What's new in Shepherd's Staff 9.2?

Shepherd's Staff's latest upgrade, version 9.2, is here!

Version 9.2 introduces updated graphics for a more sleek presentation of the software, along with some exciting new features, including a credit card import feature for finance, a re-designed dashboard, and new tools for viewing statistical information about your Membership, Attendance, and Contributions. For full details on the upgrade, see the information below.

Membership

General

• A new "Who" filter has been added for "Non-removed members".

People Tab

• Individual/Household records

  • For clarity, the Membership Code for “Unknown” is changed to “None”, which better describes the condition.
    • Note: This change does not affect the United Methodist and Presbyterian editions; the UM edition uses “Unknown or Other”, and the Presbyterian edition uses “Suspended Member”.
  • An on-screen checkmark was added to indicate whether an address exists, so that you don’t have to click on each address option to see if data is filled in.
  • Addresses can now be marked as Private so that they can be hidden from certain reports (e.g., Church Directory and Church Phone Book).
  • The Person and Household Record reports can now include envelope number.
    • Also, private addresses are flagged.
  • Loading Household/Person records has been optimized for speed.

• Lists

  • A new "Name (first last) column has been added at the far right of the Lists table, displaying the person name in “first last” format, so that you don’t have to work to flip the data after exporting to use it for a mail merge or other purposes.

• Anniversaries

  • A "Contact list by month" report has been added.

Ministry Tab

• In the Participation too, you can now include removed and inactive people.

Explore Tab

Tools formerly found under the Dashboard have been moved into a new Explore tab under each relevant module.

• The Membership tool has been expanded, with more calculations.
  • “By age” has new filters for:
    • Baptized members.
    • Inactive members
    • First Communion (church-defined 2)
    • Church-defined 3
    • Click the “i” info button to see the Who option’s criteria.
  • “Counts” has new counts for:
    • Baptized members
    • First Communion (church-defined 2)
    • Church-defined 3
    • Click the “i” info button to see the Who option’s criteria.
  • “Changes” has three new categories under “Type of change”:
    • Births
    • Marriages
    • Deaths.
    • Click the “i” info button to see the option’s criteria.

Tools/Settings:

• An automatic backup feature has been added to the Promote Students utility.

Attendance

General

• The module has been reorganized, including the removal of the Events, and the redistribution of various items into more logical locations:
  • Formerly under Events, the below have been moved to the Attendance tab:
    • "Events"
    • "By date" (renamed to “Events by date”).
    • "By year" (renamed to “Events by year”).
    • "Enrollees".
  • Formerly under Attendance, the below have been moved to the Explore tab:
    • “By person / event”.
    • “By person / type” moved to the new Explore tab.
    • “By person / week” moved to the new Explore tab.
    • “By person / year” moved to the new Explore tab.
  • Attendance / “By year” stays in place under Attendance, but has been renamed to “Yearly totals”.
  • And a new tool added to the Attendance tab for “Distinct yearly totals”.

Attendance Tab

• Batches

  • A new filter was added to allow showing Posted, Unposted, or All batches.
    • And you can now reprint an Attendance batch report from the Posted batches.
  • In Basic batch entry, a "keep open" checkbox was added to allow saving work in progress without closing the batch entry window.
  • In Advanced batch entry:
    • There is a new user access option that allows someone without Membership access to still add visitor records when entering a batch.
    • The last Who option you used will be remembered between batch entries.
    • There are three new Who filters, based on attendance. The idea is that those who’ve attended recently are most likely to attend again, reducing the names you have to search through.
      • “Attended in the past 45 days” (about six weeks)
      • “Attended in the past 90 days” (about three months)
      • “Attended in the past 180 days” (about six months).
    • When adding visitors to Membership from within a batch, the system will warn you if you may be accidentally adding duplicate households (but will allow you to continue as desired).  It will check for potential duplication between the following, and warn if it is found:
      • The head of household's name vs. all names (except deceased).
      • The spouse name vs. all names (except deceased).
      • The primary address line vs. other primary addresses.
      • The phone number vs. other Home 1, Home 2 or primary address Phone 1 numbers.
      • The phone number vs. cell phones (excluding deceased people).
      • The email address vs. other household email addresses.
      • The email address vs. other personal email addresses.

• Detail

  • A new column has been added showing whether the person was a visitor at the time they attended.

• Events by date

  • You can now view both the event and visitor notes directly from the grid without having to go into each record and click the Note and Visitors buttons.
  • You can now include event and visitor notes on the grid report; when you click Print, there is a new option for “Include notes”

• Enrollees

  • This grid will now include contact information.
  • You can now send email to enrollees from the grid.
  • You can generate mailing labels from the Print button on the grid.

• Distinct yearly totals

  • This new tab shows total the number of individuals who attended for each of several categories.

Explore Tab

Tools formerly found under the Dashboard have been moved into a new Explore tab under each relevant module.

• The Attendance tool has been expanded, with more calculations.
  • “Weekly by type” and “Weekly by event” combined into a single tab, with a “By attendance” option to pick between the two.
  • “Monthly by type” and “Weekly by type” combined into a single, with a “By attendance” option to pick between the two.
  • New “By age group” tool with graphing to analyze attendance by age group for a given year and attendance type or event.

Other Reports Tab

• You can now print the Attendance Roster report for any attendance type.

Tools/Settings Tab

• The “Combine Attendance for two people” utility now has a sanity check that shows your selections and asks if you are sure.

Contributions

General:

• Several views have been optimized for speed.

Giving Tab:

• Batches

  • When adding offerings, inactive giving funds are now hidden by default.
  • A new "Hide giver names" checkbox has been added when using "Post all", to allow for printing all batch reports without names with one click.
  • The “recalculate pledge” feature from earlier versions of Shepherd’s Staff has been added back to the Edit Pledge window.

• Pledges

  • To avoid mistakenly including a prior year's pledged offerings in the next year's Pledge:
    • If a Pledge is being edited now and:
      • The pledge is expired (the pledge end date is prior to today) and you change either the Begin or End dates of the pledge:
        • We display a red warning message to the right of the End date that warns you that you should be entering a new pledge using Add or Copy, rather than just changing the date range.
        • You can still continue if you legitimately want to expand it to a multi-year pledge, this is just to warn you not to try to create a new pledge just by editing the existing one.

Explore Tab

• Tools formerly found under the Dashboard have been moved into a new Explore tab under each relevant module.
  • The Contributions Dashboard tools have been moved into the Explore tab (formerly named “Analysis”) in Contributions and expanded with more calculations.
    • There is a new “By age group” tool with graphing to analyze giving by age group for a given year and one or all funds.
  • The “Weekly giving” tool under Explore can now be printed.

Other Reports Tab

• There is a new report for “Other givers” that lets you print all the offerings made during a date range in a single report, along with contact information.
• Envelope box labels can now be printed in all caps.

Scheduler

Events Tab

• You can now attach files to a room.
• A new "When" filter has been added to the Events list view, with the below options:
  • Today – events dated today.
  • Today and future – events dated today and in the future. This is the default setting.
  • Future – events dated after today.
  • This week – events occurring in the current calendar week.
  • Next week – events occurring in the next calendar week.
  • This month – events this month, based on today’s date.
  • Next month – events occurring next month, based on today’s date.
  • Past – events earlier than today.

Inventory Tab

• You can now attach files to:
  • Inventory items.
  • Vehicles.
  • Maintenance records.

Other Reports Tab

• The Calendar report has a new format that prints a vertical list, allowing for a larger display than we can show within a formatted, grid-based calendar that has cells for each day.

Finance

Activity Tab

• Vendors

  • You can now attach files to vendor records.
  • When editing a vendor, the list of other vendors in the tree to the left will now filter out inactive vendors.

• Payments

  • Transactions with the statuses of: “Stop payment” and Void now appears at the end of the payments grid instead of at the top, so that you don’t have to scroll through them.
  • For “charge to debt” payments (e.g., credit card purchases):
    • If you edit a payment you have already reconciled, it now displays a warning to that effect above the Save button.
    • The charge reconciliation date now displays on the Payments tab to the far right.

Accounts Tab

• The “All accounts” tab is the new default under the Accounts tab, instead of the accounts tree.
• Books: You can now inactivate an outdated or unused Book so that it is hidden in Finance and on reports.

Receivables Tab

• Accounts Receivable statements

  • Now show the total purchased and total paid in the header section.
  • Can now include the school name, school tax ID, and a custom message. (School info is a new tab under the Program Settings.)

Plan/Analyze Tab

• The “Bank account balance” tool can now be filtered for a date range.
• The “Period analysis” tool has a new graphing feature.

Other Reports Tab

• The “All months: actuals” version of the Treasurer’s report can now include a progressive running total so you can see where you stood, cumulatively, as of any month of the year.
• When printing checks, there is a new “Sort by number” checkbox for the “Bank account” drop-down, which makes it easier for those who order their most-used bank accounts by account number rather than name. The setting is remembered between uses.
• The three vendor reports have a new filter button that lets you limit the Vendor drop-down to just the vendors who match the types you’ve selected.

Subgroups

• When adding a dynamic subgroup, if a field offers options in multiple checkboxes, you can now select or deselect all items with a button click.

Common Reports

• Mailing labels have a new checkbox that keeps Removed people from appearing, regardless of other settings.

 

Task Manager/ To Do List

• The Task Manager user interface has been updated to allow you to
  • Search and filter the grid contents.
  • Delete tasks from the grids (multiple can be deleted at once).
  • Reopen multiple tasks at once.

Global

General

• Graphics have been updated.

Login Screen

• The “Switch church” feature has been streamlined.

Tools

• The Backup / Restore process has been redesigned/simplified

User-Specific:

• The Favorites panels in each module will "remember" their expanded/collapsed state from session to session.
• You can now set the default font size for data grids by user.