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Printing accurate clerk reports is totally dependent on the accuracy and completeness of the information you save in your CMD data files. For example, you can't expect to print names who have joined your church unless they have been entered in your file, marked as members in the Membership Status Menu, and you've specified which options on the Membership Status Menu are church members in the Members List combo.

While you can print membership reports without entering the Joining date, you won't be able to include such names in reports for a given time period.

Please read the following brief description of how names are filtered in the process of printing a report, and then read the section on Preparing Your List for a Clerk Report below for tips on how to make sure your data is ready to print.

How Names Are Filtered for a Report

When the command is issued to begin printing a Clerk Report which includes an Incoming Report, the following steps are followed internally:

CMD starts at the beginning of the file and calls up the data from the first entry in alphabetical order. It then begins to look for certain data.

•First, it checks to see if this name is a member, as defined by the choices you make on the Members List combo. If the name is found to be a member, it moves on to the next step. If not, the name is ignored and the next name in the file is called up.

•When a name is found to be a member, CMD next looks to see if there's an entry in the name's Joining Date field. If the date there is a valid date which is on or between the starting and ending dates for the report, the name moves on to the next step.

However, if the date is blank, or is earlier than the starting date for the report, the name is ignored, but the internal counter which tracks Prior Members is incremented. If a name is found to have joined at a date after the ending date, it is also ignored. This allows you to print a report for a period earlier than a current month or quarter.

Note that names which have blank dates in their Join Date field are ALL considered to be members who joined prior to the report date. The Prior Member counter is used to print the line on the Summary Page which says "Membership Prior to this Report."

We assume that you will have easy access to the joining dates of members who join from this point on, but that you might have trouble locating dates for members who joined years ago. Thus, you must make sure that any new names you enter as joining members have a valid, accurate date saved in the Joining Date field, otherwise your reports will include these new members as members who joined prior to the start date!

Now let's go on with our sequence.

•If a name is found to be a member who joined during the report date, then the name's Joining Method entry is matched with the items you've defined in the Joining Pick List. If a match is found, the internal counter matching the search string will be incremented to keep track of the number of names who joined by that particular means of joining your church listed in the Joining Pick List.

Note that if a name is a member with a date in their Joining Date field which falls in the report period but has no information or no information matching any of the items in the Joining Pick List, the name will still be included in the count, but the math on the summary pages will be off since it won't have incremented any of the counters that track how many names join by the various means as represented on the Joining Pick List.

•When printing a Summary Page, you might find it interesting that CMD will also scan the Archive File to see if there are any entries in that file of names removed from your list to see if any were members prior to the report date but who have been removed since then. If such names are found, the Prior Names counter is incremented because those names were members prior to the report. Otherwise, the count of names prior to the report date would not be accurate.

There are two prime lessons in all this. First, you cannot print accurate reports without accurate data entered into each name's Joining Date, Membership Status, and Joining Method fields.

Secondly, accurate reports are possible for this point forward if you at least determine to enter accurate data in the Joining Date, Membership Status, and Joining Method fields for each new name entered from now on.

We used the Incoming Report as our example above, however the basic steps of processing for the Archived Names, that is names who have been removed from your file is virtually identical.

Preparing Your List for a Clerk's Report

There are several steps you will find helpful before printing a Clerk's Report. The first should be done at least yearly, and before you print your first report. The others should be taken just before you print reports after that point.

Recommended Steps for Initial Report or Yearly Maintenance

If your church is connected to a denominational entity who manages the "official" list of members for your church, we recommend that you reconcile your list of members with theirs initially, and then yearly after that to make sure that the numbers generated by the reports are in agreement in both places. You may find members you did not realize you had, and they might discover they don't have members that you shown on your records. Once you get this baseline established, it will be easier to know if the reports you generate after that point are accurate.

If it has been some time since your local records have been reconciled in this manner, it will likely take some time to work through your list. However, once it's done, the time taken for subsequent comparisons will be much less.

If your church is more congregational in nature, try to reconcile your records against the other permanent records which have been kept prior to using CMD. Once again, the important thing to establish is simply a reconciled baseline of membership against which future reports can be compared to help maintain accuracy.

Recommended Steps to be Taken Before Each Clerk's Report

•Select the Incoming Names Preview Output Form on the Clerk Print Control dialog so that you can check to make sure that there are no obvious mistakes in the Joining Date or that information is missing Joining Method field.

•Make any adjustments to names in your file which do not have accurate information.

•Select Basic Report Output Form, and select only Address Change Report in the Reports to Print group. Check to make sure you want each name to appear on this report. Remove any not needed using the Address Change File option on the Clerk Menu.