Zone and Section for example Enter your names in the four division fields starting with Division1 as your biggest division It is not necessary to use all of the available fields for divisions If your church has two divisions simply leave the other fields blank The cell designation does not need to be specified here that field is always labeled Cell For example for cell group 1 A 5 B which stands for District Zone Section Cell only specify Div1 District Div2 Zone Div3 Section The Cell identifier is recorded in a separate field within the cell group file The program also allows you three fields for naming cell intern types which gives your church the flexibility to have several intern types such as a cell intern a worship intern possibly a youth intern The final designation is for a cell supervisor or an individual that acts as manager or overseer of another cell This might be helpful for your children s pastor if you have children s
86. eporting for a specific contribution As with other member reports you can choose to exclude certain members based on the mail code If you want the member contributions reported to the whole family you would choose one of the family reporting options instead of individual members 109 Reporting If there are certain family members that you wish to receive their statement separately from their family you can indicate that in the member s edit screen under the contribution tab If you selected the Canadian option in contribution preferences and choose the Canadian report style Excellerate will provide functionality to generate receipt numbers on your contribution statements These receipt numbers will be stored in the member s change history and once the statements have printed correctly those contributions are protected from generating a new receipt number This is done by setting the Date last contribution statements printed field in the contribution options screen Those statements can be re printed with the original receipt number by choosing the re print report style Here is an example of a member contribution statement New Life Cell Church 1100 Germantown Rd Cordova TN 38018 Joe Adams Date 12 19 99 11212 Dogwood Ln Member ID 6 Cordova TN 38018 Contributions for 01 01 1999 12 31 1999 02 24 1999 200 00 GeneralFund 124 02 24 1999 200 00 Missions 124 02 10 1999 25 43 General Fund Chec
87. er These codes can be excluded from mail outs You can use any code that is meaningful to you Typically N would be used to designate that this member should not receive any mail outs The Envelope Number field allows you to assign a contributions envelope number to the member so that their contributions can be entered by simply looking up this number as opposed to searching for their name Envelope is one of the quick search fields available in member searches 36 Pre Members Members and Pastors Comments The Comments field can be used for recording any comments or other information for which there is no specific field You can enter as much information in this field as you wish The Comments field automatically expands when you place the cursor in this field to allow you to see more information When you go to another field it shrinks back to its original size Comments can also be included on reports User1 4 The user fields can be renamed in the preferences option to any other item that your church wants to track for it s members These fields can be set up to accept any value or values from a pick list The Cell Group Information section will show what cell group if any the user belongs to Since this field is underlined in blue you can also double click it to jump directly to their cell group The fields below specify what divisions the member is assigned to Members can be assigned to divisions but not necessarily a cell
88. er program will you need the password If you are setting the database password for the first time you will leave the current password blank and only specify a new one When you set a database password in Excellerate it will be converted to all uppercase letters so if you want to open the database with another application remember to use all uppercase When setting a database password Excellerate makes a temporary copy of the database so be sure you have enough disk space available to hold the temporary file Also no other users can be using Excellerate when you change the password Remove Members When you delete a member in Excellerate the member record is still in the system and can be viewed by viewing the Deleted Inactive members This is so that history can be kept on these members and so that you can recover the member if you deleted them by mistake To permanently remove deleted members you use the Remove Deleted Members option in the Utility menu This option can not be recovered from unless you have a backup so use caution 133 Utilities Remove Deleted Members iof x This option will PERMANENTLY remove deleted members from the system Ce Remove all deleted members C Remove curent member only l Print Member list before deleting Print Detailed Member report before deleting i Dont print a report DELETE Cancel When using this option you have the choice to remove al
89. esacesacaaks 99 Reports and VieWS geesde e hate eine die ee 99 Report SIV OS tiie entregedegeereege goe def pte Z gege Gat antes 100 Member Reports A 101 Cell REPOS eens EENS 104 Class REPOS E he tsi eel ee er 108 Organization Repotts eeeeseeeeeeeeeeestskrtttttttttttt tt rtntttttE ttn tnttnt entr Ennan Enne nnnn ernn 108 Contribution Reports 2 00 eccccccceceeceenneceeeeeaaeeeeeeeaaeeeeeeeaaeeeeeeeaaaeeeeeeaaaeeeeeeaaas 109 Custom Heports EEEE 113 Mail Merge 116 Chapter 12 Internet Integration ccccseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeseeeeeeeseeeeee 117 Web Mee Le 117 Setting up Web Integration 117 Using web Imtegraton REEERE OE RR 120 Modifying Web integration to fit your website 121 List of Excellerate s Web Integration Files 0 cccccccecceesseeeceeeeeeeeeeneeeaeens 128 IVA seer cater enee ee 129 Setting up EMAIL 129 USINGIEMAIL eege ees ee egedegeder 130 Merge Fields h EMA Lesa ac cewadcnite seeasicn cennaiis tnsitens E uediedies NS EE d 131 0 dl e Beie CG 132 Chapter 13 Utilities eed uerge eege eu eed Eege Gidiitlanaeiediss 133 Change User Password 133 Set Database Password 133 Remove Members 133 Remove Old Contributions 134 Re Index Compact Database cccccccccccccsceeeceeeeaeeeeaeeeeaeeeeaeeeeaeeeeaeeeeatess 135 Remove Old Locke 136 Edit History e E EH 136 Edit Required Fields 136 Update Cell Meeting History 136 Enter Church Attendance ccccc
90. etc This allows staff members to log on quickly to access basic information such as phone numbers and addresses 20 Getting Started Logging on Once you ve setup your preferences and users you can now log into the system Excellerate 1 3b ES excellerate Copyright c 1999 2000 MicroSystemDesign Registered to New Church Logon C Program Files Excellerate sample mdb ml Enter User ID Enter password E Cancel Help Program Registration You must enter your registration The logon screen prompts you for your User ID and password The default User ID is MANAGER and the password is SETUP The logon prompt shows you the database that you are logging in to If you wish to log into a different database you can hit the button which will prompt you for a database information into Excellerate to enable its full functionality From the Utilities menu choose Program Registration Program Registration EN Enter the registration name and m Registration registration code that were provided Registration Name with your purchase of Excellerate Registation Code This information will be located on the inside cover of the user manual The Configuration 0s in the registration code are Demo E Network Version Zero s It is also important that you Under 500 Members choose the configuration that you Unlimited Members purchased Under 500 or Unlimited C
91. fo Tabs When you are editing a record the top half of the screen will contain the pertinent information for that record and the bottom half of the screen will contain a series of associated information tabs These tabs will contain more information that is associated with the record Member Information Iof x Member ID 9237 Status 4 Last Abed Frstlcndn Middle M Prefix irs d 2 eae VA Save Inactive Eamily Abed Cindy 13795 Relation Spouse Marital Married gt Sutt C Deleted 4 x d fosm D d Occup Camera Operator Home 123 456 7690 Cl Group Information e GE raf Employer NCC Communications Work 123 456 0983 1A Wise Student gt Mobile District 1 d Mail Code JN SexIM e mail et Envelope 9237 Zone H SE Amgoershansaeer pirthforoineco FAX C gf Bla Addresses V Split family addresses Comments Age Bs 4 Home Available for filming User J0585502 d AII770DD North Blvd Apt 3 sunday morning User cel services User CelMepper Sponsor users Brown Cindy L BEA t Baton Rouge LA 70808 1148 MemberStess Dae Completed Comments _ _ o oS D Water Baptism 01 06 1998 Completed mm baptized at the cell group __ Christianity 101 03 11 1998 Completed Encounter Retreat 05 22 1998 Completed Cindy feels a calling into the ministry E Discipleship 201 08 11 1998 Discovery Seminar 11 28 1998 Leadership 301 01 14 1999 For example the member scree
92. g Started Allow editing contributions after they have been posted If you want to be able to add edit and delete contributions after they have been updated from batch entry check this box Typically you would not want to allow this but if your church is smaller and doesn t require the batch entry process contributions could be added by going to the member edit screen and to the Contribution associated information tab Prompt before resetting account totals When Excellerate detects the current date has changed into a new month quarter or year it will prompt you to be sure it is ok to advance the system to the next accounting period and to reset the old monthly quarterly or appropriate totals If you do not want to be prompted uncheck this box Canadian receipt number generation and tracking on contribution statements This option is available for countries such as Canada that require receipt number tracking on their contribution statements This option will generate unique receipt numbers for each statement and those numbers will be stored in the member s change history Once the statements have printed correctly those contributions are protected from generating a new receipt number but those statements can be re printed with the original receipt number by choosing the re print report style Date last contribution statements printed updated When the Canadian option is selected this field records the date of th
93. g the cell member record and hitting the Move to new cell button To remove the member from a cell use the same process but leave the To Cell blank The Cell Attendance tab shows which cell meetings this member has attended Each cell meeting is listed indicating whether the member attended or not The Contributions Pledges tab shows the member s contribution summary and a choice of seeing their individual contributions their family contributions or their pledges These contributions can be edited from this screen if the program options have been set to allow it The Church Attendance tab shows the date that this member has attended a church service Time in and out can also be recorded which is useful for checking children in and out of children s church Adding Members To add a new member to the system simply Dress he E add button or hit insert while viewing the member browse When adding new members there are several Required Fields that must be entered before you can save the entry You can specify which fields are required fields in the Utility menu For new members of a new family you do not need to select a family The program will automatically create a new family entry for you 42 Pre Members Members and Pastors Adding Family Members While adding a new member you can quickly add another family member by clicking the W button for the family members tab This will save your current member and add a new rec
94. g the edit button for the tab The edit screen for cell meeting totals is a shorter version of the Mass Cell Meeting Totals Entry screen accessible from the cell browse You would use the Mass Cell Meeting Totals Entry screen on a weekly basis for entering all of your cell totals but this tab allows you to easily see and maintain the meeting totals for a particular cell The Cell History tab shows change history to the fields that are designated as history fields This list of history fields can be modified in the Utilities menu The Cell Attendance tab shows individual cell members attendance history Member s attendance can be modified here by double clicking the Attended column Again on a weekly basis you would use the Mass Cell Meeting Totals Entry screen for recording attendance for all of your cells but this tab shows the attendance for one particular cell Representing Your Cell Structure in Excellerate In the following discussion we will use the names District Zone and Section to identify our divisions Your church may use other names If you were to draw a chart of your churches cell structure you would probably draw an organizational chart with cells listed under district zone and section pastors In Excellerate to represent cells as being under the district 1 pastor for example you would create a Control cell group for district 1 Then assign the district 1 pastor to be the leader of that cell Next you would cr
95. ham NW 1 4 1 C Hm Chapman bed 1 4 1 D Sandra Kennedy Terry Baker ZS 1 4 1 E Brian Sullivan e B 1 4 2 John Bivona SS 1 4 3 Hank Sinclair sz foe 1 4 4 Charles Payne SS 1 B Tom Gess 2 Bob Neal Organizational Parent Child BHAR D el EE In this example we see the members of cell group 1 A 1 A Just as you can drag and drop cell groups you can also move cell members Here Terry Baker is being moved from 1 A 1 A to group 1 A 1 D The normal cell move screen will appear asking for the reason why this member was moved If you double click a cell member you can go to their edit screen to make changes In a Groups of 12 structure when you right click a cell to see it s members it will look similar to the following Cell Tree 360 cells ojx B Senior Pastor Pete Maxwell So SES Brandon Ellis d Robert E Sulcer George G Storms Jesse C Moland Thaddeus D Holmes Robert Hayes i i i d Johnny Colbert 1 4 Grant S Samuel 1 B Lewis Taylor 1 C Hogan Moore 1 D Ron Craighead SS 2 Gant Atwell Cag 3 Jackie Benton a Organizational Parentchid ER el a E E A 66 Cells In this example we see Brandon s group of 12 Since he is encouraging his members to st
96. he cell table This type of search will return all cells matching the search criteria in a search results view Hit escape to return to the previous view The other way to search is to simply start typing a few letters of the cell name Search for EN The Search for window appears This method will take you to the first occurrence of the cell name that matches the search criteria in the current view This will not find a cell that is not in the current view 60 Cells Multiplying a Cell When a cell group grows in size it becomes time to multiply into two or more groups From the cell that needs to multiply use the Multiply Cell button to create a new cell group and to move members to the new group Multiply Cell Eg Create new cell group District Zone Section Cell Existing Cell fi D a d H E E Ven Cel AE Jl d fi II Jl View Cells IT d Se ae New cell should be under old cell New Leader SI C New cell should be under old parent Double click members to move MemberType MemberName Phone ___ Datelained Move H Carruth Yaney 123 456 7890 10 23 1998 Y Corona Tammy M 123 456 7890 06 30 1998 Y Cox Anita 123 456 7890 06 30 1998 _Create Cel Dossey Beth 123 456 7890 10 15 1998 Y Dossey Mary 123 456 7890 10 14 1998 Y Faust Thomas 123 456 7890 06 30 1998 Fleming Jewell 123 456 7890 10 14 1998 Haddox David Wayne 123 456 7890 06 30 1998 Maggio Steven Keith 123 456 7890 06 30
97. his will not cause any problems but it may be confusing to the users For this reason and the fact that you can affect your historical meeting totals by running this for a previous week you need Cell meeting update security to run the update Once you ve completed your cell meeting totals entry and have run the cell meeting update you are ready to print out your weekly cell meeting reports See the Reports chapter for more information 71 Cells Example of a Typical Cell Week We will take a look at the functions you may perform in a typical cell week to give you an idea of the events that may take place This is not a required list of activities this is just an example of some of them that might take place Add any new cells that may have been planted Update any new cell activities Make any cell changes member changes moves etc Multiply those cells that may have multiplied this week Check cell tree to see if our structure needs to be adjusted Send data files to web site if using Web Integration Print all of the cell leader reports for the week Retrieve cell meeting results from the web site if using Web Integration Enter cell meeting totals from the report forms that get turned in Print a missing cell reports list to see who hasn t turned in a report After all reports are turned in and processed run cell meeting update Print cell summary report for pastor Print weekly cell meeting reports for each
98. his without affecting all other users you would first use the saved view Now that the view is your current view you would edit it like a new view that you just created If you decide to keep this view you can change the description and save it just as you would a new view To delete a saved view use the Delete saved view button 96 Views Importing Exporting and Downloading Views from the Web Since there could be a very wide variety of useful views that a church may desire Excellerate allows you to import and export views to be exchanged with other churches and to take advantage of new views offered through our web site To export a view you can either export the current view or a saved view by choosing the appropriate export button When importing a view from a file use the Import view button and select the filename to import This view then becomes your current view You must save it to make it available for other users or to be able to choose it from the saved views in the future Views can be exchanged through our web site at www msdweb com When downloading a view from the web site remember where you save the file on your hard drive because once it is downloaded you will use the import view button to import it Advanced Views Advanced views are views in which the SQL statement has been customized beyond the basic capabilities of the view builder To create an advanced view you can start with the basic view buil
99. hitting the Auto Assign button you can assign the member to a set of divisions This may be a District for most cell churches The other buttons to the left of the address window on the member screen are for editing deleting and viewing the previous or next addresses Family addresses and Split addresses When a member is added to a family they automatically get assigned to the family address The family address is the address that is shared by all members of the family If you pull up one of the family members and change the address it is changed for all family members If you need to change the address for one of the family members then that members address needs to be split out from the family address To do this you would choose split family address from the member screen and this will make that members address separate from the rest of the family s Then changes can be made to that address without affecting the other family members If that family member decides to move back home and you want to un split their address you will need to do the following Remove the member from the family by using the family button and then selecting Remove member from family Save the member then re assign them to their original family 38 Pre Members Members and Pastors Members Associated Information Tabs Associated Information Tabs appear in the bottom portion of each members screen and contain various information associat
100. ield for the groups You may modify the script to search on a different field if needed Here is an example of the steps that would occur on a weekly basis Cell Meeting Results Web Host Settings Web Server Configuration FTP Utility Send Send to website V Cells Members Meeting history Export and Send to web Allow web entry of cell meeting reports for dates in the past 14 days Retrieve Retrieve from web View cell meeting screen Print cell meeting report 120 Internet Integration Use the Export and Send to web button on the web integration screen to upload new information to the web site Use the Retrieve from web button on the web integration screen to retrieve any cell meeting results that may have been entered Use the View cell meeting screen button to view any meetings that may have been retrieved from the web Meetings from the web will appear on the left with a red w next to the date of the meeting If you see w that means there are comments for that meeting that may require your manual intervention for adding a new member or visitor etc Any information that you request in your online cell leader report form that can not be directly imported into an Excellerate cell meeting entry will be included in the comments section of the cell meeting entry This way you can be flagged that there is more information and you can decide what to do with it Use the
101. ific to their area Simply hit the Add Zip button to enter a new zip code and the corresponding divisions You may also add zip codes as you use the program during member entry 23 Getting Started Member Steps Member Steps is also accessed from the Options menu List of Member Steps E E Encounter Retreat Discipleship 201 4 True Discovery Seminar 5 True Leadership 301 6 True Champions Retreat 7 False Add Step Change Step Delete Step z Assign all auto steps to each member Cancel Help The Member Steps option allows you to enter the Steps or Levels a member may go through in their spiritual development process These are milestones in a membere development so a class may be a step even though there is another module for entering more details on each class Whether your church has a highly defined system of discipleship classes or one that is more open ended the Member Steps option will be useful You may add steps at any time to this list You may also designate different steps as Auto Load steps All Auto Load steps can be loaded for a member at once so that it is easy to see which steps have been completed and which steps have not 24 Getting Started Member Profiles The Member Profiles option is where you enter a list of all possible attributes that you may want to keep for members These are typically things like hobbies t
102. ify Head if this member is the head of the household otherwise choose Spouse Child or leave blank This field is also used to determine how to address mailing labels when using the Mr amp Mrs option The family button allows you to assign the member to a family For new members of a new family do not choose a family and the system will create the family for you Then subsequent members can be assigned to the new family If a member needs to be removed from a family this button can do that as well The status field specifies the member s status This can be Active Inactive or Deleted Active members are current active members Inactive members are those that may have moved away but have given contributions in the past year These members must remain in the system until the end of the year Then they can be deleted Deleted members are marked for deletion These members can be permanently removed from the system at the end of the year Inactive and Deleted members can not be modified or assigned to cells classes etc The picture window is a thumbnail view of the picture assigned to this member See member pictures in the appendix for more information on assigning pictures The member type is used to classify the member These types can be setup by the user Pastor Type designates this member as a pastor The pastor types can be setup using the pick lists menu option Mail Code allows you to assign a code to the memb
103. ill be sorted by giving amount and can be run for a specific account Pledge Report and Pledge Projection Report The Pledge report lists member pledges and the Pledge Projection Report projects income based on member pledges 112 Reporting Custom Reports A custom report is a report that you create yourself These reports are similar to report styles except that you tell the report what data to report on This is actually done by building a view and a style and saving them in a custom report Custom reports can be created when there are not any other similar reports in the different modules For example if you want to create some sort of list of people it would be better to modify one of the Member report styles rather than creating a custom report Always check to see if you could modify an existing or create a new report style before deciding on building a custom report Custom Reports Bisi x Available Reports Picklists ZipCodes ew Modify Delete A Print Preview 113 Reporting Creating a Custom Report To create a custom report choose the New button You will then see the report editor screen Report Editor Bisi Xx Dem Bae al i alale Layout Data d IT Pgheader Title J Colheader Detail IT Summary 7 Pg footer The only difference between the report editor for report styles and custom reports is the Data button This button allows you to
104. in the currently selected module The buttons are for Adding Deleting and Editing records The button is used for finding records within the current module The Ja button is used for sorting the current view in different ways The Tel button is for printing lists and reports Other buttons will appear on the toolbar that are specific to the selected module Fly by hints are available for these buttons as you hold the mouse pointer over them The remaining button on the left portion of the tool bar is the D Select Different Views button which allows you to view selected records such as First time visitors Members with children Youth Cells etc Browse Screens When you select a module to work in Members Cells etc you will see the browse screen for that module The browse screen lists the records in that module for the current view you have selected The browse screen can be re arranged to show different columns These columns can be moved around and re sized to meet your needs The column arrangement will be saved for the next time you use the program To move a column drag the column header with the mouse To re size a column drag the divider between column headers If you shrink a column all the way it will be removed from the view To return you column arrangement back to the default right click a column header and choose restore default columns See Browse Columns in the appendix for more information 28
105. ision pick lists Div1 Div2 etc is important Division pick lists are the possible values for each Division For example in a District Zone Section structure you may enter values 1 2 3 4 5 for Div1 District And A B C D E for Div2 Zone and so on You may use values that are up to eight characters in length such as East and West if your cell hierarchy is structured that way 22 Getting Started Zip Codes The next setup step to complete is the zip code table Postal Codes ES Zip 123742 R P Cordova City Nashville et S Bartlett State i TT 2 Germantown Add Code Delete Code Cell Divisions District fi Di Zone Ja Di Section Di Assign divisions to all members vv gt Cancel Help By entering the zip codes your church anticipates using along with their corresponding city and state Excellerate can automatically enter the city and state for you when pre members or members are added to the system The program can also automatically assign those members to a specific division not a specific cell based on their zip code This may for example prove helpful in assigning people to follow up with first time visitors to a church service The visitor s zip code would automatically put them into a division and someone from that division could maintain contact with them Although they may not remain in that division upon becoming members they have a point of contact from the church that is spec
106. k 02 03 1999 94 25 General Fund Check Total tax deductable contributions for this period 519 68 Account Sum mary General Fund 319 68 Missions 200 00 110 Reporting Contribution Batch Report The contribution batch report can be printed at any time This report lists each contribution for the batch and can be grouped and subtotaled in many different ways Contribution Batch Report EN Report Tithe Rudel See Reporton fe Openbatches Updated batches CG All batches for User ID M D Batches with designation D C For Batch H s C For the Date range Group and Subtotal on acht D Fa by sell Receipt Member Amount V Show individual contribution detail I Include summary at the end of the report TI Use version designed for 132 column text only printers Print Preview Cancel Here is an example of the contribution batch report Contribution Batch Report User MANAGER ox noa 1 15 General Fund 150 00 Check Kieth Neal ESCHER 6 General Fund 9425 Check Joe Adams 1 02 03 1999 D General Fund 78 00 Cash Loose cash ozossi999 1 28 Mis s ions 4 24 Check Katy White 02 03 1999 4 24 General Fund 92 00 Check Kathy Smith Batch 1 SubTotal Hash Total Batch Total 459 49 Contributions Calculated Hash Total Calculated Batch Total 459 49 Difference Difference 0 00 SO SO A MIN 0 02 10 1999 28 General Fund 250 01 Check Katy
107. l deleted members or if the current member you were viewing has a Deleted status you have the choice of removing that one member This option permanently removes the members so you also have the option of printing out the records before removing them You have the choice of printing a detailed report a list or no report at all You also have the option to remove all members from your current view e g all members in the state of Texas To do this you need to create a view of the members you want to delete Select the Remove members from the current view All Members option We suggest that you select the option to print a member list or detailed member report before proceeding to delete that view This process is irreversible so use extreme caution when selecting which group of members you want to delete When the Remove Deleted Members option is used from the Pre Member Module you have an added option of removing Pre Members whose first visit to the church is older than a certain date This allows you to remove people from the system who are no longer being followed up on or have no interest in the church The Remove Deleted Members option requires DATABASE security access to perform this action Remove Old Contributions Excellerate can store years of contribution data even after all of the reporting has been done for those years This allows you to continue to report and analyze giving history for those years Although it is conv
108. l structure you really only need to assign Organizational Parents Birth parents will be calculated and entered for new cell multiplications Now that you understand how the cell structure is implemented here is the easiest way to start entering and structuring your cell groups First start by entering all of your cell groups without worrying about assigning the Organizational or Birth parents Next enter any Control groups for Districts Zones etc if you are using that type of structure Now use the Cell Organization Tree to view all of your groups They will all appear in a list on the left hand side Finally drag each cell on top of the cell it should fall under For example if you have a cell called 1 A 1 B it would fall under Control cell 1 A 1 so you would drag cell 1 A 1 B on top of cell 1 A 1 This will automatically assign the Organizational parent Continue dragging your cells around until your structure looks like you want Adding Cells To add a new cell to the system simply press the W add button or hit insert while viewing the cell browse When adding new cells there may be several Required Fields that must be entered before you can save the entry You can specify which fields are required fields in the Utility menu Start by entering a cell for the head pastor or whoever oversees all of your cell groups This cell and leader will appear as the head of all the cells on you organizational
109. le This report allows you to select certain types of visitors such as those who you wish to follow up on from an information card alter visit etc This report can also be limited to a specific date range as well as a district zone etc Church Attendance Chart The Church Attendance Chart prints a chart showing the members and their church attendance history in a chart to easily spot attendance trends You can run this report for a specific view of your members and for any date range of up to approximately six months 12 19 99 6 29 23 PM New Life Cell Church Page 1 Church Attendance Chart All Members Reese kA SIWKSO WWK51 WKS 2 111291 206 1 2021 2420 1 2 27 Adame Adame Adare Adame Johnson Jones Landry Landry Landry Maxwell 103 Reporting Cell Reports Cell Info Report 26 i 1 SEI New Life Cell Church SS Cell information 1 A 1 Type Family Leader Cindy Abed Started 03 01 1998 Inter Judy Zito District 1 Emphasis Outreach To Multiply 11 01 1998 Intern2 Zone A Old 18 18 Meets On Tuesdays Intern3 1 MeetArea 1 Time 7 00pm Supervisor Childcare Yes Frequency Weekly Cell Primary Meeting Phone 123 456 7890 Organizational Parent Cell 1 A Generation 3 Primary Meeting Address Baker Zachary Birth Parent Cell Generation 0 Cell Members Member Carruth Yaney 225 529 5120 10 23 38 Member Corona
110. lerate but they can be used during contribution entry to enter their pledged amounts for you Member Pledge E Membe Johnson Peter L x Account DEET I Use Percent of pledge If you use a percentage then all Amount 100 00 pledges will be considered t Frequency weekly x percentages Payments D enter 0 for indefinate Total expected pledge or D if indefinate Dates From To 0 00 SEH The frequency and payments fields allow you to specify how often this amount will be given and for how long They are only used for projecting future income in the 84 Contributions pledge reports and graphs not for automatically entering the amounts You must specify a from date when entering a pledge and the to date is optional These dates are used to project future income as well as controlling whether or not the pledge is enabled during contribution entry If the current date is outside of the pledge s dates you will not be able to use the pledge to post contributions for you The total expected pledge field is only for your information and not used in any calculations Entering Contributions Batch Processing Excellerate processes your contributions in batches using a streamlined contribution entry system You simply create a batch enter all of the contributions for that week or month or whatever period you desire Then print the batch report and update When you update the batch all of the ente
111. mber module can track changes to critical fields and record those changes in the Member History associated information tab You can specify which member fields get tracked this way by using the Edit History Fields utility With this utility you simply list the fields in the Member or Address table for which you wish to record change history This option requires PREFERENCES security Edit Required Fields The Member and Cell modules can require a user to enter certain fields before saving a record For example it is a good idea to require a member s last name first name and member type when adding members The list of fields that are required by these modules can be specified in the Edit Required Fields utility option With this utility you simply list the fields from the Member Address or Cells tables that you want required This option requires PREFERENCES security Update Cell Meeting History See Updating Cell Meeting History in the chapter on Cells Enter Church Attendance See the chapter on Church Attendance 136 Utilities Flex Fields Flex Fields are user definable fields that can actually be added to the Excellerate database These fields can be added to the member cell class or organization edit screens and positioned by simply dragging them into place These fields are great for information that you want to keep track of that doesn t quite fit into the existing fields You can also designate whether your new fields
112. member to a cell or delete a member You can do that right here from this screen by using the Add Edit or Delete buttons Cell Attendance You can also track individual cell members attendance from this same screen Tracking members attendance allows you to review an individual s cell attendance history to observe their faithfulness or to look for signs of continued absence To record members attendance using the Cell Meeting Totals entry screen simply double click their name in the Current Cell Members list Each time you click their name their attended status changes between Yes and No You can quickly mark all members present or absent by using the Tag All button 69 Cells As members are tagged Excellerate will automatically calculate the number of members present at the meeting It is possible to enter a different member count than the number checked off if necessary To further ease the process of entering attendance you may choose how you want the attendance to be marked by default In the program s preferences screen you can choose to have the attendance default to all present all absent or to use the attendance from last week s meeting You may also choose to turn off cell attendance tracking here As cell member attendance is recorded the information is available in each member s edit screen in their Cell Attendance associated information tab From that tab you can view an individual member s attendance hist
113. n will have the following associated info tabs Other family members Follow up Information Member profiles Members cell group etc The information in these tabs will contain links to the other parts of the program For example If you are viewing a particular member you will see their family members listed in the family members tab If you double click a family member you are automatically taken to that member s edit screen You can also see that this member belongs to a cell group You may double click that cell group link which will take you directly to that cell s screen of information along with all of its associated views These work much like a web page with links to related information Remember Any information that is underlined blue can be double clicked to jump to that edit screen 31 Pre Members Members and Pastors Chapter 4 Pre Members Members and Pastors The Member Pre Member and Pastor modules all use the same information screens with a few differences Pre Members are the people you are interested in following up with or mailing out marketing information to These may be first time church visitors or an area of your city that you may be targeting Pre Members contain all of the same information fields as a member because at some point you are hoping to move a pre member to the member module The main difference between pre members and members is that pre members can not join cells classes organizati
114. nd the bottom portion lists the accounts To add edit or delete an account first click in the account window in the bottom portion of the screen then use add edit or delete buttons in the toolbar 82 Contributions Edit Contribution Account E Account Code Description General Fund Other Account Info er Begin Date End Date Week To Date 0 00 Year To Date 0 00 Month To Date 0 00 Last Year 0 00 Quater To Date 0 00 Beginning To Date 0 00 Cancel When entering a new account you must specify an Account code and description The account code is a short code use to specify the account when entering contributions This code can be numbers or letters up to four in length You may also specify other account information This can be used to specify a bank account number or other values that may be useful to you financial system if you plan on exporting your contributions If you are exporting to Quicken or QuickBooks for example you can specify the Quicken category that corresponds to this account The begin and end dates are available for your information only and do not affect how contributions are recorded These may be useful for planning different projects such as a new building The accounts you set up here will also appear on the member contribution statements if your members have contributed to these accounts These account totals can be exported by using the Export Account Totals menu
115. nsitry Accounts Post using pledges With this screen you simply enter the Member ID or Envelope number tab to enter the amount check or type and then hit enter Repeat this process for each contribution to be entered Notice that if you don t know the member ID or Envelope number you can always use the name search field Just start typing a few letters of the last name and the member will be selected for you You can change the account that the contribution is designated for if necessary but this can be defaulted to any account you have set up As you select members their name and address will be displayed directly below the input fields so that you can verify this information You can also add or change members on the fly by using the relevant buttons or double click the underlined member name or address to jump to that member As you enter contributions for this member they will appear in the Posted for this member window This window shows all entries posted for this member in the current batch You can change any one of these by clicking on the entry The distribution window in the bottom left will show how the contributions for this 87 Contributions member were distributed into the different accounts For example if a member gives 400 where 300 is designated for the general fund and 100 for missions you will see the total contribution for the member then the 300 and the 100 in th
116. nt to have that data on hand you may be able to improve performance in the contribution module by removing those old contributions The remove old contributions option allows you to first make a copy of your current database to a backup file then to delete contributions for previous years that have already been reported This way the size of your current database is reduced improving performance and you can always open the backup copy of the database to access the removed contributions After removing the old contributions it is a good idea to run the Reindex Compact utility Removing Old Locks Once again if you experience a power outage during contribution entry you may find that a batch is left in the In use state preventing anyone from working in the batch If this happens you can use the remove old locks menu option to remove any database locks left open Make sure no other user is logged into the system when you do this 91 Views Chapter 10 Views What are Views A view is basically a subset of the records for a particular module Views allow you to look at the records your interested in This can make working with the database much easier because you are only looking at the information relevant to your task Each module has its own set of views For example the Member Module will have views relating to members as in the following Select View EN C My Default View fal Members My Current View fal Members Ze
117. ntributions can be viewed and edited using the Edit Loose Cash Contributions menu option 88 Contributions Updating Batches After entering your contributions into batches you need to update them to the members Updating a batch moves the contributions for that batch into the membere contribution file Batches can be updated one at a time several within a batch number range or all the batches entered for a specific user To update the current batch you are working on use the update button on the Contribution Batch screen Or you can use the Update Contribution Batch menu option Once a batch has been updated it is closed and contributions no longer get posted to it If a mistake has been made it is possible to reverse update a batch make the corrections and update it again Before the batches are updated you have the option of exporting the batch totals to your financial system See exporting contributions later in this manual You can also print a batch report at this time which lists each contribution along with a summary by account and type at the bottom of the report These batch reports could be used to match up against bank deposits Reverse Updating Batches Once a batch has been updated it is closed to further contribution postings If a mistake was made in a batch that has been updated or you forgot to export the batch before it was updated you can reverse update it This process brings back the contributions from the
118. ode to any of the accounts you have set up This way you can reduce the number of times you have to choose an account code See Accounts later in this manual Use same code until changed When entering contributions you can tell Excellerate to always use the same contribution code until it is changed Otherwise it will default every time to the default code specified in the previous field Default contribution type Again like account codes you can set the default contribution type here You can set up any kind of contribution type in the pick lists menu option Default member lookup field When entering contributions you can lookup members by either their MemberID Envelope or Last name Set this field to whichever method you will use most Accounting period Excellerate tracks contributions according to the accounting period Here you can set your current accounting period The accounting period is only used to calculate contribution totals for the various periods such as month to date quarter to date etc Show member name when entering contributions This option allows you to hide the member s name when entering contributions If your church uses the member ID or Envelope to enter contributions you can keep the members identification private so that other people in the room will not see the members name This option disables the ability to look up members by last name during contribution entry 15 Gettin
119. of period processing The second way is to allow you to set a database password This will prevent users from opening the database with another program other than Excellerate without knowing the password To set the password use the Set Database Password option in the utilities menu See the chapter on utilities for more details Contribution Types Excellerate allows you to set up the various types of contributions that you wish to track The default types are Cash Check Credit Card Money Order and Other You can set up these types using the pick lists menu option and choosing Contributions Type for the field Summaries can be printed on the various contribution reports showing break downs for these different types Contribution Accounts Contributions can be posted toward any number of different accounts or funds For example you may want to designate contributed money for a certain purpose such as missions a building project or a general fund Then as contributions are received they are totaled into the different accounts so at any time you can see how much money your church is receiving in these different areas Each account records a weekly monthly quarterly yearly last year and beginning to date totals To view the contribution accounts go to the contribution module by using the contributions button or by hitting F10 In the contribution module you will see two areas The top portion lists the contribution batches a
120. on in the Help menu for quickly emailing technical support Merge Fields In EMAIL Excellerate also allows including merge fields in your emails To include fields from a members record use the table field notation So if you wanted to email all of your new visitors and address them by their first name you would use Dear Members Firstname Excellerate would replace Members Firstname with the member s first name To see what the email would look like with the data inserted use the preview button in the toolbar You can include fields from the MEMBERS PREMEMBERS or CELL table 131 Internet Integration EMAIL ing Reports Excellerate can email reports that use report styles There is an example of a cell leader report style that can be emailed To create a report style that can be emailed all you have to do is insert a special field in the report When you go to PRINT the report Excellerate will check first to see if it can be emailed if so you will be asked if you want to email it If not it will be printed as normal The following email fields can be added to your report style EMAILTO emailaddress EMAILBYID Members MemberlID EMAILADDR Members Email EMAILTO emails to the hard coded email address that follows EMAILBYID emails to the email address for the memberlD database field that follows EMAILADDR emails to the email address for the email database field that follows When the report engine sees one of
121. on on Setting up Web Integration in the Internet Integration chapter of this manual 18 Getting Started Users and IDs As with the Preferences screen if this is your first time using the program you will automatically be taken to the Users screen Otherwise User IDs can be accessed from the Options Menu d gt Add User Delete User User Information UserlD M Name Fete Maxwell Password Email addr Jpete church com M Default User View District Di Zone Di User Access Members IR User IDs p Send Email jo Cell Groups jp Preferences Options p Classes p Database Maint p Organizations p Cell Meeting Updates p Financial p Report Modifications p Visits Counsels p Saved Views p Access Codes R ReadOnly U Update D Delete Update Blank NoAccess G Only see last given date Cancel Help This screen allows you to enter all of the users of the system their email address their default view and their levels of access Default User View Users can be assigned a default view which can narrow their view of the database to the area they re interested in district secretaries and each of them For example your church may have several can set up their program to open to the view that they use the most such as District One for the District One secretary When a user has a default view assigned that becomes their initial vie
122. ons or use other associated information tabs They can have family members and follow up information Pre Members are actually stored in a separate table to avoid slowing down access to member information At any time you can transfer a pre member to the member module Use the Hl button or the F4 key to select the Pre Member Module Pastors on the other hand are exactly like members except the Pastor Field in the Member record is coded with the type of pastor Pastors are members and are stored in the member table along with other members The only difference when you select the pastor module is that your view is automatically setup to show pastors only Use the Al button or the F9 key to select the Pastor Module Members are of course the members of your church They are also any individual or business that you wish to track contributions for Members would also include anyone you wish to track through cell groups member steps classes and organizations Your cell groups may consist of a few members from other churches These people would still be entered into the member module and designated as OtherChurch in their member type field Use the ij button or the F5 key to select the Member Module We will describe the Member Module in detail here Remember it contains the same screens used for the Pre Member and Pastor Modules 33 Pre Members Members and Pastors When selecting the Member Module you will see the Member bro
123. or this field can be setup in User Pick lists Next the Contribution Batch screen will appear Contribution Batch of x Batch 1102 Date 12705 2007 _EditBatchinfo Geen PreCalculated Difference _ Print Batch Accounting Period 200101 Batch Total 000 3523 32 3523 32 Update Batch Add Edt Delete Cose HashTotal Of 0 0 Heb e a This screen will list each contribution entered into this batch At the top you will see the batch number date accounting period batch and hash totals if entered For both the batch and the hash totals you will see the current amount which represent the total of the contributions entered into the batch the pre calculated amount entered by the user and the difference The difference totals should be zero if the batch was entered correctly 86 Contributions Entering the contributions Entering contributions is quick and easy with the contribution entry screen To begin use the add button or hit insert Member Ion Envelope Lastname z New Member Edit Member Peter Johnson 1359 Hollyberry Dr Cordova TN Use ID 0 for loose cash 1270171999 Sg Batch 1061 Description l Check or Check zl Posted for this member Date Amount__ AcctDescription Type Checkti Tax Description Receint_ CE aC 300 00 General Fund Check Deductible Distribution 400 00 Boalar Te EG General Fund 300 00 TAPE Tape Mi
124. ord with the last name and address already filled in Your cursor will be placed in the first name field ready for you to continue The other way to add a new family member is to add them as described in Adding Members above but this time select the family they belong to by using the family button All family members by default share the same address Any changes to the address will be applied to all family members To specify a different address for one of the family members you would use the split address feature See Member Addresses above If you ve made a mistake and assigned a member to the wrong family simply edit that member hit the family button and select a new family You can also remove a member from a family by selecting remove member from family under the family button Editing Member Information To edit a member record simply double click it press enter or use the edit button Once you ve made your changes save them with the V swe save button or cancel your changes with the X cancel button Deleting Members To delete a member use the key from the member browse or edit the member and choose the Deleted status This will only mark the member as Deleted and not actually remove it from the system This is so that history can be kept on these members and so that you can recover the member if you deleted them by mistake To physically and permanently remove deleted members you use the Remove Deleted M
125. orm login html page EXLOGIN HTM Cell Leader Login Screen Leader name or group name Password Login 122 Internet Integration The form section on this page should include lt INPUT TYPE text NAME LOGIN gt for the username lt INPUT TYPE text NAME PSWD gt for the password The form s ACTION attribute should be set to the location on the server of the file named exform p lt FORM ACTION http www yourwebsite com cgi bin exform pl gt The default password for logging into your online cell leader form is the last four digits of the leader s phone number or the phone number located in the Primary meeting phone field in the cell record If you want to use a different password enter that password as the last four characters in that field or change the exform pl script The look of the actual cell meeting report form is based on a template The template is read in by the script then outputted to a web page with the cell s information included The template can be modified to accept different types of information The standard information such as meeting date and member visitor counts will be imported into the cell meeting history table Any information that you request in your online report form that can not be directly imported into an Excellerate cell meeting history will be included in the comments section of that record You will be flagged with a red w which means there is more info
126. ort is also a generic report for your organizations that can use several different report styles to produce the information you need The default style is a contact list of members of the organizations and their phone numbers 108 Reporting Contribution Reports Member Contribution Statements One of the main purposes for tracking contributions is to be able to print the required Member Contribution Statements at the end of the year These statements can actually be printed at any time and can be modified because they use report styles There are several default styles including single column contributions two column contributions contributions and pledges text only versions etc Other styles will be available from our web site www msdweb com Member Contribution Statements EG I This member only Ce Report Date range 01701 1999 127 3171999 Bl Or specific receipt Exclude this MailCode Exclude businesses Report Member Type DI blank for all Report members giving 250 or more Report Member F amily Each Member Sort Drder Name 5 digit zip Message to appear on statements 4 Report Styles FullPage Use Letterhead FullPage Two Columns FullPage with Pledges default FullPage with logo Delet Full Page Text only printer _Delete Print Preview As you can see you can choose the date range to report on or you can generate a receipt by r
127. ory Cell Attendance Reports By using the Cell Member Attendance Chart attendance can also be reported in a chart form to easily see a cell s history This report can be printed for all cells or any view of your cells such as a district The Members Who Missed Cell Meetings report allows you to list those members who have missed a certain number of consecutive cell meetings Updating Cell Meeting Totals It is important to make an entry for each cell every week This is how the program knows how many cells you had a few months back before you added a lot of new cells To make this a little easier for you there is a routine that should be run each week after making any cell group and cell member changes and after entering your meeting totals This routine goes through your list of cells and checks to see if a cell meeting totals entry has been made for each cell If not it will automatically enter Cell did not report entry for that cell This way if you forgot to check that a cell did not turn in a report the update will catch it and enter it for you 70 Cells Cell Meeting History Update Update Cell Meeting History for Week BE Year 1999 Dates 02 01 7199 to 02 071 99 e Update Cell Meeting History finds cells that have not turned in a Cell Meeting Report for the specified period No Repott entries are recorded in the Cell Meeting History for these cells This update should be run every cell period
128. osoft Access Jet Engine to process the SQL for the views so a knowledge of Microsoft Access SQL will be helpful 98 Reporting Chapter 11 Reporting Reports and Views One of the most important parts of any church management system is its reporting Excellerate uses a combination of views and reports to produce the wide variety of reporting for a church Many of the reports are based on the current view you have selected For example the Members list and labels report can be used for cell leaders visitors pastors etc Likewise for a particular view you could print a list mailing labels or mail merge with your word processor This approach will provide many possible combinations of reporting The following is an example of the Member Info Report Like many of the reports in Excellerate you can report on either the current record or the current view Member Report EZ Report Title Member Information CurentView Members in District 1 Current Member Ollie M Brown i Preview Change Selection Cancel This screen is showing that our current view is Members in District 1 To print a detailed report for these members select the Current View choice and hit Print To print the report for the current member select that option before printing From this screen you can change the view for the report by using the Change Selection button This will allow you to pick a new view to use for this report
129. otals and Attendance The key to tracking your churches cell growth is to record your weekly cell meeting totals Excellerate helps you do this in two ways First by providing cell leader report forms that you print or log into online each week for your cell leaders These forms list the existing cell members and provide a place to record the number of members visitors children and other counts that may be of interest to your church Second by downloading the totals from the online forms See the online integration chapter or by using the Cell Meeting Totals Entry screen Cell Meeting Totals Entry x Entering cell reports for week 50 Year 1999 Dates 12 06 1999 tof12 1271999 E Help Cell Groups Current Cell Members 12 Tag All _ Cell Name Reported Type Member Attended Date 12707 1999 Cell didnot mest T 7 Pastor s Cell Adams Joe Cell did not report BEE Member Adams Mary Yes 1 Topic Faithfulness 141 8 Member Adams Tina Yes Led by m awal Pate z 1 4 1 E 1 4 1 D Members 11 WaterBapt Visitors 3 Chidren 2 Salvations Meeting Report for Cell Pastor s Cel 2 Member Johnson Peter Member Jones Adam Landry Jimmy Yes Member Landry Terry Yes Member Maxwell Kristi Yes Member Neal Kieth Yes Member Phillips Joseph Yes Member Rushing Erin Yes Comments Visitors Joe brought a new couple to the group Mark and Candic
130. ou want to have a training database separate from your main database or for keeping multiple congregations separate form one another The Database Name option allows you to specify which database to automatically open when starting Excellerate Typically this would be your database mdb located in the 12 Getting Started directory where you installed Excellerate but if you are using the network version this will be the database on your file server This is a local option that only affects this workstation Word Processor If you would like Excellerate to automatically start your word processor for mail merges enter the full path to your word processor This is a local option that only affects this workstation Use Printer Tray If you wish to default all Excellerate reports to a specific printer tray set that option here Note not all trays specified here are applicable to all printers For most printers the default of First or Auto will work Open To Module Specifies the module that you want to see first when the program is started This may vary from person to person depending on their job duties This is a local option that only affects this workstation Allow State Province more than 2 letters Allows international users to use full state or province names instead of the 2 letter abbreviation Format for phone s Specifies the format for phone numbers The default is the United States format Use 9 to repres
131. r in the section on Adding Cells Started The date that the cell was started When multiplying cells Excellerate will enter this value for you To Multiply The target date for this cell to multiply You can then report on this field to list all cells targeted to multiply next month etc Meets on The day and time when the cell meets Frequency How often the cell meets Most cells will meet weekly but you may have some cells that meet daily monthly or periodically 49 Cells Description This is a general description of the group This can be used in printing group menus and providing information on your web site about the groups Primary meeting Phone amp Address These fields specify where the cell meeting Members Cell Leader Intern 1 3 Supervisor Parent Cells Generation User fields is primarily held The last four digits of the Phone field is used as the default password for logging in to the online reporting form This field shows how many cell members are in this cell The cell leader When a new leader is assigned to a cell history of the leader change is recorded and the new cell leader s phone number can be loaded into the primary meeting phone These fields may be renamed to titles that your church uses You may have several interns Although every cell will not have the need for three interns it may prove helpful as cell leaders attempt to give responsibility to various cell members a
132. red contributions are posted to the members Create a new batch To create a new batch go to the contribution module by using the contribution button or by hitting F10 In the contribution module you will see two screens The top portion lists all of the batches that were entered into the system To adda new batch click in the batch list screen then hit the add button New Batch EN 02708200 Accounting Batch Date ISSN Period 200101 Batch Total Hash Total sl The Batch and Hash totals are pre calculated totals used to ensure that the contributions are entered correctly Not required Batch Designation None a C Cancel Help Enter the date for this batch and verify that the displayed accounting period is correct You may change the accounting period for the batch if necessary You also have the option of entering your pre calculated batch or hash totals for the program to use to compare against running totals generated during the contribution entry process These totals will help ensure that there were no data entry errors made The batch total is simply the sum of all of the contributions that will be entered The hash total can either be the sum of the member ID s or the Envelope numbers used during contribution entry These totals do not have to be 85 Contributions used If you wish to designate this batch for a particular purpose or bank account etc use the Batch Designation field Entries f
133. resses in the BCC list will not be seen by the other recipients of the message When sending emails you may want to send them from your own personal email address so that when a person replies you will receive it in your email program Or you may want to send email from the church main email address You have the option of choosing which email address the message will be from by selecting either your own or the churches email address in the From pick list The church email address can be setup in the mail settings under preferences and your email address is set up when your user id is created A formatted message can be entered using the font and color tools in the toolbar Use the attach button to attach files Only plain text messages can be sent with files Use the File save and Files open buttons to save and retrieve common emails When sending emails from Excellerate the sent messages are saved in the sent mail screen To see a list of sent emails use the Utilities menu then Email then View sent mail This screen will allow you to view and retrieve sent emails If for some reason you want to send an email to an individual but you want to send it from your default mail program you can use the Utilities menu then Email then Email this member using default mail program This will send the message using your default mail program and the sent message will be saved in that program s sent messages folder There is also a menu opti
134. rmation for you to do something with 123 Internet Integration Here is an example of the default cell leader report form The Life Church of Memphis Cell jeader online report form Meeting Date 02 02 2001 mrrdd yyyy Cell Group 1 A4 B Topic 5 signs of a loving family Leader Pete Maxwell Led by Pete Maxwell Didn t Meet Current Cell Members List any new Members Visitors below Member Vist FirstName Lastname Address City State Zip Phone Member Sam Benes fo NonhGa Memphis fin bas aor a9a a909 RE 1 C 1 El ee M O OC ee Enter meeting totals below Members Visitors Children Salvations bk LI L Comments Evaluations Testimonies Great meeting The couples with children really enjoyed discussing the section on how to teach and train your children Sam was invited by Matt he said he enjoyed the meeting and wants to come to church Submit 124 Internet Integration Cell Leader Report Form Template file EXREPORT HTM All INPUT NAMEs and field names are case sensitive Use the form tag like this lt FORM name Name action LocationOfScript gt The ALocationOfScript tag will be replaced by the cgi with the correct information Somewhere in the form you have to include this comment lt Form Variables gt This is used by the script for internal information The following tags are required for the cell lea
135. rrectly before loading it into Excellerate Step 1 Use the import File button to open your import file Once your file has been opened Excellerate will display the fields in the field list and the first few lines of data in the import preview window Step 2 Map the fields from your import file to the fields in the transfer database This is done by clicking the field in the import list then finding the matching field in the transfer list and clicking it You will notice a line drawn from field to field showing the map Continue with this until all desired import fields are mapped Step 3 Load data into transfer table This is done by using the Load into transfer table button Step 4 Load data from transfer table into Excellerate Once you ve check the data in the transfer table window and have verified that it imported correctly you can then use Load the data in to Excellerate You have a choice of loading the data into the Member or Pre Member module If you have a lot of data in your old database that needs cleaning up you could transfer everything into the Pre Member then go through and move the current members into the Member module Note If the data in the transfer table window does not look the way you want You can clear the table and try again by using the Clear Transfer Table button Exporting To export data from Excellerate simply choose the module and view of the data you wish to export and choose
136. rs can quickly be added by hitting the Add button for this tab The Follow Up tab is used for following up on new visitors or members These people can be assigned a sponsor who would be responsible for following up with them You can track how they heard about the church dates of first visit or joined and up to four contact attempts and their responses All of the pick list values for these items are user definable in the Options menu The Profiles tab is used to track various attributes about a person such as interests or hobbies You can enter any and as many profile codes as you wish as long as they have been set up in the member profiles list under the options menu Member Profiles EN Code Description n E Clerical Clerical Interest Computer Computer Interest Cooking Cooking interest E Electric Electrical Interest Gardening Interest Add Profile Music Interest Change Pond E Nursery Nursery Interest Sewing Interest Delete Profile afl Cancel With member profiles you can search for members with a specific interest when a need arises in that area This may include everything from locating seamstresses willing to sew costumes to identifying people interested in bicycling that could assist in planting a special interest cell group The Member Steps tab allows you to track a member s progress through your churches member development process 40 Pre Members Members and Pastor
137. s To add a new step to this member use the button Member Step x Member Abed Cindy M y Step EERE ee Step number 6 Date 0172771999 IV Completed Notes Pre load Auto SEH Cancel From this screen you can select a specific step to add to the member or you can choose Pre load Auto Steps This option will automatically load all of the member steps that have been designated as Auto Steps This way when you pull up a member record you can easily see which steps have been completed and which steps have not Member Steps Completed Comments Water Baptism 01 06 1998 Completed Water baptized at the cell group Christianity 101 03 11 1998 Completed gt Encounter Retreat 05 22 1998 iit ene Cindy feels a calling into the ministry Discipleship 201 08 11 1998 Discovery Seminar 11 28 1998 Leadership 301 01 14 1999 To indicate that a step has been completed simply double click the completed field for the desired step The Organizations tab view allows you to track any organizations a member is involved in These may include choir prayer teams kid s services etc Remember you can double click the organization to quickly jump to that screen The Visits Counsels tab is used for recording visits meetings counseling etc between members and the staff as well as between members and other members Often in a cell church cell leaders and members do much of the ministry as well a
138. s the church staff You have the option of viewing visits with the current member or visits the current member has had with others 41 Pre Members Members and Pastors The Classes tab allows you to track which classes this member has taken or is scheduled to take This list will show each session of a particular class so this tab gives more detail than if you had a member step indicating that the class was completed Again as in member steps when adding a class you can choose to add all sessions of a class to the member to make it easier to see what has been completed and what is left Also the attended field can be double clicked to quickly indicate that the member attended that session The Member History tab records certain changes that have been made to a member s record This will show the members cell group membership history and any changes to the History Fields You can setup which fields you wish to record change history on by entering them into the History Fields List under the Utilities menu option The member history list also show which user made the change and when The Cell Groups tab shows which cell group this member belongs to and which groups this member may lead You will frequently want to jump back and forth between a member and their cell group and can easily do so by double clicking the cell group or the member s name You can also move a member to a different cell group from this tab by editin
139. s Friday GOEN Wed 2222 Addison workers and sometimes a parent will volunteer to help with the kids 222 222 2222 Tina 1 A 1 A Adams Tuesday 7 00PM Weekly 100 West Blvd List of Excellerate s Web Integration Files All of Excellerate s web integration files start with the letters ex The following is a list of those files and what they are used for Cell Reporting exform pl script for logging into weekly cell reporting exlogin htm HTML form for logging into weekly cell reporting exsubmit pl script to process entered weekly cell report forms exreport htm HTML template for what the weekly cell report form looks like Cell Searching exclsrch pl script for searching for and listing cell groups exclisrig htm HTML form for searching for cell groups exclsrch htm HTML template for what the cell list looks like Data Files exbusy txt flag file telling scripts we re uploading data exmaster txt Excellerate s master table uploaded to web site excells txt Excellerate s cell table uploaded to web site exclmems ndx Excellerate s cell member IDs uploaded to web site exclhist txt Excellerate s cell history uploaded to web site exmembrs txt Excellerate s members uploaded to web site exmembrs ndx member ID index file for faster access to exmembrs txt website map map file listing which fields to send to the web site 128 Internet Integration EMAIL Excellerate has the ability to send email to your members and pre m
140. select the data to be used in the report 114 Reporting Data for Report EN Report for Tables Description Report Query Selection Add Edit Delete I Ask for specific Member Type You will notice this screen looks very much like the build view screen Basically you are doing the same thing that is building an SQL statement to produce the data necessary for the report You can still use prompts to ask the user for certain values in selecting your data just as in a view The report data criteria you build here gets saved with your custom report Remember these reports can be exchanged with other churches so visit our web site to exchange custom reports See the chapter on Views for more information on selecting data See Report Styles in the appendix for more information about designing the report content 115 Reporting Mail Merge Excellerate allows you to easily create mail merges with your word processor Basically Excellerate will export your current view to a text file or access database This file is then used by your word processor to merge with a document When you select Mail Merge under the reports menu you see a screen similar to the following This will create a temporary database for you to use with your word processor s mail merge feature Current View All Members Exclude this MailCode N Export Member Family Each Mem
141. selection of cells by specifying the selection criteria Lastly you indicate which values you want to appear on the graph The first four items in the left column of the screen are for graphing the number of people attending your groups The next four options in the middle are the user defined totals that you can track for your cell groups The last four pertain to the number of meetings reports or cells To look at how the number of cells are growing in your church include that item in the graph These graphs are produced from the meeting totals that you will enter each week for your cells So if you choose not to enter these totals you will not be able to graph your churches cell growth Hit the Graph button and you will see a graph similar to the following Cell Growth co 5 al Rms fos Jr STS E della Cell Group Growth LJ Meetings Il Salvations O Visitors EI Children HB Members E total 37 Week 37 09 06 98 lei Es 38 Week 38 0943 98 Number of People 39 Week 39 09 20 98 40 Week 40 09 27 98 41 Week 41 37 38 39 40 Ai 1004 98 Cell 1 A 1 Weeks 37 41 09 06 98 10 10 98 Previous cel ak Next Cell 63 Cells This graph shows the growth of this cell group by different criteria The red bars in the back represent the total number of people that attended the meetings The other bars in front show how many of them were church members or visitors or children et
142. step in using the Church Attendance with Barcodes feature is to choose how you want to print your barcodes Use the Members Lists Labels report to select a report style that includes barcodes or modify one of the existing styles to add the barcodes To add the barcodes to a report style simply add a text field to the report with the following value BARCODE 15 l MemberQuery MemberlD This value tells the report to print a check in barcode for the MemberID You can also print a check out barcode if you are interested in tracking check ins and outs BARCODE 15 0 MemberQuery MemberlD This will print a check out barcode Note the letter O not zero Also see Report Styles in the Appendix for more information Before printing your barcodes choose a view to select the members you are interested in or you can print for all of your members Now that you have your barcodes printed you can scan the codes as each person attends using the check in barcodes If you want to track the check outs as well then you would scan the check out barcode as the person leaves You do not have to use the check out barcodes if you are not interested in time in and time out 142 Utilities Once the barcodes have been scanned place the scanner into its cradle and use the File Import Church Attendance menu option x Service Type z Scanner Type Symboics2000 Port com d Date of service 05716 2002 Bl Timeofeewice x Attendance data
143. ta files that get uploaded to your web site For the simplest installation use the same directory as your CGI files This way you will not have to modify any of the script files If you choose a different directory other than the CGI directory you will need to modify EXFORM PL and EXSUBMIT PL to reflect the new directory name See the section below on Modifying the scripts for a different data directory 118 Internet Integration A simple built in FTP utility is available in the FTP Utility tab This utility will allow you to list files and directories of your web site as well as upload download other files There is a Command button so if you know the names of the FTP commands you can quickly enter them here Also included on this page is a button that will upload your database or other files to Excellerate support if you need help with your data Now that the directories have been setup and scripts modified if needed you can use the Install buttons to install the scripts and support files on your web site The Install server scripts on web site button will install the perl scripts to the cgi directory on your site The Install cell report from template button will install the supporting template files to the data directory on your site Finally use the Cell Meeting Results tab to send the data files to the web site Cell Meeting Results Web Host Settings Web Server Configuration FTP Utility Sen
144. tail IT Summary 7 Pg footer bag fue i MasterTable Name TITLE E VIEW Member MemberQuery Last MemberQuery First Memb Member MemberQuery Ho The report editor screen allows you to Choose the layout for your report Choose the data to include in your report Place text shapes data fields on your report Lets look at the tools you use to build reports Report Toolbar Jelgl R abl 0 glelel el o seetf a The report toolbar has buttons for Saving and loading reports Layout button Previewing printing and printer setup Data button Adding text data fields or expressions Component list Zoom buttons Snap to grid 146 Appendix IT Poheader V Title IT Colheader Detail IT Summary Pg footer The Band toolbar allows you to select which bands or sections to include on your report The Page header band is printed at the top of each page The Title band is printed on the first page only The Column header band is printed before the list of records The Detail band contains the fields for each record that is printed The Summary band is printed at the very end of the report The Page footer band is printed at the bottom of each page Simply check the bands you wish to include in the report and they will appear in the report editor Careful When you uncheck a band it will remove the band and all items contained in the band fra f DI B I u
145. the delete button and edited with the edit button You can jump directly to a member by double clicking their name in the member organization information tab You can also jump to this screen from a member s organizations tab by double clicking the organization name 78 Church Attendance Chapter 8 Church Attendance Excellerate now includes the ability to track church attendance Similar to cell attendance tracking you can now record individual members church attendance This can be used to track any number of different types of services including children s church Entering church attendance is slightly different than entering cell attendance because you have all of the members to choose from not just those who belong to a cell The Member Module now has a special screen for entering church attendance This screen lists all of the members in your view and allows you to check them off if they have attended Type Celebration OI Date 12 19 1999 bes Default Time In 10 30 AM sloal 229 D Close Attended Timein Tiet MemberID Lastname Firstname Mid Prefix T 6 Adams 3 Adams 5 Adams 4 Adams 7 Johnson gt 8 Jones 3 Landry 11 Landry 10 Landry 2 Maxwell 1 Maxwell 15 Neal 14 Neal 17 Pearson 16 Pearson 18 Perkins 19 Phillips 20 Robins 21 Rushing 24 Smith ae ee o r Change View All Members The ability to enter attendance based on a view allows you to use the church attendance feature for more than j
146. then hit the Save Next button This will save your totals for the current cell and then bring up the next cell for you to enter totals So the process is really just entering a few numbers and hitting Save Next until you are done As you enter your totals you will notice the date of the meeting appear in the cell list in red This shows you that a report has been turned in and entered for that cell The cells without a date have not been entered yet When a cell decides not to meet for some reason it is important that you still make an entry for that cell All you need to do is check the Cell did not meet box Also if a cell did not turn in a report you need to make an entry as well You can check the Cell did not report box for those cells When you check Cell did not report the word NoRep will appear in the cell list to remind you that a report has not been turned in for that cell You can go back and enter a report if it is turned in later If you have cell meetings that have been entered using the Web Integration feature those entries will appear with a red w next to the cell name and date If an exclamation mark appears after the w that means that this entry may require additional user intervention This could mean that there is a new member or visitor that needs to be added to Excellerate That information will appear in the comments section for this entry Occasionally you will need to add a new
147. then the cell pick list will only show cells in 1 A 1 To view all of the cells select the List All Cells option Primary and Secondary Cells Excellerate allows members to belong to multiple cell groups This can be disabled based on the cell options in the program preferences If a member joins more than one cell group you have to choose one of the groups to be their primary group and all other groups become secondary The main difference between primary and secondary groups is that the membere primary group will be displayed as the members cell group on all screens and reports When a cell group is made primary that group s division codes District Zone Section etc are put in the member s record therefore assigning that member to those divisions Member s attendance can be tracked for primary as well as secondary groups and all of the member s groups will be listed in their cell groups associated information tab To make a specific cell their primary cell use the Make this their Primary cell button when adding or editing a cell member When a cell is chosen as the primary all others become secondary 59 Cells Searching for Cells There are two ways to search for cells First is to use the Tel find button from the cell browse screen Find records EN Cellname a Or Find In field Status Cancel This method allows you to quickly search by the cell name field or another field in t
148. umbers just as you would a cell meeting report This way you can report and graph your church growth Remember you can track totals other than attendance such as the number of salvation s using this method See Importing Church Attendance with Barcodes in the Utilities section of this manual for information on how to use bar coding with church attendance Church Attendance Reports Member church attendance can be reported in a chart similar to cell attendance You can view approximately 6 months of attendance at a time A church attendance report style has also been added to the Member Lists and Labels report to allow you to report individual member attendance 80 Contributions Chapter 9 Contributions The contribution module is designed to record member contributions so that you can print member contribution statements at the end of the year or as often as you wish It is not a complete financial system but will handle the tracking and reporting of all income received from your church members The contribution totals can then be exported periodically to your financial system for further analysis This approach offers a good clean separation of data because Excellerate is your complete member information database and your financial system can handle the other accounting needs of your church without you having to update member information in two systems To use the contribution module use the Contribution button or hit F10 E
149. ur data to be included in the report If you do not see a Query table or there are no fields available in the field list that means you have not selected any data for the report yet You can do so by using the Data button in the report toolbar The Master table is the table that contains most of your churches settings such as Name Address User defined field names etc When your satisfied with your report design save it and give it a descriptive name These reports will be available for other users if you are using the multi user network version 149 ppendix Technical Support Micro System Design offers free technical support through email and our online resources See or web site at www excellerate com Our complete annual support plan includes free software updates telephone support including help with designing and modifying reports and a subscription to our newsletter Our data conversion service can convert data from your existing systems Our support phone number is 901 754 0315 Contact us at 888 371 6878 for more information about these services 150
150. ur member information in another database you could export it from that database and import it into Excellerate To import members and their addresses into Excellerate first export them from your database in such a way that there is one record per member that contains the member information and their address This can be in an Access database or text file If using a text file a quoted comma delimited format is preferred You may be able to use other formats such as tab delimited depending on how your database exports the information To import the data into Excellerate use the Import Members utility under the File menu Member Import Utility Bisi x IV Fieldnames infirstrecord Transfer Table LIE Delimiter Field Field2 C Tabs C Map field from Input Table gt Field in Transfer Table aff Step 1 Use Import File button to open your import file Step 2 Map fields from import file to fiels in transfer table Step 3 Load data in to transfer table Step 4 Load data from transfer table into Excellerate Open Import File Load into transfer table 0 Records Processed Load into Members PreMembers Load into Excellerate D Records Processed 140 Utilities As you can see from the instructions on the screen this is a four step process Basically you are importing the data from your file into an intermediate Excellerate file Then you can view this data to be sure it imported co
151. ust Sunday service For example if you wanted to use it to track children s church you would first select a view of all of the children then hit the Church Attendance button This way you only see the children while you are marking attendance This screen also allows you to record the time in and out if desired For a Sunday morning service you can set the 79 Church Attendance default time in and out to the service time and those times will be recorded for each member If you set one of the default times to Current Time the program will use the current time to record their attendance This again would be useful for checking children in and out There are several ways of marking a person attended Double click or press enter in the Attended column will set their attendance and their in and out times Double click or press enter in either of the time columns will set their attendance and only that particular time in or out Use the All or None buttons to mark all members present or none of the members Notice you can also double click a member s name to jump to their edit screen As you mark member s church attendance the record of their attendance appears in their member edit screen in the Church Attendance associated information tab If you are interested in tracking counts of members visitors and other attendance set up a cell called Sunday Service or whatever you call your church services and enter those n
152. uter and accessible from the Start Menu or desktop icon Network Installation Excellerate s recommended network setup is to have the application installed on each workstation These workstations would then reference the database located on a file server Installation First install the application on the file server as in the previously described Single Computer Installation For some file servers you may have to actually run the installation on one of the workstations but specify the file server s drive designation such as N when prompted for where to install Excellerate Make sure that the directory you install Excellerate on is accessible to all of the workstations that will be using the program Once installed on the file server run Excellerate and create your new database Next install the application on each workstation in the same manner but when prompted to create a new database choose Open other database and open the database that you just created located on your file server When prompted if you would like this to be your default database answer yes Actually the only files needed on the file server are the database which will have a MDB and CFG extension the report styles with QR extension and the Pictures directory See Member Pictures Make sure your report styles are copied to the file server otherwise many of the reports will not work If you have a previous version of Excellerate make sure all
153. uttons Remember when you delete a flex field the associated data in that field is deleted and can not be recovered 138 Utilities The import and export buttons will allow you to import or export a group of fields all at once This allows you to exchange field definitions with other databases our support staff or even other churches Positioning Flex Fields Once the fields have been added you can go to the member or cell screen to re position them To position the fields right click on any of the flex fields They will all turn red indicating they can be moved Simply drag the field to the correct position When all of the fields are in the correct position right click one of them to save You can move several fields at the same time by shift right clicking a field Enter the number of fields to select then drag them Shift right click again and reset the count back to 1 Exporting Flex Field Data To export the data in flex fields you must first modify the export maps such as website map or default map and add the flex field entries to that file You can use notepad to edit those files 139 Utilities Importing and Exporting Importing When starting to use any new database program it can be a time consuming task to hand enter your data especially names and addresses Therefore Excellerate has provided a generic member import utility that will allow you to import member information If you already have yo
154. w when they start the program They can always choose another view at any time If a default view is not specified for the user then they will see all records when the program starts 19 Getting Started User Access To allow or disallow users from viewing or modifying different types of information within the program you assign them access codes Access codes provide different levels of access to different areas of the program For example to allowa user full access to member information give them a D for member access The D code allows deletions and updates The U code allows updates only and the R code allows read only A blank prevents access to that area of the program SUMMARY OF USER ACCESS AREAS ACCESS AREA ACCESS CODE Database Maintenance Re indexing or Compacting the database Purging deleted members from system SUMMARY OF USER ACCESS CODES TYPE OF ACCESS ACCESS CODE Delete and update P O Only allow seeing a member s G applies to financial area only last giving date No access Blank The following options require Delete and Update access in the financial area change accounts reset or reverse update contributions end of period processing Remember to change the MANAGER password at some point This ID defaults to full access to the system for setting up users etc Here s an idea Consider setting up a STAFF User ID without a password which allows read only access to Members
155. wse screen Excellerate 1 3b Program Files Excellerate sample mdb Il g os ele File Edit kee Reports Contributions Options Utilities Help Member Adams Member Adams Mary Member Adams Tina Member Adams Tommy Member Johnson Peter Member Jones Adam Member Landry Jimmy Member Landry Tery Member Landry Theresa Member Maxwell Kristi Member Maxwell Pete Member Neal Kieth Member Neal Leslie Member Pearson Jason Member Pearson Melinda PEPE 11 z 2i Child 112121 Child 112121 Head 1359H Head 15954 Child 112121 Head 1987 W Spouse 112121 Spouse 100Bo Head 100 Bo Head 67585 Spouse 112121 Head 6987 B Spouse 112121 Head 2898 P Se ee ee ee E Member Perkins Rose New Life Cell Church All Members The member browse screen shows the members in your church From this screen you add edit and delete members and can see different subsets of your members by selecting other views Next we will take a look at the Member Screen and the information it contains 34 Pre Members Members and Pastors Member Screen Member Information OP x Member D 9237 atus 4 Last abed First Cindy Middle M Pretix Mrs d E oa VA Save ve Al Eamily Abed cindy 13795 Relation Spouse Marital Married Suttix C Deleted lt x Member Kou Occup Camera Operator Home 123 456 7890 Fe Group Information nant Employer NCC Communications Work 123 456 0988 c e 8 Student z Movie f gt District 1 z
156. xcellerate 1 3b C PROJECTS excellerl 2 demo mdb ioj x File Edit View Reports Contributions Options Utilities Help dil d re il Contributions Bul A E Contributions Bich JB lat Gett Meieehe Pesio Dierence_ Is E 0 Updated bk 199904 0 Updated M 199904 0 Updated M 199904 p 0 Updated M 799904 O Updated M d 0 Updated M 0 00 0 00 700 00 New Life Cell Church All Members Actives 29 Records See Contribution Settings in the Getting Started section of this manual for details on configuring this module for your church 81 Contributions Contribution Security There are two ways Excellerate secures your contribution information First you can grant different levels of access to individual users by setting their User Access codes in the User IDs setup screen To prevent any access to financial information leave the financial field blank To allow read access only enter the letter R To allow read and update access which includes adding and editing contributions use the letter U To allow full access which includes deleting use D There is one other special level denoted by the letter G G will allow a user to see the last date a member gave but not any other giving details This applies to the financial field only The following options require Delete and Update access change accounts reset or reverse update contributions end

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