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Church Office Release Notes

11.1D Release

If you're part of the Preferred Client Program, you can download the latest desktop version in the Client Portal.

PDS Church Office 11.1D, released for desktop and OnDemand 4-11-24, offers the following enhancements.

New and Improved Features

Maiden Name

  • When adding a family, you can now enter the maiden name for the head or spouse.

    Family Name dialog box showing two fields for Maiden name, under the head of household and under the spouse

Add/Remove Periods in Address Abbreviations
  • When you change your address format, you now have the option to add or remove periods in abbreviations. If you abbreviate street directions (like "North") and/or street extensions (like "Street"), you can add periods (so it shows "N." and "St.") or remove periods (so it shows "N" and "St").

    Change Address Format process showing new options for Add Periods in Abbreviations and Remove Periods from Abbreviations, with checkboxes for adding or removing periods from street directions and street extensions

Replace Sacrament Places
  • Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you realize the wrong place of sacrament was used on records in your Sacramental Registers? For example, a bunch of records for your parishioners showed the Faith Lutheran Church in New Jersey instead of the one by the same name in your state of Illinois.

  • Now, using the Replace Sacrament Place process, you can quickly replace the incorrect Sacrament Place with the right one. After the process completes, you can print a summary and list of the changes made.

    Example of the Replace Sacrament Place process showing the Place to Replace as Faith Lutheran Church in Newark, NJ and the Place to Replace that with as Faith Lutheran Church in Elmhurst, IL

    Attention: This process replaces every instance of the selected place in all your registers, so be careful to only use this when all instances should be replaced. And, it only changes the place in the Sacramental Registers and does not affect your member sacrament records.
List of Families Processed for New Year Fund
  • At the end of the New Year Fund process, you're prompted to print a summary of what was processed. Now, you also have the option to print a list of families that were processed. You can print this in addition to or instead of the summary report, depending on your needs.

    Report Preview showing the family ID, family name, and fund period for the families processed in the New Year Fund Setup process

Online Giving Report
  • We created a new Contribution listing report called Online Giving by Date. This report is handy for working with Abundant transactions since it only prints contributions marked with "Online" in the Check number field. Amounts are grouped by gift date and then sorted by family name. A summary displays the total amounts for each gift date.

    Online Giving by Date report showing information on Gift Date, Amount, Check, Fund, Activity, Name, and ID

Fast Payment/Donation Entry
  • We improved the Fast option in the Payment/Donation Entry so it processes your entries quicker. We also added a Search button so you can quickly locate a family or member to use.

    Fast Typist Quick Posting dialog box showing a Search button and the Search Family/Member box that displays when you click it

Letters with Large Images
  • Printing or emailing a lot of letters with large images can strain your network and may cause recipients' email providers to reject your message. To help prevent this, the program now warns you when a letter is too large.

    Warning message informing you that the letter is too big to send with information about what you can do to reduce the size

  • We recommend reducing image sizes before printing/emailing the letter. To do this, click Yes on the prompt to go back to the Letter Layout window, then click Edit Style. Right-click the image, and select the Reduce the resolution... option. This reduces the image size by 75% and usually does not affect the visual quality. You can repeat this to reduce the size as much as needed. Once the size is small enough, you can print/email your letter!

    Editor showing an option to reduce the resolution of the image you right-clicked

New User Videos
  • Our team created several videos that go over the basics of working in Church Office. Topics include a new user introduction, managing families, editing records, and searching/navigating records. Check out Videos for New Users if you're new to the program or if you need a refresher! The link to this page is available on the New User Checklist in PDS.

    Here's a sneak peek of the New User Introduction:

  • You can see our entire PDS Video Library by clicking the icon in your program.

Release Notes
2024
Church_Office

Last updated: October 29, 2024