The core of the
Church Helpmate system is the "Households & Individuals" modules.
You will really appreciate the flexibility in the way we have
structured first the household record unit for holding all of
the common family data (address, home phone, etc.) and then
the individual record unit for holding all of the individual
specific data (birthdates, cell phone#'s, grades levels,
etc.).
You
will
easily be able to setup household records which consist
of the traditional family members (mom, dad, brother, and
sister - all with the same last name), or more complex cases
(like mom, dad, brother, sister, dad's aunt, mom's sister,
mom's sister's foster child,... well, you get the idea).
You'll have a wealth of data fields (many
of these are user-definable) to record as much (or as little)
as you need to about the families and individuals in your
congregation. For example, Church Helpmate provides well over 100 data
fields (of which 49 are user-definable) for each individual in
your database - however only 4 of these fields are "required"
in order to enter and save the record.