Service Settings

When you open your service settings you will see three different sections: 

Reporting

Customer reporting field for the services area is very similar to the groups area where you can record custom information for the services in your church. 

Unlike groups where you may like to take individual attendance (eg. john was there, evie was there etc etc) instead you would do a head count. So to set up a reporting field to include that in a service, this is where you do it:

1. Click and drag a reporting field box over 

2. And name it Headcount

The available fields are:

Print Presets

When you are looking at a service, you can print out a service plan. These presets will appear here when you print a service and save it as a preset. However, this will be set up when you decide you need to print something down the track. So for now, it won’t apply. 

When you roster volunteers there are notifications that can be sent out to your volunteers to communicate to them.

Notification Settings

This has a number of different settings mainly relating to notifying volunteers that they have been scheduled onto a service.

Notify ‘Reports To’ Volunteer/Person

When you roster a new volunteer onto a service, you can choose who the volunteer reports to (under Departments). By default, the 'Reports To' volunteer is notified when a scheduled volunteer confirms or declines. You can change this so that the 'Reports To' volunteer is only notified when someone declines.

A lot of churches do want it to be only if declined, but there are benefits of being notified of both, so you choose what suits your leadership style best. 

Automatically Contact Volunteers when Scheduled on to a Service

If you enable this option, the moment you schedule a volunteer onto a service, do you want to notify then by email or sms? If you enable either of these, our app will also send a push notification at the same time. 

Automatically Contact Volunteers when UNScheduled on to a Service

This the same as the above, but it’s when you un-schedule them. This setting isn’t used as much as the one above, but if you feel people need to know you’ve removed them from an upcoming service then this is a way to notify them automatically when you do it. 

Follow Up Unconfirmed Volunteers

Using this setting enables your account to automatically follow them up until they confirm or decline a scheduled request. You can send the reminder in 2 days and then every 2 days until you get an action. 2 days may be too often, but if just depends on how soon you need the scheduling to be actioned.

Volunteer Schedule Reminder 

This is a way of reminder people they are scheduled for an upcoming service and you’re awaiting their availability. This is sent every 2 days until they confirm. Depending on how far out you organize rosters you may like to change this.

Every setting in your account can be adjusted at any time, so nothing you save is locked in concrete and you can always come back and review again once you start using Elvanto on a regular basis. 

This is specifically about how a person ’s roster is viewed. 

Default Status when Scheduling New Volunteers on a Service

When you schedule a volunteer onto a service, do you wish them to be confirmed or unconfirmed by default? 'Confirmed' means that the volunteer is happy to be scheduled on the service, and 'unconfirmed' means you are giving them an option to say yes or no. 

This is very much a church cultural option, so you decide how you would like your rostering to work. This is where you set up the default option, but you can override this setting under the different departments you set up. Eg. Worship & Hosting may like to have the option to confirm or decline, but for the Preaching team or Money Count team, you may prefer to just have them confirmed automatically. 

Roster Settings

In the member area, we have a roster.

Go to Demo Site > Member Area > Roster

This is where your volunteers will view what services they are scheduled on and view the service plan if provided access. It is also where they can see who else is scheduled.

Go Back to the Settings > Services > Roster

Services On A Roster  

So going back to the Roster Settings, you can choose how many services in advance you wish to show on the member's roster. By default, it will display 4 weeks, but you can change it to as many weeks or months in advance you want.

Default Roster Tab

When you look at a service within the roster, do you want to show the list of volunteers and who are scheduled on first, or show the plan of the service (eg. what is happening at the service).

You can see the two options therea for people to click on but you choose which one shows by default. 

Go to Demo Site > Member Area > Roster (and click on a Service as per image)

If you’re unsure what one to have as a default, we suggest you select the Service Plan view for now, but you can change it to volunteers later.

Unconfirmed Volunteers on Roster

There is an option for you to show or hide the unconfirmed volunteers on the roster. Some people only like to show confirmed people, but others want to show everyone until they say decline. 

Show Family Members on Roster

This setting allows your volunteers to also see where their family members are scheduled on. This is useful for parents or spouses to know where each member of the family is on any upcoming service.

Only Display Services that Volunteers are Scheduled on the Roster

If there are 10 services coming up. However, a volunteer was only rostered on 2 of the 10, do you want that volunteer to see all 10 services or just the 2 they are rostered on? 

Only Display Departments that Volunteers are Assigned to on the Roster

This works in conjunction with the above, but when you look at the roster, do you want the volunteers to see all the departments and volunteers rostered across the church, or do you only want to show the department/area that that volunteer individual is serving in? 

Block volunteers from declining services after confirming

Once a volunteer has confirmed they can serve at an upcoming service, do you want them to be able to decline at a later date? 

You can block it completely, or you can block it with a time limit eg. 5 days before the service starts. 

Unavailability Submission Time Limits

This one similar to above, but it’s in regards to how much notice volunteers must give when submitting their availabilities. How many days notice do you need from them to notify that they cannot attend or volunteer at an upcoming service. 

Eg. Some churches may ask for 1 month, other churches ask for 1 week. This depends on how much notice you required in order to run your church services and manage volunteers efficiently. 

Block Volunteers from Submitting Unavailability when Scheduled

If a volunteer tries to submit unavailability for a date they are already rostered on for an upcoming service do you wish to block or allow this?

Swap and Replace is a clever tool. Once a volunteer has been scheduled on a service, rather then having them decline if they’re not available, they use the feature called “Swap & Replace” 

Swap - means they can go and swap with someone that may be rostered on an upcoming service and swap with them. Eg. They do this week, and the person they swap with will do the service in 3 weeks that the original person could no longer do.

Replace - means they can find a replacement from available volunteers on the list. By enabling this feature, it does take some of the pressure off the admins to try and find replacements all the time and gives more responsibility to the volunteers. 

Prevent Requests

You can give a time limit to when a volunteer can swap and replace. Eg. 7 days before the service starts. 

Cancel Pending Requests

You may wish to cancel any pending requests within 5 days of your service starting. If this is enabled the volunteer would be notified at this point and they would then need to contact the church’s admins for assistance in finding a replacement. 

Swap & replace is an account wide setting, unless you specify within the different departments.

Here's where you can edit the individual positions in department:

Conflict Time

Volunteers can’t be in two locations at once, so by default if a volunteer is scheduled on a service, the system will mark them as having a conflict if someone tries to schedule them on at the same time.  This setting allows you to set a time limit between when they are available again so not to overlap or be rostered on more then once on the same day.

Default is 4 hours of each other. So if a Sunday morning finishes at 12pm than the 4 hour conflict time would mean they wouldn’t be available to be rostered until after 4pm.  

Scheduled Preferences

When your volunteers set their scheduling preferences, they can choose how many services they are able to serve at. Because services can have multiple service times attached to them, this setting allows you to choose whether to treat a service time as its own service or not. 

What you set this to depends on how you structure your teams of volunteers. For example you might have a single service that has two service times: an 8AM and 10AM service. If the same volunteers serve at both services, you would want to count both service times as a single service. If you have different volunteers at each service, you would want to count each service time as a service.

There you have it! Please reach out directly to support@tithe.ly with any other questions :)