Getting Started With Crimson

OVERVIEW

Welcome to Getting Started with Crimson Church Management Software (Crimson CMS)!

This “Getting Started Guide” is meant to highlight the initial administrative things the Church Administrator or Business Manager should do to prepare Crimson CMS for use by herself/himself and others. This guide does not cover everything that the Church Administrator needs to do – only the first steps that are necessary for effective and efficient functional use. These steps cover the fundamentals required to prepare the system to accept data related to processing members, their payments, donations, and dependent information. Moreover, the initial setup and configuration includes preparing the Crimson Mobile Outreach Tool for church members to use.

Use the built-in Search feature within Crimson CMS for details on how to perform other tasks and where to find functionalities.

STEP ONE – Setup Lookup Values

Lookup values are the values that appear in drop-down lists and permit you to restrict your users’ data input to pre-determined values to ensure data consistency and accuracy for analysis and reporting.

Start with this ‘Getting Started - a Financial Perspective’ video.

Go to Settings in Main Menu on the left of the screen:

  • Member Types – Types of members your church has (Eg. Regular, Associate, Visitor, Donors)

  • Member Status – The status of a person’s membership (Eg. Active, Dormant, Pending)

  • Marital Status – A person’s marital status (Eg. Married, Single, Divorced)

  • Member Payment Types – The purpose of money given to the church (Eg. Tithes, Offering, Building Fund)

  • Member Payment Methods– The methods of payment the church accepts (Eg. Cash, Checks, CashApp)

  • Currencies – The currencies your church accepts or expects to accept (Eg. US Dollars)

  • Ministries – The individual ministries/departments in your church (Eg. Women, Men, Music, Youth)

  • Activity Types - The types of activities for which attendance can be tracked (Eg. Sunday Service, Bible Study)

STEP TWO – Perform Custom Configuration

These settings allow you to customize your CMS for reporting purposes, provide details for donation receipts and End-of-Year Tax letters, configure SMS Notification settings, and customize the appearance of both the Crimson CMS user interface and the Crimson Mobile Outreach Tool.

Start with this ‘Introduction to Custom Configuration’ video.

Go to Settings -> Custom Configuration:

STEP THREE - Perform Outreach Management

Crimson CMS provides content management capabilities for its companion Mobile Outreach Tool. The settings here control or determine the content that your members see when using the Crimson Mobile Outreach Tool. For a sample or to see how this can be used, use this Client Key DCDC-2062-145 to view our Crimson Mobile Outreach Tool Church Demo.

Start with this introductory video to Crimson MOT Configuration.

Then view with this video on Crimson MOT in action.

Go to Members -> Outreach:

  • Dashboard - View outreach analytics, QR-Code, Client Key

  • Pastor (Message from the Pastor)

  • News - News articles to share with members

  • Scriptures - Scripture passage and references

  • Themes - Biblical themes for each month of the year

  • Prayer Requests - Reviewing prayer requests submitted by members or guests

  • Schedules - Regularly Scheduled Events

  • Events - Schedule of Special Events

  • Contact Us - Managing contacts for user interactions

  • Links - Managing important social media and other links for members & guests

  • Volunteers - Reviewing a list of people who have volunteered

  • Customization (& Geo-location using Google-based map and directions):

    • Page labels

    • Latitude

    • Longitude

STEP FOUR- Add Members & Dependents

Go to Members -> Add/Edit:

STEP FIVE- Add Payment Data

Go to Financial -> Member Payments

NEXT STEPS