This article announces a change in how to display children in the directory.
First, some background — please read this previous article on a few changes that preceded this one.
Now, for this change. Until now, if you wanted to list children in the directory, you would select their roles, along with adults and parents. With that choice, children would appear if they had a cell phone or email. If they had neither, their names would not appear. Moreover, if you wanted to show children’s names, but omit the cell and email, you would have to individually check that option per child.
It’s simpler now. Basically, you can follow two rules. Rule one — the Role within family determines whose names appear with their personal contact information. Rule two — by adding the phrase {children} to the letter template for the Directory, you’ll display children in the directory. First names only, as a list.
By way of explanation — typically, after a pledge drive, or school signups, you’ll record what each family owes. The most direct way to handle those charges, is to book an amount owed per category. For example, $1800 for a pledge, or $500 for religious school. You can include an effective date and/or a due date with each item.
However, we understand that some synagogues prefer, not a lump sum, but to create equal charges over time. Using that $1800 pledge as an example, to bill $200 for nine consecutive months.
Until this change, the only way to create successive monthly (or quarterly) charges was to bill them manually. Now, as you can see in the video below, ShalomCloud handles that automatically. You’ll enter the total amount of the charge, say whether it’s monthly or quarterly, declare a first bill date and a last bill date, and ShalomCloud handles the arithmetic.
One small point — the program handles situations where the total, divided by the number of months, is not an even number of cents.. For example, if you’re making six pledges for a total of $1000, ShalomCloud will create five of $166.67; and then the last one will be $166.65, to come out to the even $1000.
A few points of caution to consider.
Statements will exclude future-dated transactions. So, if you’re running statements on, say, October 5th, and you want to show amounts owed that might be effective-dated October 15th, you’ll need to use a period end date of at least October 15th.
The logged-in member portal will show each of those individual transactions owed. Put another way, showing a single line item for a pledge, would be a cleaner presentation than half a dozen, smaller line items.
Another point — if your intent is to set up recurring payments for the pledge, you’re much better off keeping the amount owed as a single line item. Otherwise, you’ll see a screen like this:
where the top line, a single lump-sum pledge, is clearer to deal with than many small increments.
Nonetheless, if you’re aware of these situations, and consider that incremental billing fits your situation, feel free to use it.
You now have the ability to CC eligible users on outgoing ShalomCloud email.
There are two places the CC comes into play. First, when you’re sending emails from the member query. Second, when you’re sending emails from the All Children report.
Be aware of a couple of ground rules, though. The CC email addresses must be in ShalomCloud as administrative users. That’s what we intend with the phrase “CC Eligible Users.” That is to say, they must have read or write permissions on general data. If you do type in an email address that isn’t eligible, the system will warn you with a red bar underneath the CC area. Just blank out the named email address, and you’ll be good to go.
Do be aware that your own sent email is available in ShalomCloud, under Queries -> Email history. Therefore, you needn’t CC yourself, just to have a record of what you’ve sent.
You can now remove items from the Selected Journal Entry screen.
If you’re a QuickBooks Desktop user, you’re likely familiar with the Selected Journal Entry screen. This panel shows the items posted to ShalomCloud since the last push to QBD. From its inception, you could pick and choose which items you wanted to summarize and send.
However, if for some reason you wanted to permanently remove an item from that screen, you had to contact ShalomCloud support. Otherwise, the item would stay on that screen. Now, though, the right edge of the screen has a link to Remove the item. This does not delete the transaction altogether. Instead, it just marks it with a faux batch code.
On the other hand, if you removed an item and want it put back into the SJE screen, there is a way. Namely, you would do a financial transaction query to find the item, edit it, and check a box to remove that faux batch code.
Now available — email notification flags, to control who receives any of various notifcations.
Until this change, the system used three rules to determine who received email notifications:
Anyone with read or write permission for financial activity would receive an email whenever a payment occurred.
Anyone with read or write permission for schools would receive an email whenever a school registration occurred.
Anyone with read or write permission on families would receive a notification whenever any other type of form arrived.
With this change, you can designate which of these notifications go to each user. You’ll see a yes/no choice, when you edit the profile for any user.
Be it noted that, initially, we’ve set the flags such that there is no change in who receives what. Thus, we recommend that you have a look at your profiles, and turn off the flags for those who are receiving extraneous email notifications.
You now have the ability to specify where you’d like the family’s address to appear on the statement. You can be as precise as you’d like, down to 1/72nd of an inch. Thus, you can now configure window envelopes with precision.
Second announcement — if you use the option to include recent payments on the statement, the payment line now includes the transaction description. We’ve always shown the date, the category, the amount, and the source of funds. Now, though, we show the description, if entered within the item.
The most visible change is the option to print the directory in a linear, up-and-down organization. Before now, the only choice was to use a “Z-Pattern.” That is, ShalomCloud would print the first entry in the upper left corner. The the second name in the upper right corner. Then the third name on the next row, under the first name.
Now, you can choose to first fill the left column, then fill the right column. Then, a new page, continuing to the end.
Another change in the new style is displaying page numbers.
One more thing — if you populate the field known as “informal label,” you can now include that in the directory.
This video runs through all of new features for the membership directory.
We now have a convenient, straightforward way to handle those situations where you have a third-party payer. By that, we mean cases where your congregant owes for dues or school, for example, and someone volunteers to pay on their behalf.
To enter the third-party payer, you’d use the same screen as always. There’s simply a new field, roughly in the middle, to select the family who is making that payment.
On the financial transaction query, you’ll see the family name of the payer in the “source of funds” column. Likewise, that information appears on a spreadsheet export.
We now offer the ability to allocate recurring payments. That is, within a single payment, to specify exactly what to apply to any and all outstanding items. Thus, you can now pay against categories such as pledges, school tuition, and a security fee, concurrently.
A little background: When we first rolled out recurring payments, the only method available was “waterfall.” Meaning the entire payment would go against whatever item was at the top of the list of owed items. After the top item went to a zero balance, the recurring payment would proceed to the second item, etc.
With this ability to allocate recurring payments, you can declare exactly how much to go against each outstanding item. You can concurrently pay pledges, school tuition, security fees, and the like.
You can change an existing waterfall to an allocation if you’d like. In doing so, you needn’t re-enter any the payment information; but rather just change from waterfall to allocation, as illustrated in this video.
However, inevitably, a segment of your congregation prefers to deal with paper statements and paper payments. Accordingly, you now have the option of including a stub at the bottom of your statements.
The left side of the tear-off shows the amounts owed for the household. Items such as pledges, school tuition, security fees, Bar/Bat Mitzvah fees. Then, the right side has the family name and address, along with a place to record payment information. That payment information could be a check number and amount, or card information.
