OVERVIEW

Welcome to Crimson Church Management Software (Crimson CMS)!

This “Getting Started Guide” is meant to highlight the initial (almost mandatory) administrative things the Church Administrator or Business Manager should do to prepare the Crimson Church Management System 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/App for church members to use.

Use the built-in “How do I?” feature within Crimson for details on how to perform other tasks.

STEP ONE – Setup Lookup Values

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

Go to System Tasks in Main Menu bar:

• Member Type – 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)

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

• Payment Forms – The forms 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)

STEP TWO – Setup Activity Types

Crimson CMS allows you to track the number of persons who attended a specific event/program. This configuration allows you to decide which events can be tracked.

Go to Activities in Main Menu Bar:

• Types of Activities

STEP THREE – Perform Custom Configuration

These settings allow you to customize your CMS for reporting purposes, details for donations and End-of-Year Tax letters, donation receipts, and some information used in the Crimson Mobile Outreach Tool/App.

Go to System Tasks -> Custom Configuration:

• Church logo

• Names of 2 signatories used on donation receipts and letters

• Signatures of the 2 signatories used on donation receipts and letters

• Contact information

  • Address

  • Phone Number

  • Website Address

  • Office email address

STEP FOUR - Perform Outreach Management

Crimson CMS provides content management capabilities for its companion Mobile Outreach Tool/App. The settings here control or determine the content that your members see when using the Crimson Mobile Outreach Tool/App. For a sample or to see how this can be used, use this Client Key CSCD-2053-145 to view our Crimson Mobile Outreach Tool/App Church Demo.

Go to Members -> Outreach:

• Message from the Pastor

• News Articles

• Scripture Readings

• Monthly Themes

• Schedule of Activities

• Upcoming Events

• Contacts

• Scripture References (labels) for each page

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

  • Latitude

  • Longitude

STEP FIVE - Add Members & Dependents

Go to Members -> Manage Members:

• Add Members

• Add Members’ Dependents

• Import Member data from Excel (Crimson Desktop and Crimson Hybrid only)

NEXT STEPS

1. Using the Built-In Help Feature (“How do I?”)

2. Learning About Crimson CMS (About)

3. Getting Help (About -> Incident Ticket)

4. Adding Users (System Tasks -> Create/Edit User Accounts)

5. Recording Payments, Donations, and Pledges (Financial)

6. Importing Payment data (Crimson Desktop and Crimson Hybrid only)

7. Generating Reports (Reports)

8. Facility Management with Rental Application Forms (Crimson Desktop and Crimson Hybrid only)

9. Suggesting New Features (About -> Incident Ticket -> New Features)