If you have a role in BVCMS that allows you to create new people records…by adding visitors to a meeting, adding people to families, adding members to an organization…then you will have Tasks about those new records. Each Task will be named ‘New Person Data Entry’ and will display the name of the new record you created.
In a nutshell, here’s what should happen:
You thoroughly inspect the person’s record, adding anything you know about that person that was not included when you created the record.
NOTE: You probably have more information about a person than you were able to capture when you created the record. The Search/Add dialog was designed to help you add people quickly with the most vital information, but your visitor forms or guest cards probably have more tidbits about the person that should be added to the record at this point.
You mark your Task for that person as ‘Completed’, which will send an email to the New People Manager.
The New People Manager looks over the record again and performs some basic searches looking for duplicates or additional family members.
Only after that will the New People Manager change the status from ‘Just Added’ to ‘Not Member’.
So let’s break it down further…
It’s Monday morning and you are entering attendance from Sunday. That also involves adding visitors. You add them during the course of entering attendance so you can keep going and finish everything in quickly. The ministers are waiting to look at the attendance reports!
Now it’s Monday afternoon or Tuesday and things have calmed down a bit and you notice that you have a list of Tasks on your homepage. You see that they are all named New Person Data Entry and have the names of the new records you created listed.
You click on the name of the person listed in the task. Carefully review the record…verifying the address, making sure the Gender and Marital Status are correct…just basically adding any information that you have about that person that was not included when you added the record.
Next, perform a search in People Search. Look for families with the same last name and the same address…in case you don’t have all the family members in the same family. If you find another family member, add the new record to that family.
Check the Growth Tab to ensure that the Entry Point information is complete, adding any notes that may have been on the visitor slip or guest card that need to be on the person’s record.
Look at the System tab and check the Duplicates tab to see if the system is indicating a possible duplicate record. Check those out to see if there is indeed a duplicate record that should be merged.
If you are the New People Manager for your church (a setting in BVCMS), then you receive emails about the above-mentioned tasks for the ‘Just Added’ records. Read more about your role…
Remember…we can minister more effectively to our members and guests if we have complete and correct contact and family information.