Just Do It

January/February is an incredibly busy time for most of our customers, and for us. Accounting departments are closing one year and opening another. Statistical data collection is underway with short timelines. District Superintendents and their staffs are gearing up for another "appointment making season" (hence those short timelines on the previous year's statistics). Camp registrars are working hard to get the summer camp schedule nailed down and entered into the database. And...

changes, it will be an improvement for your work flow. Be sure to let Lori or me know right away if something is not working, if you have a question on how to do something, or if it doesn't meet your needs.

CRSP & CPP
Related to CRSP, several of you have been asking about adding some further breakdown to the batch report for CRSP DB, CRSP DC, and CPP. I am in the process of adding those items to the batch report, and perhaps by press time, it may already be in your hands. However, it is very important to understand that I use the descriptions of transactions to determine what amounts belong in what “bucket.” Invoice descriptions, and those who use combined benefits payments have descriptions automatically included which put the keywords in the descriptions that the reports look for. However, with any

any pension adjustment, or if you do NOT used the combined payments form for posting pension payments, I suggest you include CRSP, CPP, DB or DC in the descriptions. This will help determine where they go in the totals summary.

Caveat: In some cases it is not possible to determine if an item is CRSP or CPP. In those cases, it is placed into the “CRSP Unclassified” category.

For the future, we are working towards a different, more reliable method to handle these categories so keywords in the descriptions would not be needed to determine totals. Much of this has to do with the historical development of the pension billing system in the late 1990s not realizing then the potential for the many changes that have occurred. Some of the pension billing system will be retooled to allow for more benefits types, with a goal of having it ready for 2008.

2. Don't wait until the 11th hour to do all your appointment changes. Remember that most of the information entered in MissionBase relies on Start & Stop dates making it possible to enter a new appointment, or an appointment change, as soon as it is known! If the information changes prior to Annual Conference, it is simple to delete the created appointment and make the change. Using this feature in MissionBase will help you stay ahead of the game... or at least, keep up!
3. For moving pastors, we have automated a STOP date on the current compensation record when the appointment is stopped, but the pastor may also be serving on several committees or church activities related to the old appointment. In the activities screen, place the same stop date as the appointment on all activities which will not carry over to the new appointment.
4. Does the pastor have family? NOW is the perfect time to relate them in the "Relationship grid" if not already present, and link their addresses to the pastor's. That way, on moving day when you change the pastor's address... it changes the address for everyone in the family at once!
5. If there were family members who will be moving with the pastor, remember to also add Stop Dates to their activities related to the old appointment.

If you've discovered tips or tricks in MissionBase that make your work-load easier, share those with us! We'd love to publish your comments so that other users may benefit from your experience. Thank-you!

What'sNEW!

 You asked for it... It's HERE!
 On 01/08/2007 a "Notes" button
 was added to the Church Details and Institution Details screens. In the future, we do anticipate having an area on the Church details screen specifically for recording service times, but many of you were currently recording that information on the "Directions" tab of the church address, as this was the only available text entry area. Now you have the "Notes" button.

Also new, each note contains the UserName" and "Date" of the person who originally entered, or last updated, the note contained on that row.

A note may be deleted in the same way as previously, by clicking on the gray box to the far left of the row (indicated in red below), to highlight the row in blue. Then click the "Delete" key on your keyboard.

We are just entering the fast & furious "appointive season." All the hard work done by the Bishop and District Superintendents then translates into a lot of work for the administrative assistants and others responsible for entering this information into MissionBase.

Here are a few tips to save you valuable time, when you don't have any to spare!

1. Before you get started, go to "SETTINGS" and click on the "Charge & App't Defaults" eagle. The set defaults can always be changed on the new appointment if the default information is not correct, but defaults will save many key-strokes on the majority of new appointments. Set the default Start Date on the first day after annual conference when new appointments begin. (Generally 6/1 or 7/1/2007). Set the default stop date for the day before. Setting the stop date allows you to click the on several screens rather than typing the stop date in. Set the default Title as "Senior Pastor" or its equivalent, as this will be the title used in most new appointments, and set the Category as "Pastoral Charge." Then Save.