PEOPLE & GROUPS

Shepherding needs a system of record

Every module in SundayHQ joins back to a person in a household. Profiles, custom fields, permissioned notes, tags and saved lists — and the assimilation workflows that turn 'we should follow up' into a card with an owner and a due date.

1

Record per person, everywhere

48h

Follow-up SLAs, enforced

Permissioned

Pastoral notes stay private

Safe

Merges never orphan a receipt

CORE CAPABILITIES

From first visit to membership, on purpose

Assimilation workflows with owners and deadlines

A workflow is a pipeline of steps — First-Time Guest, Follow-Up Call, Newcomers Lunch, Membership Class — and a person enters it as a card with an assigned owner and an SLA. Cards advance by hand on a board or automatically on triggers: first check-in, first gift, form submitted, tag added, group joined. Overdue cards land on the owner's dashboard and in a daily digest.

  • Steps with auto-actions: assign, email, SMS, tag, wait
  • Triggers from check-ins, giving, forms, tags, and groups
  • Overdue surfacing so follow-up doesn't rely on memory
Workflow — First-Time Guest
New card: R. Okafor familyAuto-created
OwnerPastor Dana · due 48h
Step 2 actionSend welcome email
Overdue cards today2 · digested

Households, custom fields, and notes done right

People live in households with named relationships, a mailing address for receipts, and guardians for minors. Admins define custom fields — text, dates, dropdowns, files — that show on profiles, filter in lists, and export in reports. Notes carry categories and visibility levels: a pastoral-care note is invisible to anyone without pastoral access, including in search and exports.

  • Household roles: head, spouse, child, related contacts
  • Custom fields usable in filters, forms, and reports
  • Note visibility mapped to permissions, everywhere
Profile — J. Whitfield
HouseholdWhitfield · spouse + 2
StatusAttender → Member track
Custom: baptism classCompleted
Pastoral noteRestricted · hidden

Groups that run themselves between Sundays

A browsable directory of small groups with day, location, capacity, and open or closed status. Members self-signup from the portal with leader approval; waitlists catch the overflow. Leaders take attendance, attach curriculum, message the roster, and see their group — and only their group — with prayer requests respecting the same note privacy as everything else.

  • Self-signup with approval, capacity, and waitlists
  • Per-meeting attendance with streaks and nudges
  • Leader dashboards scoped to their own group
Group — Tuesday Night Alpha
Roster14 / 16 · 2 waitlisted
Join requestApproved by leader
Last meeting attendance12 present · 1 guest
CurriculumWeek 6 PDF attached
MORE IN THIS MODULE

The database underneath

Tags & Saved Lists

Free-form tags plus dynamic saved lists from the filter engine — the same segments drive email audiences.

Duplicate Merge

Fuzzy duplicate detection with a transactional merge that re-points gifts, check-ins, and rosters — never orphaning a receipt.

Minor Protection

Under-13s exist without logins; their communications route to a guardian, and age gates room eligibility.

Forms

Custom forms feed people records and can drop submitters straight into a workflow.

Assimilation Metrics

New-people funnels and retention curves, so you know whether follow-up is working — not just happening.

Archive, Don't Delete

Archiving hides a person from search and the directory while preserving giving history, because receipts must reproduce forever.

FAQ

Common questions

The merge is a single transaction: donations, check-ins, group memberships, and assignments re-point to the surviving record, and a merge-audit entry records what happened. A merge can never orphan a receipt.

Only staff with pastoral-level access. Restricted notes are invisible to everyone else — in the profile, in search results, and in exports. Visibility is enforced by the permission system, not by convention.

Yes — on new person created, first check-in, first gift, form submission, tag added, or group joined. Each step can auto-send templated email or SMS, assign an owner, add a tag, or wait a set number of days.

Leaders see their group's roster, attendance, and permitted notes — not the org-wide database. Broader access requires an explicit staff role.

Yes. The importers map known export headers automatically, dry-run with a duplicate and error report, commit in tracked batches, and can roll back — and imported giving history keeps original dates and funds so historical receipts reproduce.

Meet the demo congregation

Open the demo church, watch a first-time guest become a workflow card, and follow them through to a group roster — the loop your church runs every week.