If you are moving from our other church management software Shepherd’s Staff, you will certainly notice differences in your new software. Though neither software is better or worse than the other, Church360° does have a separate software development crew and uses different approaches to church management. Some of these differences are highlighted in this article.
Fields that import and do not import
CTS has developed an importer for customers to be able to import most of their historical data from their Shepherd’s Staff database up to their new Church360° Members site. However, not every field in Shepherd’s Staff has a one-to-one corresponding field in Members. For more information on fields that may or may not import, please visit our article here.
It’s also important to check your custom fields after import. Some fields like Person Assigned or Elder may be imported as both a person and household field. To save future data entry confusion, it is recommended to choose one custom field to use and delete the other. If you need any assistance with this, please feel free to reach out to CTS.
Approaches on Reports
One of the major differences you’ll find between the two software systems will be their reporting interface. Shepherd’s Staff offers several canned reports that pulls data from its database and presents it in a templated structure that has limited customization and some exported views. Some people prefer this, but others want more flexibility in how their reports look and give data to its users. Church360° uses this more customized approach by allowing most if not all views to be printed directly from your web browser or exported into Excel that users can then use to modify the data into a format that fits their needs.
It's recommended to review these areas of each when deciding which software works best for you.
Subgroups vs Smart Groups and Tags
Another adjustment when moving from Shepherd’s Staff would be how it groups people with similar traits.
Shepherd’s Staff uses a concept called subgroups. These groups can be created and applied to views and reports to filter people you are looking at. Subgroups can be dynamic and use criteria based on fields to include all records that fulfill those requirements. And users can also create static subgroups where the user can manually pick and choose which people they want as a part of this group.
Church360° has similar grouping options called Smart Groups and Tags. Smart Groups uses traits based on fields and relationships to show those who fit those traits. To designate someone as part of a group but not basing that designation on a field, you can add a tag to a person or household record to use as a filter.
Contributors vs Givers
Another concept that you may notice is the differences between contributors (anyone with an individual or joint envelope number) and givers (individuals or married couples that gave an offering). The concepts are very similar with differing requirements.
Shepherd’s Staff requires all contributors, past and present, to have an envelope number, whether the person themselves use a physical envelope or not. And envelope numbers can be shared between two people in the same household/address, even if they are not married. As such, contribution statements can have both people’s names attached to those offerings.
Church360° does not require giving units to have envelope numbers to contribute and receive statements. And it uses the logic that since a contribution statement affects tax reporting, only those who are married can share offerings. This may lead to the importer to assume that if someone shares an envelope number and posted offerings with someone else, they must be married. Users will want to review their giving units to make sure all marriages are accurate. If there are any discrepancies related to marriages and offerings, please contact CTS support and we can help move those offerings appropriately and help fix any incorrect relationships.
Using Shepherd’s Staff and Church360° Members/Ledger concurrently
For various reasons, your church may choose to use both Shepherd’s Staff and Church360°Members for church management. If this is the case, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind.
The import will convert most of the data available in Shepherd’s Staff Membership, Attendance, and Contributions modules. No finance information will be imported into Members through the main import utility on People. However, the Church360° suite does offer a financial software called Church360° Ledger that you can import account data from your Finance module through another utility.
After the initial import of your Shepherd’s Staff database, the Shepherd’s Staff and Church360° Members software no longer interact. You can reimport your database to your Members site, but existing person records on the site will be skipped and not be updated. Only new records will be imported.
You can then continue to use Shepherd’s Staff alongside your Church360° Members subscription but you will need to enter in data into both programs in order to maintain accuracy in reporting.
In the same way, you can use the Shepherd’s Staff Finance module and Church360° Ledger simultaneously, if the same information is entered into both programs.