Last week we deployed an update to the app that created a bug where you couldn't edit a family's shepherding groups (wards/districts) from the edit person page in the People section. This issue has been fixed.

Church Social now has a new "statistician" role, which lets churches grant people access to the people and reports sections without making them a full administrator. You can find this setting when editing a person, under the "Access & Privacy" heading.

Statisticians are able to create, edit, and delete people and reports. However, they are not able to edit access roles or office bearer roles. These roles must still be set by an administrator.

Further, to prevent a statistician from gaining access to a "higher" role, they are also not allowed to edit the login information (email and password) for administrators, office bearers or treasurers.

The group pages have been updated to now display member photos, as well as the latest messages sent to that group. Note, group messages are only visible to the recipients of those messages.

You can now create private groups. Private groups are exactly the same as invite-only groups, except that their membership list is hidden, and only group members are allowed to send messages to those groups. This is helpful for groups where it really doesn't make sense for everyone in the congregation to know who is part of that group.

The following group types can be private:

• Bible studies
• Clubs
• Committees
• Mailing lists

Office bearer and shepherding groups don't have this setting, as they are always invite-only.

Church Social now has a new "report manager" role, which lets churches grant people access to the reports section without making them a full administrator. You can find this setting when editing a person, under the "Access & Privacy" heading.

Note, report managers are able to create, edit and delete custom reports.

When editing a person's membership information, Church Social now automatically suggests previously used churches in the "previous church" and "left to church" inputs. These churches are now also included in the "baptism church" and "profession church" suggestions, and vice versa.

We have fixed in issue in some web browsers where search inputs were glitchy, making it difficult or even impossible to click an option in the search dropdown menu using a mouse.

Further, we also fixed an issue where hitting "escape" to close a search input would also close the popup dialog it is in. Now it will only close the search input.

When creating or editing sermons, you can now create new authors and series directly on those pages. To do this, click the "add new" button beside the author and series inputs.

We have fixed a bug with the "groups" attribute in the people report, where it would incorrectly include previously removed group members.

Today we released a significant technical update to the app. And while this update is largely unnoticeable to you as an end user, it does make many subtle improvements to the navigation of the app.

For example, now when navigating back or forward in history, the app properly maintains your previous scroll position. This is particularly nice on the "Members" page, where if you scroll down the list of families, and then click to view a family, and then press back in your browser, you'll be brought back to your previous position on the members page.

Further, now when editing a member in the "People" section, hitting "Save changes" in one of the many dialogs on that page will no longer reset your scroll position back to the top of the page, but will instead maintain your current position on the page, helping you maintain context.

The submenus on the "Members" and "Sermons" sections has been improved on mobile. Previously the submenu on these pages was shown as a dropdown menu while on a mobile device, which wasn't super clear, and also required extra "clicks" to use. Now it is simply a horizontal list of links.

Throughout the app, we've standardize the primary and secondary actions. These now always appear on the top right of the page. Primary actions are available as large teal buttons, where secondary actions are available from a three-dot dropdown menu.

We've also standardized how you search and filter records in the app. When there is a text search input, the filtered results appears automatically as you type. To apply specific filters, click the new "Filter" button to see an apply one of the preset filters.

Previously when using one of the bulk importers within the app, it was possible to make changes to your Excel or CSV file, and then hit "Refresh" within Church Social to upload and validate the file again. Unfortunately, this behaviour was broken recently in Google Chrome as a result of a new security restriction they added.

We have fixed this issue by removing the "Refresh" option, and making it clear that you now need to reselect the import file from your device.

This update has been applied to the people importer, schedule importer, contribution importer, and library importer.

You can now add images to sermons and sermon series. This can help add some visual interest to you sermon archive. To start, these images are only visible within the app, but we plan to also add them to the embeddable sermon archive, WordPress plugin, and our REST API.

A few days ago we announced that treasurers can now email receipts from within Church Social. Today, we have some more updates to the giving features, and more specifically the tax receipts, to make you aware of. Many churches are already busy getting their 2020 tax receipts ready, and we've made a number of improvements to make the process easier.

Legal church name

Some churches have a different legal name than the church name that they go by. This can be problematic when generating tax receipts, since the receipts must use the legal name. To accommodate this, we've added a new "legal name" option to the church settings page. You only need to set this if it's different from the name you go by.

Note, you must be an administrator to change the legal name setting. If you're not one, be sure to just ask your Church Social administrator to make this change for you.

Church mailing address

Also found on the church settings page is the church address. This address is used to display your church location in the map in the members section. Meaning, this is really your worship address, not necessarily your mailing address. For many churches, the worship address and mailing address are the same. However, that's not always the case.

Since it's important to show the mailing address on the tax receipts, we've added a new mailing address option on the church settings page. The mailing address will be preferred over the worship address when generating giving statements and tax receipts.

Note, you must be an administrator to change the church mailing address setting. If you're not one, be sure to just ask your Church Social administrator to make this change for you.

Member mailing address

Another mailing address change, this time for members. Previously, when selecting what member address to use on the tax receipts, we first looked for a home address, and if that didn't exist, we'd check for a mailing address. However, if a mailing address is set for a member, that's probably the preferred address to use. And so, we've made that change. Tax receipts will now prefer the member's mailing address over their home address.

Authorized (treasurer) name

Currently churches are able to upload an authorized signature that will be included on the tax receipts. However, we've had requests to also include the authorized person's name. You'll now find this as an option on the giving settings page. When setting this, the tax receipt will change from "Authorized signature:" to "Authorized signature of John Doe:". Unlike the signature, the authorized name is not required. Simply use this if you want it.

Middle name initials

Previously when issuing tax receipts, Church Social would include the initial(s) of the member's middle name(s). For example, "John R. & Beth A. Calvin". We did this because of the Canada Revenue Agency tax receipt requirements. However, speaking with our customers, we've realized there are some problems with this. Church Social uses the "common" first name, but the birth middle names for the initial(s). This can lead to weird situations.

For example, consider someone who uses their middle name as their common name, such as "Robert James Doe", who goes by "James". His tax receipt name would end up being "James J. Doe", which is obviously incorrect.

One solution here is to use the birth first name instead of the common first name. That would solve the "Robert James Doe" situation, since the tax receipt name would then be "Robert J. Doe". However, having spoken with customers about this, we believe using the birth first name will actually cause more issues than it solves, since people often prefer to not use their birth name.

In the end we've decided to simply remove the middle name initials entirely, at least until we're able to find a bulletproof system for them. Having done some research around this, it sounds like most of our customers haven't included the middle name(s) in the past, nor does this seem like a strong CRA requirement, especially considering that many people don't even have middle names.

Anonymous contributions statement

Finally, a couple updates not directly related to tax receipts. We recently added a new "Anonymous contributions" statement, which lists all the anonymous contributions made for a specified period of time, including the date, fund, payment method and the amount.

Your giving number

We've also updated the "My Contributions" page to include the member's giving number, should they have one set. This serves as a helpful reference for members who may not remember what their giving number is.

That's all we have for today. We hope these updates make the jobs of your treasurers easier. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.

We've added a number of new settings to make contribution receipts more accurate.

First, since some churches have a different legal name than the name they go by, there is a new "legal name" option on the church settings page. When generating receipts, the legal name will be preferred over the regular name.

Similarly, there is now new "mailing address" option on the church settings page, as churches often have a different mailing address than their worship address. The mailing address will be preferred over the worship address when generating receipts.

Finally, there is a new "authorized name" option on the giving settings page, which allows you to set the name associated with the authorized signature. This name will be shown with the authorized signature when generating receipts.

With tax season quickly approaching, we're happy to announce that treasurers are now able to email tax receipts to members and donors directly within Church Social.

When viewing receipts in Church Social, you'll now see a new "Email" option when you click the drop down button beside a receipt. Choosing this option allows treasurers to quickly email the receipt to the member (or donor) who made the contribution.

Of course, you can only email a receipt if the receipt has an email address associated with it. For members, this information is managed by administrators. For donors, treasurers are able to add an email address when editing a donor record.

Church Social automatically keeps track of when you last emailed a receipt in the "Last emailed" column. This can be a helpful reference for receipts that cannot be emailed, and need to be hand delivered or physically mailed instead.

Bulk emailing receipts

In addition to sending one off receipt emails, you can also send these emails in bulk. You can do this by clicking the drop down menu at the top right of the the receipts page, and then choosing the "Bulk email" option.

This will then show a popup window listing all the receipts within your current search parameters, allowing you to hand pick which receipts you'd like to email. You'll notice here that you cannot select receipts that have no email addresses available, or receipts that have been cancelled.

Keep in mind that Church Social allows you to email a receipt more than once, so be careful to not accidentally email the receipt twice, unless that's intended.

Also, one final note, when emailing receipts, a statement of the contributions will automatically be included as well.

Treasurers, we hope that this new feature makes your jobs a little easier this tax season!