Enjoy the simplicity of a complete mobile check-in solution for your church!
Our portable check-in tablets allow you to easily check-in your children, members and volunteers wherever you are – Internet NOT required. The information can be stored on the tablet, or synced to a main computer with a USB stick. Continue reading
With one check-in station, the database and the check-in program are usually running on the same computer, so everything easily stays in sync.
If you want to run an additional check-in station, you must decide how it will sync to the main database (located on another computer).
There are several ways of syncing the additional station.
The best solution is using a WIRED network connection between the check-in stations and the main computer with the database.
In this method, there is no “syncing” involved, because the check-in station talks directly to the database over the wired network. Changes in the database are immediately reflected in the check-in station, and vice versa.
This is really only recommended for wired connections. Wifi connections can drop and this can damage your database.
If you have really strong, reliable Wifi, and you don’t move your check-in station while connected, you might be able to use this method over wifi, but make sure you take frequent back ups just in case.
Typically you should consult your IT person about sharing information across your network, but if you don’t have an IT person, here are the basic steps:
If you don’t have any network access, you can sync the check-in stations manually using a USB stick.
In this method, you load up a USB stick with data from the main database, and insert it into the check-in station to operate. At the end of the day, you bring the USB stick back to the main computer and sync your data.
Now each week, just make sure the USB stick is in the computer before starting check-in, and after check-in is complete, take the USB stick back to the main computer and sync as described above.
If you have wifi available to your computers, you can sync over wifi and not use a USB stick.
When you use the “Synchronize check-in Stations” feature, you’re just reading/writing to a network share instead of USB.
Now each week, you simply have to run the “Synchronize Check-In Stations” feature from the main database computer. Make sure you first hit “Import offline attendance files”, then hit “Export latest information for offline use”
If you have wifi, but are unable to create a network share, you can use a cloud storage service as the transfer path.
Now each week, you simply have to run the “Synchronize Check-In Stations” feature from the main database computer. Make sure you first hit “Import offline attendance files”, then hit “Export latest information for offline use”
It’s possible to get the “Synchronize Check-In Stations” process to run automatically, every 10 minutes or so. This way you don’t have to manually run it yourself. This involves installing a special service on your main computer.
Now when the check-in stations are done at the end of the day, they will send the attendance info to the main computer. The main computer will automatically sync the data ever 10 minutes.
Please contact support if you have any questions
These habits come from the best practices we’ve seen in the healthy, growing churches that we’ve worked with over the past 15 years. Not only have we been helping other churches, but I’ve been fortunate to also help start and grow our local church through all of its stages – from 30 people in a temporary facility to now over several thousands of people in multiple campuses! I’ve been both on the outside, helping with the administration of these practices, but also on the inside – working through all of the many details in our local church as well. So it’s a privilege to bring these habits and practices to you and your church. Continue reading
You can send emails directly from Excellerate by entering your email provider’s settings. You simply enter the SMTP server settings (non SSL) into Excellerate’s email preferences screen. If your email server requires SSL, see the section below for Gmail/Outlook/Office365.
A couple of things you should be aware of…
You can send emails to individuals or mass email to a large group of people. When you are sending lots of emails to a large number of people, from any system, it can look like you are “spamming”. When email providers see this type of activity, there is a chance that you could be added to a black-list. This means more and more of your emails will get caught in junk/spam folders instead of reaching your members. So you would want to be careful if you are sending these emails from your church’s main email account.
This issue is not specific to Excellerate, it applies to any email sending program.
The best practice for sending large amounts of emails, is to use an email service that specializes in delivering mass emails, and works to protect from blacklisting. Some of these services include:
If you do decide to use your church’s main email service, and you won’t be sending mass emails, you will need to perform one additional step if you are using gmail.com, outlook.com, office365.com.
Many of the free/mainstream email services such as gmail.com, etc… require special authentication (to prove you’re not a spammer). To use these services with Excellerate, you will need to download a small utility that allows Excellerate to communicate with these services using SSL.
(When installing, accept all the defaults and you can simply press enter for all of the questions)
Gmail – Note, for gmail, you need to setup an app password. see the following links:
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/185833?hl=en
If you don’t see “Add app password”, try this link: https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords
Now, start Excellerate and enter the following under Options, Preferences, Email Options.
Finally, enter your email UserName and App Password
That’s it, you should be able to send emails from Excellerate!
If you try to print a member list report, contribution statement, or other report, and you get a message “You must select a report style first”, then you may have moved your database to another folder and didn’t move your reports with it
The Excellerate report styles (files ending in .QR) must be in the same folder as your database.
So if you moved or saved your database to your Documents folder, you need to copy all of the report style to that same folder.
Re-start Excellerate, and your report style should appear.
If you still need help, our support team would be glad to help. If you need a support plan, you can purchase that here
There several options for allowing multiple computers to access Excellerate.
Desktop solution on the church network – If you have the desktop solution, you can share your database from a server or a “main” computer that always stays powered on. Each workstation would have the Excellerate program installed, but would open the database from the server or main computer. For this solution, the computers would need to be connected to your church network with ethernet cables. Wifi connections are not recommended because they can an drop packets, which can cause problems. All computers must be running Windows. You would also need the multi-user network option for this. It’s a one-time cost and allows you to connect all of your church computers to Excellerate.
Desktop solution with remote access – If you need access to Excellerate away from church, and you’re not ready for the cloud solution, you could use a remote access or screen sharing solution such as Remote Desktop, Join.me, or Team viewer.
Cloud solution – The cloud gives you the ability to access your church information from anywhere on almost any device, including Macs, tablets, phones, and more. Excellerate Atom gives you the full Excellerate experience in the cloud with unlimited users!
Here’s how to move you Excellerate from one computer to the other.
You have successfully moved your database to the new computer!
Remember – Do not use Excellerate on the old computer any more, otherwise you will have two different database with different information, and out of sync.
Here’s what you need to know about printing year end church giving statements or church contribution letters for your church members.
You can refer to the official IRS publication here for the specific details.
People who contribute to your church will want to deduct those contributions when they file their tax return in April. To do so, they will need to provide proof of those donations to the IRS. That proof is usually a “contribution statement” or “giving statement” that reports the total tax-deductible contributions for each person or family.
Technically, you really only need to provide statements for people who Continue reading
It’s all too common. For some reason, we humans tend to take on more and more tasks and responsibilities until we reach overload. Especially in the church world – I think we really do want to do more, and make a bigger difference in peoples lives, but we have to be careful. When we take more on, the quality and effectiveness of our work starts to decline.
It’s definitely a great quality to be a “high-capacity” person, and able to handle a lot of responsibility. The trick is Continue reading
Most churches offer classes to help members develop personally, spiritually, etc… These may be classes for membership, spiritual growth, or just practical topics. It’s a great way to help develop your members, build relationships, and get people more plugged-in to church.
Instead of manually taking attendance, writing out name badges, trying to keep up with all of the paperwork, streamline it all with Excellerate Check-In!
Excellerate Check-In now allows you to check people into classes with just a few clicks.
Having class attendance data really helps you know where your members are on their development track, and helps you know who’s ready for their next step.
If you don’t have the Excellerate Check-In module, you can add it at any time.
Have questions? Give us a call 888-371-6878 or email: info@excellerate.com