Step #2a Prepare your Data
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 fields below.
If you are currently using PDS or ACS, you can find information specific to your software and the recommendations for preparing your data using the link below:
Software Specific Data Preparations
Gender
All members in your existing data must have a Gender recorded. 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. If no gender is provided, it will default to “Unknown”.
- Male
- Female
- Unknown
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 as Head.
If their member role is Head of Household and they have a marriage sacrament, the system will update their roles to Husband and Wife. The gender cannot be unknown, or this will not automatically update.
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 correct post conversion ParishSOFT recommends that you update the roles in your data prior to submitting your back up 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 because 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:
When there are adult children within their parent's record, 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
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. 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. Creating workgroups in your current software to track family status will provide guidance in checking for correct family status.
Envelopes
If your current system uses a secondary field to indicate who receives envelopes, be 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. Creating workgroups in your current software to track which families should have Send Envelopes will provide guidance in checking for which families should and should not receive envelopes.
Special Characters
Please note the conversion tool will replace any data that contains a / with a -.
For example:
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:
Last Name of Doe & Smith would be changed to Doe and Smith.
If you would like to read all the steps in the Conversion Process, click the Conversion Steps document below:
ParishSOFT Family Suite Conversion Steps
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