Tips for a Successful Conversion
In preparing for your conversion to ParishSOFT Family Suite there are a few things to consider. The completeness of your existing data will affect the accuracy of your converted data, therefore ParishSOFT recommends that you update the following fields:
Gender –All members in your existing data must have a Gender record. Gender is a required field in ParishSOFT Family Suite. Having this information will assist the conversion team in assigning the appropriate member Roles for each person in your database. ParishSOFT Family Suite accepts
- Male
- Female
Member Roles-A married male will be assigned the Role of Husband, a married female will be given the role of Wife and single men and women will be given the role of Head.
NOTE: Many customers will list the Wife as Head of Household if she is Catholic and the spouse is not. The conversion process will automatically change her Role to Wife.
The following are the only Roles allowed in ParishSOFT Family Suite. If your data contains other roles, the conversion process will attempt to adjust the roles to match the acceptable roles in ParishSOFT Family Suite. To ensure that your roles will be corrected post-conversion ParishSOFT recommends updating the roles in your data before submitting your backup for conversion.
- Adult
- Daughter
- Father
- Foster Daughter
- Foster Son
- Grandchild
- Granddaughter
- Grandfather
- Grandmother
- Grandson
- Head
- Husband
- Mother
- Other
- Son
- Stepchild
- Unknown
- Wife
Titles - If your current system uses Member Titles (Mr., Mrs., Miss, Dr., etc) verify the titles are correct for both Head/Husband and Wife in all family records. These titles are used when creating the Formal Salutation in ParishSOFT. (I.E. Mr. and Mrs. Smith).
Marital Status – Verify all married couples have the same marital status. If any changes are made to the matrimony status as a result of a marriage, divorce, or death of a spouse and the members end up with different marital statuses the member records may not link correctly. For example
If there are adult children within their parent's records and they have marriage information, they will be married to their parent of the opposite gender due to “couples” marriage records. To avoid this incorrect mapping of marriage records, remove the marriage record from the child or move the adult children to their own family in your current software before the conversion. If this is not an option, please note on the checklist to remove marriage information for children. We will not do this automatically. ParishSOFT Family Suite uses the following for Marital Status:
- Annulled
- Divorced
- Married
- Separated
- Single
- Widowed
Member Status –– If your current system has more status categories than ParishSOFT, they can be converted as Member Work Groups, however, we will still need to know how to categorize your members into one of the ParishSOFT Statuses.
- Active
- Inactive
- Deceased
- ActOther (Active Non-Catholic)
- Unknown
Family Status (Registered/Unregistered) - If your current system tracks registration statuses please verify that all families are correctly coded as Registered/Unregistered. If your current system uses something other than Registered/Unregistered please identify what terms are used to capture this data. Please note this on the Data Conversion Checklist that you must complete before your scheduled conversion. If you do not have Registered/Unregistered, Active would be considered Registered and Visitor or Inactive would be considered Unregistered unless indicated otherwise on your checklist.
Envelopes - If your current system uses a secondary field to indicate who receives envelopes, please make sure that this information is up to date and identify the field on your Conversion checklist. If no such field is used in your current software, please be aware that all families/members with an envelope number who are Active will be marked to Send Contribution Envelopes in ParishSOFT Family Suite and those Not Active marked Not to Send Envelopes.
Special Characters - Please note the conversion tool will replace any data that contains a "/" with a "-". For example, the Last Name of Doe/Smith would be changed to Doe-Smith. Additionally, any last names using the special character of "&" will be changed to "and". For example, the Last Name of Doe & Smith would be changed to Doe and Smith.
Tuition - As Tuition data cannot be converted you will want to pull Tuition Reports from your existing system to aid you in setting up Tuition in ParishSOFT Family Suite. NOTE: If you track Tuition using offering funds those funds will be converted, as long as you are not tracking special activity in the funds such as refunds and credits.
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