Two Small Enhancements — Plaque Location on the Bimah list…

and a summarized version of the Deposit Assistant.

We have two small, unrelated enhancements to show you.

Enhancement One: This relates to the combination Bimah list. The combination Bimah list, for those of you not familiar with it, combines onto one list, the Yahrzeits observed by Hebrew date, along with those observed by Gregorian date.

The combo Bimah list contains a growing numbers of options. Prior to now, those options were

  • Group by month, or group by day.
  • Whether or not to show the relationships on the list (e.g. father of, mother of).
  • To include all Yahrzeits with plaques, whether or not there was an observer.
  • Whether to specifically exclude relationships with a notification flag of “N” (meaning do not notify).

Now, we have one additional checkbox. If you’d like to show the plaque locations on the Bimah list, there is a corresponding selection.

For our second small enhancement, we turn to the Deposit Assistant. Here, as before, you can select recent incoming funds, either by Deposit ID, or by date range. Until now, the report always showed the detailed line items, grouped by category, within the source — cash, check card, ACH, etc.

Now, you’ll see an additional radio button — to produce the report in summary, with only headings and totals.

Here’s a video that runs through these two features.

Your entry did not go to QuickBooks Online — now what?

Announcing the ability to post activity to QuickBooks Online retroactively.

First of all — this article does not pertain to those who use our QuickBooks Desktop integration. Because that is, by its nature, run in batch, after the transactions post to ShalomCloud.

When would you want to use this capability? Not often, hopefully. However, let’s say you’ve set up a new financial category in ShalomCloud, and haven’t mapped it to the corresponding chart of accounts entries in QuickBooks. And, then, some items post — could be via the administrative screens, or via any of the online portals. If that happens, you’ll receive an email, saying something like, “No mapping for credits on category <name of the category>.

Given that the integration from ShalomCloud to QuickBooks Online occurs within seconds, how can you correct that missing entry? In the past, you could post the entries manually; or we in ShalomCloud support could handle it, also manually.

Aha! Now, you can go into the familiar Queries -> Financial transactions. Enter whatever criteria will include the items(s) in question. Check the box on the far right, and touch the orange button at the bottom, Send checked to QBOL. That’s it.

You can see the above scenario in action by viewing this video.

Retroactive posting to QuickBooks Online

Easily Track High Holiday Honors

We’ve expanded on the already-available, but not widely publicized, ability for ShalomCloud to manage the process of assigning honors. This pertains primarily to the High Holidays, but could be used for any set of honors.

There a detailed tutorial available, which may serve better than this text description. Nonetheless, here goes. With this feature, you can

  • Nominate people to carry out various honors.
  • Track the status — accepted in person, accepted virtually, declined — whatever terminology you’re accustomed to using.
  • When assigning honors, ask for a specific last name, or by anyone who has not already been assigned an honor.
  • Obtain a spreadsheet, with contact information, of who has not received an honor.

And on the query side,

  • Obtain a list of honors for which there is no assigned person.
  • Ask for those who have been offered an honor, but who have not yet responded.
  • From that list, send formatted emails, with the specifics about the respective honor.
  • Obtain a list of those who have accepted an honor, and email a formatted reminder, replete with details about the honor.

New ability to group checks by deposit ID

For those of you who process a significant number of checks, you now have the ability to group checks by deposit ID.

What this means, is that, as you enter checks (or cash, for that matter), you can select a free-form label that will stick with those transactions. As you enter financial activity, you can enter a never-before-used deposit ID, or you an select from a drop-down list of previously used deposit ids. By the way, the previously used list, appears according to when they were created, with the most recent being at the top.

Where does the deposit ID appear? One place is within the financial transaction query. You can use deposit id as one of the filtering criteria. And, regardless of the filtering criteria, deposit ID appears in the source of funds column. Moreover, if you do a financial transaction download, the deposit ID appears as a column in the resulting spreadsheet.

One more place — the Deposit Assistant. Prior to this change, the sole choice for the Deposit Assistant was a range of dates. Now, in addition, or instead of, a range of dates, you can select deposit ID from that same drop-down list as mentioned above.

If you find the above description promising, and are wondering how to enable this feature — someone with administrative access would go to Home -> Declare synagogue options. There, you’ll find a radio button to “Use deposit id.”

To see this feature in action, please have a look at this video.

Now up to you — accept or disallow recurring contributions

It’s now your choice — either to accept, or to disallow, recurring contributions from the public portal.

On the publicly-facing payment/contribution page, you may have noticed an option to make a recurring contribution. This is analogous to what you’ll see on many charitable organizations, such as Shriners Hospital and Red Cross. Those organizations, like ShalomCloud, allow the contributor to choose between a one-time payment, or a recurring monthly payment.

Recurring contributions can add complexity to your synagogue finances. Accordingly, we now offer a way to exclude that recurring option. To effect that choice, simply go to Home -> Declare synagogue options, and you’ll see

Allow or disallow recurring contributions

By selecting “Do not allow recurring contributions,” your page will look like this:

Now up to you -- accept or disallow recurring contributions

instead of:

Now up to you -- accept or disallow recurring contributions

Here’s a video that displays and explains this new option.

More than one assigned user per note; now include secondary users

Expanding on our memos/notes capability, ShalomCloud now accommodates assigning additional users to a memo. The term you’ll see on the screen is “interested parties.”

Until now, you could assign one and only one user to a memo. There is still a primary “assigned to” person; but now, you can select any number of additional users who have access to that memo. All that’s required is that they exist as users in the system, and that they have at least the family permission. If an intended user is not in the list, you’d need to create that person as a ShalomCloud user, and give that user at least Read permission on families.

Each memo contains a checkbox to declare it as private. Once so declared, only users attached to that memo, either as primary or as an interested party, will be able to edit the item. That includes changing the reminder date, marking it complete, and even changing the topic. Non-attached users will, as before, be able to view most fields, other than the body of the note, which says, “*** Contents of note private ***”.

If you’re not at all familiar with this aspect of ShalomCloud, let us repeat this information from a prior post, to wit:

For the notes/memos–you can now receive an email with your individual tasks that are past due (which appear in red), or due within the next seven days.  Your administrator can determine the timing and frequency of those “push” emails–for example, the system can send the emails at 11 pm, seven days a week; or, if that seems too often, perhaps 5 am Monday through Friday.

Feel free to view the visual demonstration of this expanded capability.

How to gather and verify information about your members

We have two new small enhancements regarding the “Turnaround Document” — so-called because, when you send it to your congregation, they it turn it back in, with additions and corrections. We’ve had this capability for three years (https://blog.shalomcloud.com/2020/03/18/the-turnaround-document-2/), but it’s worth going over again.

First of all — if you’re not familiar with this term in ShalomCloud, perhaps it’s best to view the tutorial. That will cover what it is, what purpose it serves, and how to send it to your congregation. Basically, it’s a document that can either be sent via postal mail, one per family, or by email. It displays every piece of non-financial data in ShalomCloud on behalf of that family, with a place to write in additions and corrections.

The two new aspects of the turnaround document are:

  • Including the three emergency contact fields — a name, phone number, and email address.
  • A place to put a free-form message, after the individual members of the household, and before the Yahrzeits observed by anyone in the household.

Here’s a video that runs through the entire process.

Now has a free-form area, below members and above Yahrzeits

Better Handling of Early Payments

Here’s a situation that has been occurring, not infrequently.

Let’s say that you intend to gear up for a pledge drive in June or July. Or, you’re going to register children for religious school over the summer, and bill the respective families. That is all well and good.

But — you may have cases where people send in payments (or remit funds online), before you’ve had a chance to bill them.

What has been happening? Lacking an amount owed, ShalomCloud creates an immediate debit matching the payment amount. Then, when you bill the family, unless you’ve recognized the prepaid pledge or school payment, you’re effectively overcharging. That’s a bit of a sticky situation to unwind.

With this change, you can declare selected categories as prepay-eligible. Then, using the same situation described above, instead of ShalomCloud creating an immediate debit, it’ll put the money into a credit-on-file category. It will also insert “Prepaid” at the beginning of the description. So, for example, if the intent was to pay for part of a pledge, under category “Standard family pledge”, you’ll see in the description “Prepaid Standard family pledge.”

New category type — Prepay

Prepay Category

There’s one other visual change. We’ve moved up the Credit on file section. It used to be at the very bottom, below the credit card and ACH sections. Now, it’s right under the check / cash /other section. You’ll see it much more readily than when it sat at the bottom.

source of funds and credit on file
New location for credits on file

Video showing these changes

Include More Info in the Shopping Cart

We have one new wrinkle to announce, concerning the ShalomCloud shopping cart.

Until now, the items in the shopping cart consisted of the name of the item, a description, and a price. (By the way, that price could be zero, or could be user-determined). All well and good. But — what if you needed to collect some additional information from the “buyer”?

Examples:

  • For a class, the names of the attendees
  • Same thing for a community Seder
  • If you’re selling Hamantaschen, who will be picking up the order?

If you have asked for that additional information, when someone places that item into the cart, the program will provide a place for the response.

In turn, the purchase queries include the question-answer pair.

Last item of note — the email to the “buyer.” Thinking that, more often than not, those emails will appear on a cell phone, we’ve formatted the response to appear vertically.

Here’s how it looks on a computer monitor:

Shopping cart purchase -- wide screen
Shopping cart purchase — wide screen

And here’s how it looks on a cell phone:

Shopping cart purchase -- narrow screen
Shopping cart purchase — narrow screen

To see a video of the end-to-end process, please access this link:

A few changes to the contribution portal

Just a few changes to announce, concerning the contribution portal (a.k.a., non-logged-in portal).

First, where the contributor can name a person to be notified. The screen now has a radio button, to choose either email or postal mail address. Then, depending on which button the user selected, it offers an area in which to enter that email or postal address.

Second change: Before, as soon as someone tabbed out of the amount area, the screen immediately dropped down, to invite a second item within that contribution. That has led to some confusion, or, worse, people repeating the previous item unintentionally. Instead, the screen now has a checkbox. When the user checks the box (an intentional act), then the screen opens for a second line item. And repeats, for up to five line items.

Third change: With every contribution, office folks so flagged receive an email notification. All well and good, but we’ve added to that notification the email and/or the postal mail address of the “notifee.” That should save office personnel from having to look up, or, worse, chase down contact information for the person(s) to be honored.

By the way, if you missed the post on bulk email acknowledgments, have a look at this article.

And here’s a video showing certain aspects of this change.