How does Churchteams handle the records of a deceased person?

Automated database actions will handle the records of a deceased person, according to your setting preferences.

You may wish to keep records in your database of deceased persons for attendance records, contribution statements, and so that ministry staff and leadership will be aware as they offer pastoral care.

Automated actions for handling deceased member records will only take place upon a change to the Church Member Type.  Once a Church Member Type is changed to Deceased, automated actions based on your Settings will take place.

To add "Deceased" as a Church Member Type, go to Members > Settings> Church Member Type.

Automated actions created by changing Church Member Type

To set up your preferences of how Churchteams will handle the record, go to Members > Settings > Deceased Actions.  Any actions selected from this settings page will automate based on a change to the Church Member Type to Deceased.  

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These settings, when enabled:
  • Remove the email address from the member record so that mass and group emails will no longer be sent to that email address.
  • Remove the mobile phone number from the record so that outgoing texts will not accidentally be sent to that mobile number.
  • Move the deceased member out of the household (if previously in a multi-member household) so that mailing labels and directories will not show the deceased person.
  • Automatically update information in the "Related To" section of the member profile page for surviving spouse, parents, and/or children. *This information will only update if  relationships already exist in the Related To section.
  • Set the marital status to Widowed for married adults.  *The marital status will only update for married adults, if the marital status was already set to "married" and "widowed" is an option in the Marital Status attribute.
  • Remove the deceased person from Groups they were in so to accurately show attendance percentages for groups and prevent email or text communications from the group (if the email and phone are left in the record)
  • Remove the deceased person from Workflows to prevent any email or text communication (if the email and phone are left in the record).

Upon the completion of the automated steps, an email of the updated member attributes will be sent to the email address in the Notification area of the Deceased Actions page. (Members > Settings > Deceased Actions)

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A System Note of the changes is also logged on the deceased person's member profile.

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Adding a Deceased Date to the Member record

If you do not already, we recommend that you have a custom member attribute to track the date of death for a deceased member.  To add this, logged in at the Admin level, go to Members > Settings > Member Attributes. Click the "New Attribute" button and make selections for the new attribute.

Because the software will prompt you with alerts according to this attribute, it is important that you name this new custom member attribute "Deceased Date."

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The security login level allowed to enter a date is determined when the Deceased Date attribute is created.  When a Deceased Date is entered on a member record, a pop-up prompt will appear, reminding you to also change the Church Member Type in order to initiate the automated database actions you have set up.  
Clicking "No- I will review this later" will only enter the Deceased Date and no automated Database Actions will take place, unless you previously changed the Church Member Type.
Clicking "Yes - Return to Member Information" allows anyone with the appropriate security login level to change the Church Member Type and thus initiate the automated database actions you have set.
 The security level allowed to change a Church Member Type is determined on the Church Member Type settings page.

Please note that once the Church Member Type has been changed to Deceased, we will no longer calculate the age based on the Birth Date attribute.

Handling Contribution Statements for a Deceased Person

While moving a deceased person's record out of the household and removing the email address will help to eliminate accidental mass communication issues, you will want to be sure that a contribution statement is not missed.  We recommend that you inquire with the family as to how they would like the statement, based on these options.

1) At the time of adding a deceased date and changing the Church Member Type, you can go ahead and print the Contribution Statement for the person.

2) You can move the Contributions over to the surviving spouse and run the statement as you normally would the following January.

3) You can run a separate batch of printed statements filtered to Deceased Church Member Types to be mailed when you run regular statements in January.  *Please note that with this option, the surviving spouse may have had Contributions during the year as well and receive a separate statement either by mail or email.  To avoid this, you can temporarily add the surviving spouse email to the deceased spouse's record and have them both emailed the same day.