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Church Helpmate
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
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While I am familiar with a competitor of yours,
I haven't I heard of your company until now. Why?
ANSWER
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We will need to use the
Church Helpmate program on several computers in our church office as
well as on the pastor’s home computer. Is Church Helpmate
multi-user capable – that is, can multiple networked computers run
Church Helpmate and share a
common database simultaneously? And, are there additional fees
for multi-user use of the product? ANSWER |
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Do you provide free
technical support with the purchase of Church Helpmate? ANSWER |
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If
we do not purchase a support plan subscription at the time of our
software purchase, can we purchase a support plan subscription later?
Is there any benefit to purchasing the support plan up-front?
ANSWER |
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I see that there is not an accounting module (ie.
general ledger, payroll, accounts payable, etc.) included with Church
Helpmate. Why is that, and what software should I use to manage
my accounting data? ANSWER |
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What are the minimum and
recommended hardware/software requirements to run Church Helpmate?
ANSWER |
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How
much will Church Helpmate cost?
ANSWER |
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Why is Church Helpmate sold in
different "license levels"?
ANSWER |
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For license levels of
Church Helpmate which have limits on the number
of household (family) records I can store in the system (Levels 1, 2,
and 3), are there any limits on the number of individual (people)
records I can store in the database? ANSWER |
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If I purchase Church
Helpmate, can I receive a refund if it does not
meet my expectations? ANSWER |
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What forms of payment do
you accept? ANSWER |
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Do I need Microsoft Access
to use Church Helpmate?
ANSWER |
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We have been using another
church management software program. Can our data be transferred into
Church Helpmate without having to
re-enter all this data? ANSWER |
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Are there limitations on
the number of records I can store in Church Helpmate? ANSWER |
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What is your upgrade
policy? ANSWER |
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Do you provide any
training seminars for the Church Helpmate
software? ANSWER |
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Church Helpmate includes a "Contacts" module. What is the
difference between "Contacts" and Households and
Individuals? ANSWER |
Question:
While I am familiar with a competitor of
yours, I haven't I heard of your company until now.
Why?
Answer: Since
our product is a technology-based product (software), we have chosen
to utilize the Internet as our main marketing mechanism. We have
found that the vast majority of churches that are searching for a
church management software solution today are utilizing the power of
the Internet to aid them in their search.
Therefore we've focused our efforts on
"non-traditional" methods of marketing - such as optimizing our
website to show up on popular search engines (such as Google).
For example, we are typically found on the first or second page of
Google's search results for searches on "church management software"
and "church software".
Very seldom do we utilize
traditional marketing methods such as ads in print magazines and trade
show booths. Why? Well, because it has been much more
efficient for us to market our company and our products through the
Internet than through these traditional methods. Did you know
that one popular church leadership magazine charges over $7,000 to
place a full-color ad in their magazine? That's just for a
one-time ad, for a one-time publication! The others are not far
behind. We simply cannot justify spending this kind of
money...and we firmly believe that doing so would not be good
stewardship of the funds that God has blessed us with.
So, while you may not of heard of us before,
we're so glad you have found us! Rest assured that we are a
thriving, healthy company that will be here (God willing) for many,
many years to come. Each and every year since our inception in
1996, we've experienced record-breaking revenue...and we are quick to
give God the glory. For it's only through Him that broken
vessels like us have any chance of being successful. Every good
thing comes from Him.
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Question:
We will need to use the Church Helpmate program on several computers
in our church office as well as on the pastor’s home computer.
Is Church Helpmate multi-user capable – that is, can multiple
networked computers run Church Helpmate and share a
common database simultaneously? And, are there additional fees
for multi-user use of the product?
Answer: Yes.
Every license level of Church Helpmate (Levels 1-4) includes a
full "site" license for multi-user/network usage (including
usage on personal/home computers of staff/volunteers).
No, there are no additional fees for a
multi-user usage. Because so many of our clients need the ability to
place the Church Helpmate system on more than one computer, we have made
this a standard feature of our product and license levels (and do not
charge any additional fees for this).
Also, our "Replication" feature in
Church Helpmate allows even non-networked computers to use Church
Helpmate and then merge
their data files into one. For example, let's say that one of the
pastor's would like to spend his Friday afternoon at home on his
notebook computer doing some data entry work. Let's also assume
that the church secretary needs to also be working (adding, modifying,
deleting, etc.) in the database. No problem with Church Helpmate's
Replication feature. When the pastor is finished with his work, he
can send his copy of the data file back to the church office where it
can be synchronized (merged) with the data file there. Upon
completion of this synchronization process, the 2 different data files
are merged into one.
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Question:
Do you provide free technical support with the purchase of Church
Helpmate?
Answer: For
new customer product purchases, we
provide a free 60-day
startup support period as part of your software purchase.
During this period, you can contact our support department as often as
you like (by phone, fax, or email). If any any product updates
or even full version upgrades are released in this 60-day period,
you'll receive these at no extra charge as well.
Approximately 15 days before your 60-day introductory support
period expires, we will notify you via e-mail (or by postal mail if we
do not have an e-mail address for your account). At this time,
if you have not already purchased a yearly subscription to one of our
4 affordable Support plans, you will have the option to do so.
For more details about our support offerings, please see the following
page of our website:
http://www.helpmate.com/services/support.htm
Church Helpmate version upgrade
purchases include free "Upgrade Support". This Upgrade Support covers
phone and email assistance with installation of the upgrade and
conversion of data from the previous version to the new version of
Church Helpmate. Additional assistance beyond installation and data
conversion is not covered by this Upgrade Support. Additional
support options if desired are available through our 4 optional
support plans.
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Question:
If we do not purchase a support plan subscription at the time of our
software purchase, can we purchase a support plan subscription later?
Is there any benefit to purchasing the support plan up-front?
Answer: Our
support plan subscriptions can either be purchased
"up-front" at the time of the software purchase or at any
time thereafter. If an annual support subscription
is purchased along with your initial software purchase, you'll receive
a generous 20% discount off the normal support subscription pricing.
With your software purchase, you’ll receive a free
initial 60-day
startup support period. If you purchase an
annual support plan subscription at the time of your software
purchase, we will activate your annual support plan at the time your
initial support period expires (you’ll actually receive 14 months of
coverage this way).
The benefits of purchasing a support
plan "up-front" with your software purchase are:
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You will receive a 20% discount on your support
plan subscription.
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You can be
assured that there will be no lapse of coverage when your initial
60-day support period expires. Your
annual support subscription will be automatically activated at the
end of your initial 60-day support period.
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You
will
"lock in" the current subscription rate for the annual
support plan – which are subject to increases from time to time.
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Question:
I see that there is not an accounting module (ie. general ledger,
payroll, accounts payable, etc.) included with Church Helpmate. Why is
that, and what software should I use to manage my accounting data?
Answer:
We have intentionally chosen NOT to include an accounting
module into our system. We have chosen to focus our efforts on
designing the "best of breed" church membership management system -
covering the membership & visitor management,
group/activity/ministry/interest management, contributions & pledges
management, meetings & attendance management, visitations management,
and church health analysis.
Developing an accounting
module would, in many ways, be like re-inventing the wheel for us....as
there are many very good accounting products already on the market -
QuickBooks and Peachtree, just to name a couple. These and other
companies have spent decades (and many millions of dollars) developing
easy-to-use and robust accounting systems. However, there are very few
companies that have focused on producing quality, easy-to-use, yet
powerful church-specific ministry-empowering software as we have done
here at Helpmate.
Based on our recent customer
surveys, our customers are very satisfied with utilizing our Church Helpmate
system in conjunction with their accounting software. This is most likely
because there really is very little data that must pass from Church Helpmate
to their accounting system.
Please allow us to explain....
Let's suppose that you have a
collection of contributions that have been received from the congregation.
The first thing you would do is enter the "batch" of contributions into
the Church Helpmate database. You'd be entering all of the specific
details here in Church Helpmate,...such as the Smith family contributed
$100 towards the Building Fund. Church Helpmate is able to generate many
contributor-type reports, as well IRS-approved contribution statements
designed to send to the contributors (by postal mail or by email) for
their income tax return purposes.
When you are done with
entering all of these details about "who gave how much, to which fund",
the next logical step is to now take this money and deposit it into your
bank account. That's where your accounting package comes into play. What
you would need to know in your accounting system is obviously the total
amount of the contribution "batch" (ie. the total amount received).
You would also need to know how much was contributed towards each "fund"
(for example, the General Fund, Building Fund, Missions Fund, etc.). These
"fund totals" are important to know in your accounting system so that you
can keep a running "balance" of what has been received towards each
fund/purpose.
While you would need the
batch total amount and the fund totals in your accounting system, you
would NOT need to store each specific contributor's details in your
accounting system. You would have the details that the Smith family
contributed $100 towards the Building Fund on Nov 20th in Church
Helpmate.....but in your accounting system you'd simply have a deposit
figure representing the total amount deposited towards the Building Fund.
In this way, you would NOT have any contributor's identities in your
accounting package....there would be no need for this. So really every
week (or every deposit period), you would have to enter into your
accounting system simply the fund total amounts. The number of fund totals
here would be equal to the number of distinct funds that people have
contributed to. For example, if you have a collection of
contributions in which 100 people have contributed to 5 different funds,
you would have 100 entries in Church Helpmate (representing each
individual contribution), and only 5 entries in your accounting package
(representing each of the fund totals).
For our customers that use
QuickBooks, Peachtree, and other popular accounting systems, Church Helpmate
can generate a file that can be imported into the accounting package. This
import process automatically creates a deposit transaction with the fund
total details. This export/import process can be helpful if you have a large
number of funds that people give towards....but is certainly not necessary.
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Question:
What are the minimum and recommended hardware/software requirements to
run Church Helpmate?
Answer: Please
see the following link for details on the minimum & recommended system
requirements for Church Helpmate:
http://www.helpmate.com/products/ch/requirements.htm
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Question:
How much does Church Helpmate cost?
Answer:
Please see the Church
Helpmate
pricing page.
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Question:
Why is Church
Helpmate sold in different "license levels"?
Answer:
In our market
analysis of church management software and our Church Helpmate product, we
determined that a reasonable and competitive price point was
approximately $1200. However, we feel strongly that a tool such
as Church Helpmate should be used by ALL churches - regardless of their size
and financial capabilities. While many of our competitors are
catering to only the larger churches (who have the larger
pocketbooks), we do not value any church client by its size - but
rather by its mission and purpose. We have therefore
essentially discounted our Church Helpmate product for smaller churches by
implementing a pricing structure that is based on the number of family
records to be stored in the database.
Today, the Church Helpmate
product is being successfully utilized by churches ranging in
membership size of as little as 25 members to those with thousands of
members.
Question:
For license levels of Church Helpmate which have limits on the
number of household (family) records I can store in the system (Levels
1, 2, and 3), are there any limits on the number of individual
(people) records I can store in the database?
Answer: No,
there is no limit to the number of Individuals (people) that you can
have within each Household.
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Question:
If I purchase Church Helpmate, can I receive a refund if it does
not meet my expectations?
Answer: Yes.
Church Helpmate comes
with a 30-day money back guarantee. If, within 30-days of your
purchase, you find that the product does not meet your needs for any
reason, you may return it for a full refund of the purchase
price. Keep in mind that you can
fully evaluate the Church Helpmate product even before you purchase - and there is no
limitation on this evaluation period.
Currently our return
rate is an amazing low .1% (1/10th of a percent). That's only 1
return for every 1000 licenses sold!
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Question:
What forms of payment do you accept?
Answer: We
offer several payment options. These are as follows:
CREDIT CARD: We currently
accept MasterCard, VISA, Discover, and American Express. You can
purchase by credit card through our website’s secure online ordering
system (www.helpmate.com/order)
or through our toll-free sales line (888-858-3247).
CHECK: We currently accept
payment by check as long as the funds are in U.S. dollars. To pay by
check, please complete a
Church Helpmate 2008 Order Form
and then deliver it to us with your check by either postal mail or by
fax. When sending by fax, we will process your check as an electronic
funds transfer from your bank account.
If your organization requires an
invoice be issued from us before payment can be made, please
contact
Helpmate sales. We’ll set up an invoice for you.
We also offer a special 3-month payment plan which
enables you to split your total order amount into 3 equal payments. Contact Helpmate
sales for more details!
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Question:
Do I need Microsoft Access to use Church Helpmate?
Answer: No.
Although our Church Helpmate product is based on the Microsoft
Access® database program, it is not necessary for you to have
any form of Access® loaded onto your computer. For computers
that are running MS Access, the installation of Church Helpmate
will not affect or alter your MS Access installation in any way.
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Question:
We have been using another church management software program. Can our
data be transferred into Church Helpmate without having to
re-enter all this data?
Answer:
Whether your current system is another commercial church management
software product, or your own "home grown" product, it is very likely
that your existing data can be transferred over into Church Helpmate. For more information, please see our
Data Transfer
Services website page.
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Question:
Are there limitations on the number of records I can store in Church
Helpmate?
Answer:
Church Helpmate is licensed in 1 of 4
license levels. Each of these levels determines how many Household
records and Contacts records can be entered into the Church Helpmate database as shown below:
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Level 1:
100 Household records and 100 Contact records
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Level 2:
300 Household records and 300 Contact records
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Level 3:
600 Household records and 600 Contact records
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Level 4:
Unlimited Household records and Unlimited Contact records
License level storage
limitations (for Levels 1-3) apply to Household (family) records and
Contact records (Contact records are used in the "Contacts" module of
Church Helpmate for storing vendors, other church contacts, out of
state contributors, etc.). There is no limitation placed on the actual
number of Individual (people) records in the database for any license
level. Also, license levels can be upgraded from one level to
another through a simple registration process within the software (no
re-installation is necessary).
Apart from the input
restrictions stated above, the functionality and storage capacity of
the 4 license levels is identical. For example, you can record
an unlimited number of contribution records in Church Helpmate License Level 1 as you can in
License Level 4.
Technically speaking,
being a Microsoft Access database, Church Helpmate does have a data file size
limitation of 2GB. However, for all
intents and purposes, you'll never have to worry about this. The
Church Helpmate data file for even our very large clients with tens of
thousands of individuals in the database (approx size data file size of
300MB) is far
below this 2GB (2000MB) limitation.
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Question:
What is your upgrade policy?
Answer:
Whenever a "Service
Release" (maintenance update) is produced for the Church Helpmate
product, it will be posted to our website for free download by any
clients (as well as those evaluating the product). Upon
request, we will also send (free of charge) any service release on
CD by postal to those clients enrolled in either our "Premium" or "eSupport
Plus" support plans. Those clients not covered by these 2 support plans can download the
Service Releases free from our website at any time,
or an update CD can be ordered for a $10 fee.
All clients covered
enrolled in either our "Premium" or "eSupport
Plus" support plan at the time of a full version product upgrade as
well as new clients (within 60-days of their initial purchase)
receive full version product upgrades at no charge. Those clients
not covered by these 2
support plans at the time of the full version
product upgrade release are offered discounted upgrade pricing.
You can upgrade to a higher
license level of Church Helpmate at any time. It is an easy process. We will provide you with a new Registration Code
to key into the software and the program will acknowledge your level
upgrade. No installation or un-installation is required.
See the Church Helpmate
pricing
page for pricing details.
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Question:
Do you provide any training seminars for the Church Helpmate
software?
Answer:
Yes
we provide On-site and Telephone based
training opportunities. Please
see the
Training section of our website for more details regarding our
training offerings.
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Question:
Church Helpmate includes a "Contacts" module. What is
the difference between "Contacts" and Households and
Individuals?
Answer: Our
"Contacts" module was created to contain information on
persons/organizations that you do not consider as a part of your
actual Membership – and who likely would never become part of your
formal membership. For instance, it is an excellent place to
keep records on vendors, local politicians, or
individuals/organizations that contribute financially to the church,
but who do not attend your church. We would also NOT recommend
entering visitors/prospects into the database as Contacts - as these
people may end up becoming active members of your church - and the
Contacts module does not provide the facility for tracking
Some important differences to note:
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You can
record contributions and pledges from Contacts (just as you can
from Households & Individuals)
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The Groups module, the
Meetings & Attendance module, and the Visitations module of Church
Helpmate do not support Contact records - therefore Contacts are
not able to be added to Groups, have their attendance tracked, or
have associated Visitation records in Church Helpmate..
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