Dear Friends -

I have been reminded recently of public figures who quietly, yet profoundly, witness their relationship with Jesus Christ. Specifically, I was deeply impressed with Tim Russert when I heard him speak at a conference years ago, especially with how well he wove his Catholic faith into his thinking and way of life. Similarly, I was impressed by Tony Snow. I learned in a eulogy that Tony was a convert to the faith, had a beautiful marriage and wonderful kids whom "we will hear from in the future" as positive leaders. Even though both of these men have passed on, their light continues to shine brightly.

Speaking of witnesses, we are privileged to work currently with St. Thomas, a local parish, under the direction of their outstanding pastor. Sending teams to knock on doors, their volunteers go out fearful and return excited and energized, filled with stories of reaching people, including some who haven't been to church in years but are both anxious and wanting to return. Volunteers are also calling on every household in the parish to update their information, invite them to ministry, and ask about unmet needs. The volunteers use an online version of our software to update family and member information and submit it to parish staff for review. They also "flag" members in our software as "interested" so they can be contacted by ministry leaders. Cool!

These are a few examples of humble servants who witness in small but powerful ways. We at ParishSOFT are inspired to work with you, men and women just like this - every day!

May God bless you in your work!

PARISH OFFICE EMPLOYEES EMBRACE "PARISHSOFT"

By PAT HENNESSY
Reprinted with permission from the June 28, 2008, Fairfield County Catholic, a biweekly publication of The Diocese of Bridgeport.

"This keeps track of everything happening"
For two millennia, the Catholic Church has been known for the excellence of its record keeping. Nothing compares with the thrill of visiting an ancient stone church in Europe, asking politely to see the records, and seeing the marriage of your grandparents or your mother's baptism date in some impressive, leather-bound registry.

It's not so much fun, though, to look through heavy registry books or heaps of file cards for someone who is getting married or needs a sponsor certificate for a Baptism. The workload gets heavier when the staff gets calls for parish sacramental information from outside the diocese, sometimes from people who aren't even sure they were baptized at the parish.

On the Move
"People don't live in the same parish from the time they're baptized for the rest of their lives," observes Msgr. Chris Walsh, pastor of Saint Joseph Parish in Shelton.

When he went looking for a program that could both give him an accurate representation of his parishioners and provide them with quick access to parish records and easily manage multiple mailings, Msgr. Walsh settled on ParishSOFTš, which has now become the official church management program for the entire diocese.

Sacramental preparation gets a strong assist from the new management program.

"It gives you a really good picture of the family you're working with," says Sister Rita Petrarca, A.S.C.J., Saint Joseph's pastoral associate. "When people call to make appointments, I can see if they've made all their sacraments. If they're arranging for a baby's Baptism and I see that they aren't married in the Church, I can encourage them to think about their own situation and help them with that."

Saint Patrick Parish in Bridgeport, under the leadership of Father Chip O'Neill, has been using ParishSOFT for the past six years. During that time, the staff has learned to modify the program to take advantage of its many features. The staff began with basics like liturgical scheduling, then moved beyond as they discovered other possibilities.

Running History
"When I go out to visit the homebound, I'm not just bringing the Blessed Sacrament, I'm bringing the care and concern of the Church to each person I visit," says Sandy Mihalek, pastoral assistant for the homebound at Saint Patrick's. "With this program, I can keep a running history of each person I see. In the family record I can list the names and ages of the grandchildren, if that's important to a person I visit. I can make a note of their health problems, or hospital visits, and keep track of everything that's happening."

Unlike an Excel spreadsheet, which merely stores data, ParishSOFT updates records—as Mihalek discovered when she checked out her own, and found that it had updated her age on her birthday. The technology has a sense of humor, too—her record is pink, as are all women's; her husband's, like all guys, is blue.

Good for Non-Techies
While Msgr. Walsh and Father O'Neill are both technology buffs, and enjoyed choosing the program that best fit their needs, even non-techies have been pleased with the benefits of ParishSOFT.

"I can't even set my own watch, but my finance staff and accountants have enlightened me as to the great benefits of the program," says Msgr. Frank Wissel, pastor of Saint Mary Parish in Greenwich. "Better than that, I have a member of my parish staff who is a genius at this. In 20 seconds, Elva can tell me what Mass attendance was at any one of our eight weekend Masses."

Elva Giuliani, Msgr. Wissel's business manager, is indeed an expert, having worked with personal computers for the past 20 years. Her experience led her to appreciate the possibilities ParishSOFT offers, and to expect more to come.

"We had multiple databases before, but this puts everything into one package," Giuliani says. "Right now we're registering students for religious education. We set up a class, set up a catechist, and send the information out to families—by e-mail or hard copy, whichever the record lists as best for them."

Timely Reminders
The program also helps them avoid last-minute changes. "It has a list of families whose children were registered in our program last year, along with their ages," Giuliani continues. "If a family hasn't registered yet for this year, we can send out a reminder to them instead of having it go to every family in the parish."

Giuliani has found the ParishSOFT technical support to be excellent and looks forward to discovering what else the program can do when the diocese schedules training sessions. She echoes the hopes of pastors, office staff, and parish ministries of all kind when they look forward to learning what else ParishSOFT can do for their parishes.

"I know we're going to have one little epiphany after another as they show us the possibilities in store," she predicts.

Mail and email are great tools to communicate with parishioners and staff, but when the message is critical and has to reach many people in a short time, ParishSOFT NotifyNow offers multiple ways to reach anyone by phone, text and/or email—in seconds—using your existing ParishSOFT software.

NotifyNow sends your personally recorded message or text electronically from a single source to all individuals or groups that you select from your ParishSOFT database. Message recipients get the facts of any given situation via home phone, cell, fax, pager, text message and/or email. Messages, in multiple languages, can reach thousands in seconds while recording the delivery of each call. Busy signals or no-answers trigger repeat calls until messages are delivered or recorded in voicemail. Unreachable and invalid numbers are logged and reported. You receive a complete report of who received the message, when they received the message, and their responses.

NotifyNow is easy to use. And with no equipment or software to buy, you'll gain substantial, instant savings in staff time; and your messages will be delivered in a fraction of the time typical of traditional, manual communication methods.

NotifyNow has unlimited possibilities to increase ministry participation and stewardship in your parish. Here are just a few ways NotifyNow is already working in the Catholic Church community:

• Announce last minute information to specific groups (volunteer needs, traffic delays, weather cancellations, change in meeting venue, Religious Ed cancellations, etc.)
• Send special messages to new members, parishioners or students
• Remind members about meetings, practices, registrations for events
• Quickly create prayer chains
• Increase stewardship participation and conduct surveys with voting options

For more information, contact your ParishSOFT account representative at 866.930.4774 x1.

ParishSOFT's ConnectNow! Church Accounting brings you the freedom of anytime, anywhere access, the peace and security of tracking all users of the system, and major time-savings in reporting to your arch/diocese.

ConnectNow! Church Accounting's family of modules includes Ledger & Payables (available now) and Payroll, Accounts Receivable, Fixed Assets and Purchase Order (available in 2009). ConnectNow! Church Accounting offers full reporting on historical data for all prior years, so you can quickly access the records you need at any time. When you need the details behind any number in the financial report, just double-click to view the transactions. You can even work in next year's file without having to close the prior year!

The Business Manager or Parish Administrator will appreciate using the powerful Dashboard summary of live parish activity to quickly identify problems and make adjustments. Its secure, web-browser interface is easy for anyone in your parish to use, and of course, Offering & Pledges information is seamlessly integrated.

Fast, simple conversions are available from your existing CMS Accounting Software or from QuickBooks®. For more information on features and hosting options, please contact your ParishSOFT account representative at 866.930.4774 x1.

NEW! Offering & Pledges: Import/Export Utilities
Add this new product to your Offering & Pledges software (versions 3.6.25 and later) to export contributions to QuickBooks®; import contributions from ParishPay®, Vanco®, or any bank lockbox.

QuickBooks Export
With the new Import/Export Utilities, you can export contributions data directly into QuickBooks using any combination of fund, date, or batch selections. The software accommodates multiple A/R account types, so A/R account records export and import seamlessly into QuickBooks. Income and Other Current Liability accounts import as general journal entries.

Once added to your software license, the Export to QuickBooks utility will be available from the Contribution Postings screen when you select Utilities menu > Exports > Export into QuickBooks.

Import Bank Transactions Automatically
The new Import/Export Utilities product lets you electronically post pledges and contributions—hundreds of records in seconds—from a data file that you receive from a bank.

Use this import utility for any deposits received and processed through a banking institution. So whether you use a bank lockbox or an electronic giving provider other than ParishSOFT (e.g., Vanco, ParishPay, etc.), your ParishSOFT products can save church staff countless hours of manual posting. After a simple, one-time template setup to map data fields from your bank file to ParishSOFT, you just import the bank file via your Batch Processing menu and click Process. ParishSOFT reads the data file and posts pledge and contribution records to the appropriate funds and families in your software—no manual posting is needed.

Once added to your software license, Lockbox Import will be available right from your Offering & Pledges Module. Of course, for even greater savings, you can use ParishSOFT's Electronic Giving for automated posting and avoid the need to import a bank data file altogether.

Hablamos Español with New Religious Ed Forms
Religious Education registration forms will be available in Spanish with ParishSOFT versions 3.6.24 and later. If you have Spanish-speaking families in your church, you can choose to print any of your registration forms in English and/or Spanish. To simplify the registration process for your bilingual families, we recommend that you print a two-sided form with English on one side and Spanish on the other—so your families can use the language that's right for them.

Spanish religious education forms will be available from Student Directory Reports. To get there, click from ParishSOFT Reports > Religious Ed Reports Menu > Student Directory Reports.

Save Stamps with Email Merge!
If you use Microsoft Outlook, you can now send your ParishSOFT Mail Merge documents electronically all at one time. Just create your Mail Merge document as usual and click the Merge to Email icon on your toolbar. Specify a merge field for your email addresses and send. Your important messages can be sent in their original formats via html or as an attachment that the recipients can download.

With more and more families managing their day-to-day business electronically, paperless communication just makes sense. It gets your message out faster and connects families to the church from wherever their busy lives may take them. Don't forget...it cuts your administrative and postage costs, too.

What about the families without email? It's simple. After you send your email message, repeat the Mail Merge to create a traditional paper mailing just for the families without email addresses - ParishSOFT prompts you to select and create letters just for the families without email during your Mail Merge setup, so it's easy to keep in touch with everyone. Specific instructions can be found at www.parishsoft.com/support/faqs.asp.

How do I auto-fill all my family records with the different names and salutations that I installed with the 3.6.23 version?

1. Log into Family Directory as the exclusive administrator.
2. In the Utilities menu, select Auto Fill All Names > Yes.
3. Select Yes to Auto Fill all names, select No to Auto Fill only those who do not already have data, or Cancel to stop the process.

How do I clone a previous school year in Religious Education?

Cloning a school year works only when the new school year (i.e., the copy To year) has no sessions. You can clone a previous school year into a new, session-free year using the following steps.

1. Open and log into the Religious Education module.
2. Open Reports > ParishSOFT Reports.
3. Select Utilities > Religious Education Utilities > Clone Previous Year.
4. Select the year you want to copy From using the drop-down list.
5. Select the year you want to copy To using the drop-down list.
6. Select Copy and respond Yes to the prompts.

1. Open and log into Offering and Pledges.
2. Select the Preferences menu.
3. Select the Show Members in list (this will uncheck or check to display or not display the members).