The 9.0 Shepherd's Staff upgrade will be available as of 9/26/2023! Before you install the upgrade, there are several things you may want to consider. Here are our recommendations for tasks you will want to complete before upgrading.
Read up on the new version.
- You can find a rundown of the most significant changes to the Finance module in the What's new in Shepherd's Staff 9.0 Finance? article.
- The upgrade also includes improvements, updates and fixes in other modules. You can see more information concerning these improvements in the Shepherd's Staff 9.0 Non-Finance Release Notes article.
Preserve your saved reports.
- Because of the scope of changes that come with the upgrade, your saved reports will not carry over to the new version. We recommend taking note (and/or screenshots) of the setup selections, and printing a copy of each report to help you set up new ones after the upgrade.
- You can take a look at all of the report options that will be under Other Reports in 9.0 here to compare to your current reports.
- And the 9.0 FAQ section includes articles on where to find reports and other items that have been relocated in the new version.
Post any offering or attendance batches.
- It's always good to post your batches as you complete them, but if you have any that are still out there un-posted, you'll want to post them before any major upgrade so the data will be committed to your database.
Communicate and coordinate with your team.
- Similar to the 8.9 release with the new Contributions module, there are significant changes to the database structure in version 9.0 which will be applied during the upgrade. This means if you have more than one computer using Shepherd's Staff, you must upgrade them all on the same day, or any instance that has not been upgraded will not function properly.
Make a backup before upgrading.
- It is always a good practice to back up your database before upgrading or making any significant changes.
Log into your computer as an administrator and disable/pause any antivirus software (other than Windows Defender) before starting the upgrade.
- This will help to ensure the upgrade goes smoothly.
Sign up for 9.0 Finance training webinars.
- These will provide an overview of the new Finance module. Any one who is on our email list will be notified about the upcoming webinars. You may sign up to receive communications about Shepherd's Staff here.