Getting started with the Address Book module

Introduction to the Address Book module

Welcome to the ChurchSuite Address Book! This module manages all adult contacts associated with your church, ministry or charitable organisation. Through the Address Book, you can manage people's contact details, record and track levels of engagement, carry out common admin workflows, communicate and report with ease.

The Address Book is not intended for children and young people (typically under-18s) - the Children module is designed for those who are part of your organisation's children or youth ministry. You can maintain parent/carer details in the Address Book and link children to their parents/carers or, for children whose parent/carers are not actively involved, you may choose to simply store parent/carer details against the child.

We encourage you to read this article in full to familiarise yourself with the module's key features and customisation options available and to acquaint yourself with some of the basic concepts and terminology you'll see within the module and our other Children module support articles.

Next Steps

Terminology

Here's a list of terms you may see across the ChurchSuite modules and in our support articles:

• Contact refers to an adult person in your Address Book module. Contacts of interest may comprise both members - those actively engaging with your organisation - and non-members - other contacts of interest whose personal details you have a lawful basis to store and process.
• Fields are the areas into which you can input information - such as First Name, Date of Birth etc. The Address Book includes standard and optional fields; custom fields can also be added.
• Flows are a feature of the Address Book module that enable you to track and manage people through recurring admin tasks, such as newcomer integration, pastoral care or safeguarding processes. Flows enable you to keep track of who is at what stage of a process, with timely reminders when tasks become due or overdue. Flows are really powerful and have a wide range of uses e.g. DBS/safeguarding checks, managing discipleship applications, recruitment and training, membership processes and helping people get into small groups - to name but a few. Check out the Example Flows that you can quickly install and begin exploring.
  

  

• Forms are a way of collecting information or gathering responses to questions.
• Key Dates can be recorded for people's significant date-related milestones, activities and anniversaries you may wish to mark or celebrate. Think of key dates as people's journey and engagement as they interact with your organisation over time. Key dates might include the date someone first connects with you, the date they attend a significant event or course, the date they complete some training or the date they join a certain group or ministry or membership. The key dates for people you choose to maintain are only limited by your imagination, with powerful reports to give key date insight across your Address Book.
• My ChurchSuite is your church's member-facing platform where contacts can keep their details up to date, view all their communications in one place and communicate with one another.
• My Consent is a feature that allows you to send consent requests to your contacts so that they can update their details and preferences.
• Person and People are generic terms we use to refer to those in your ChurchSuite modules - contacts (in the Address Book), children and visitors (in the Children module), givers (in the Giving module) and customers (in the Bookings module).
• Reports are available to help you see summaries or lists of certain data. Most reports can be further filtered to help you drill down into your data to see only the results you want to see. In most cases, reports can be printed or downloaded, or you can communicate directly with those in the results without leaving the page.
• Tags are a common feature in databases like your ChurchSuite Address Book, enabling you to create custom groupings of people in a module. While other ChurchSuite modules will already group people in their ministries, small groups or age-based children groups, for all other people-grouping needs, tags are a must! For example, you might tag your Members, your Newsletter Subscribers or those you consider Leaders. Tags show on people's profile pages, giving immediate insight into people's engagement with your organisation. Tags make it possible to communicate with or report on specific groupings of people in the Address Book. Within the Address Book, you'll experience two types of tags - fixed tags and smart tags

Address Book features at a glance

• Add new or import existing contacts
• Contact profile pages with everything in one view
• Use standard (common) fields, enable optional fields or create custom fields
• Manage each person's communication options, privacy settings and ongoing consent to comply with Data Protection law
• Categorise your Address Book contacts using tags
• Maintain historical records of key dates
• Add internal-only notes against contacts
• Create custom forms and collect responses
• Use Flows to process people through common administrative workflows and receive reminders when tasks become due or overdue
• Communicate by Email and SMS (sending messages in real-time or scheduling communications to be sent later)
• A wide range of standard reports are available or perform custom reporting using Smart Tags or the Table Generator
• Produce printable contact directories
• Archive contacts that have moved on from your community; archiving allows you to set them active again if they return
• Customisable Address Book Embed form for newcomers to submit their contact details and areas of interest via your website
• Invite members to access the 'My ChurchSuite' member-facing platform, where contacts can keep their details up to date, view all their communications in one place and communicate with one another
• Multi-site support - assign people to sites, perhaps where each "site" represents a different community, project or location (e.g. different worshipping locations for church services or different projects for a charity)

Got a question?

You’ll find the answers to most questions in our support articles - they're all available through the Support beacon found in the bottom-right corner of each page in the Address Book - search by topic, phrase or keyword. You can also access the Support Article library on our website. And if you still can't find something you're looking for, click to contact one of the ChurchSuite team - we’re happy to help!