Product Updates | Shepherd’s Staff Blog

It’s been nearly a year since the last Shepherd’s Staff software update, version 9.0, was released. With this came major improvements, including a completely revamped Finance Module. Now, we’re excited to unveil its successor, version 9.1, which includes a plethora of updates and new features, as well as software tweaks since v9.0 was released. 

Jump to updates by category:

• Membership
• Attendance
• Contributions
• Finance
• Subgroups
• General/Other
• Addendum

Membership

• You can now view Subgroups and Activity/Skill/Training lists in the Church folder of the Person record and print a report of the information.
• The Touchpoints grids now have “Who” filter options for “everyone,” “For a list or grade,” “For one household,” and “For one person” for individuals.  
• The Touchpoints grids now allow you to select multiple rows for deletion at once.
• The Completed Touchpoints grid has a new “multi-add” feature.  
• We’ve made several time-saving automation improvements on the death/removal of a person.
• On the Anniversaries grid, the “in 4 months” column now shows ages/years in 12 months, allowing you to print one yearly report instead of one every quarter.  
• There is a new Edit Photo button on the Photo Manager. You no longer have to hunt down the image within the SS-Photos folder.  
• Speed improvements have been made to the Household/Person edit window.
• The “move person to different household” utility has been simplified.
• You can now show the age of people 18 years and older in the Church Phone Book.
• Church Register reports now sort in the same order as the records displayed.
• There is a new three-column Church Photo Directory format. 
• The Church Phone Book three-column phone/email contact list can now also include street and mailing addresses, as well as active or future alternate addresses.
  
• The Person Record report can now print the name in “last, first” format for those who keep hard copies alphabetically in a file.

Attendance

• When adding enrollees to an event, you can now filter the list of possible names to show only the people in a list, grade, or subgroup. You can then click “add all” to move all the names across.

Contributions

• The Vanco import and batch posting process has undergone several changes: 
  • You can now import Vanco transaction fees and include them in your deposit in Finance.
  • Givers who are in Vanco but not in Contributions can be assigned to Other Giver.  
  • You can override Vanco funds and point them to specific funds in Contributions. 
  • You can split Credit Card and ACH giving into separate batches. 
  • You can create offering batches based on the Deposit date instead of the Process date, so the resulting deposit in Finance is dated the same way as the deposit made by Vanco.  

• You can now post multiple offering batches at once with a new “Post all” button. 
• The Batches grid has a new report that lists and totals the displayed batches.
• The Batches grid has a new “Source” filter that displays specific batch origins. 
• A number of new calculations/statistics have been added to the Pledges grid reports. 
• The Recurrent Offering generation process has been updated, giving you the ability to pick and choose the offerings to generate. 
• The Top Givers report now has the option to hide giver names for confidentiality. 
• On the Contributors grid, a shortcut has been added under the Print button for printing a giving statement for the selected contributor.  
• Speed improvements have been made to the Contributor details window. 
• Contribution Statements can now display giving detail grouped by fund.
• The envelope box export has a new option for “Alternate home address if in effect.” 

Finance

• On the AR account window and Vendor window, the navigation tree can now be filtered to show only Active or Inactive accounts/vendors.
• The General Ledger report has a new version that includes budget information.
• There is a new “Charge Statement Reconciliation” feature that lets you reconcile credit card and other charge statements.
• When adding Payments and using the “Get last payment” feature, if the last payment was to a different bank/charge account, you now get a warning. 
• The Balance Sheet has two new formats for comparing against the prior year and the prior month.
• Modifications have been made to the following Finance reports to improve formatting and alignment when exporting them:
  • Account and Trial Balance
  • Balance Sheet
  • Dedicated Accounts
  • Income Statement
  • Payment Register
  • Treasurer’s Report
• When exporting the General Ledger, it now automatically loads the data directly into the default spreadsheet program.
• The Payment Register reports now display the Payee before the Description. Payees now show as “First Last.”
• There is a new “top of page” format for printing checks.
• When adding lines to a payment and entering an invoice number, the program now warns you if you already have a payment for that invoice to that same vendor.
• You may now search an Invoice number in the Ledger Line Search tool.
• Under the Period Analysis tool, you can now include both “Income and Expense” at the same time. There is also a new dimension that groups results by Account Type.
• A variation of the customized Treasurer’s Report has been added with a new calculation for column 5 that divides column 2 by column 4. 
• The Budget vs. Actual analysis tool now has printed reports that display all of the budget and actual information broken out by account and month. This tool now also has a search feature.
• Speed improvements have been made to the Vendor edit window.
• Certain formats of the Treasurer’s Report have a new option to use the words “this year” and “last year” in the column headings.
• When entering budgets, the filter on the Budgeting grid now carries across to the budget-entry window to limit the accounts that appear.
• When adding/editing a Payment, Receipt, or Journal Entry, if you delete a row, the prior row is now highlighted for you.
• The Ledger window’s “Year” choice list now shows year ranges based on your Finance history. It also includes the next fiscal year.
• The General Ledger report has new filter options for the Major groups, Minor groups, and Account lists.
• The Balance Sheet has a new format, “Compare to prior year.” 

Subgroups

• A “send email” button has been added to the Subgroups “People” grid. 
• You can now view in the Subgroups a person from the Church folder of the Person record.

General/Other

• You can now create a taskbar shortcut during installation of the software.
• On the Print Preview windows, you can now pick Microsoft Excel as an “Export to” option. 
• Screen readers can now recognize graphic-only buttons. 
• You can now share favorite views and reports with other users within the same module. 
• You can now paste images, formatted text, etc. into the body of a message in Shepherd’s Staff when you copy it from Microsoft Word.  
• There is a new software edition for “Other Methodist” to account for recent denominational transitions.  
• Per-machine reminders now display on the Login window when it’s time to check for software updates.   

Addendum: 9.0 Service Pack Features

Many improvements have been made since 9.0 was originally released—many of which were the result of customer suggestions. Check out these articles on Zendesk for more information on these features, especially relating to Contributions and Finance.