IMPORTANT: Save yourself some typing! When adding a New Member Record, do this by first Selecting the 2 Tab on the Browse Member Information Screen (Family Order) then clicking the Insert button. When you then "Select" the family the member belongs to, a lot of information will be filled in for you based on the related family information. This means unless the individual member is at a different address (perhaps a student at college) you will not have to re-enter the Address, City, State, Zip Code, Home Phone or Email address. It will be filled in for you.
Let's look at each field one at a time. The first thing you will need to enter, and this must be unique, is the Member Name. I suggest First Name and then Last Name, but suppose you could enter it Last Name, First Name. Then, if you have not already selected the family, Select it from the drop down list. Each family should have at least one member, but may have an unlimited number of members associated with that family. You will then want to select the Title from the drop down list. This may be Mr., Mrs., Miss, etc. and is useful in printing mailing labels or letter style reports. Next enter the first name then the last name. You may find it useful to record member marital status. This can be selected from a drop down list box which "looks up" that data from the marital status table file. Some congregations use an Envelope number while others do not. If your church does use an Envelope number you can enter that information next. The address, city, state and zip code fields may have been filled in for you if you selected the Family Order tab then selected a family when inserting a member record. You can always change this information later, for instance if a family member is at college or another mailing address than the rest of the family.
The second notebook style tab lets you record each member's home and work phone number as well as an email address. In addition, several date type fields are provided to let you enter these important member dates. A drop down list box is provided to let you record the method this member used to join the church.
The third tab shown above. Drop down lists are provided to let you record a member type and member status. A field is also provided to let you enter a member's weekly pledge amount. The next field would let you browse to a digital image of the member. This can be helpful if you want print pictorial directories of member information, or perhaps name badges which include a member photo. The next field is a Y or N value to indicate whether or not the member is a Regular Given. If you use the utility option to generate blank tithes records, this field is used so that records are only created if there is Y in this field. The last two drop down lists on this tab are provided as a help in querying data with the Query Wizard. These two fields are NOT used in the generate attendance utility, and are not used to assign members to classes.
An Attendance tab lets you view the attendance records for each member (members may belong to one or more classes).
The final tab on the member record screen let's you view the Tithes (or contributions) made by this member.
