One of our favorite parts of working with church leaders is helping them discover new ways to use every part of One Church Software. Whether you have made the decision to update your church management system (ChMS) or are still considering it, today we are sharing some advanced ways you can use the form feature within One Church Software to support your ministry most effectively.
Read More: 7 Signs You’re Ready for a Church Management System
How are forms used?
Forms can be used for a number of purposes, including registration for an event, sign-ups, purchasing tickets for a special event, joining your church newsletter, requesting a resource, and the list could go on.
You can share a form in a variety of ways as well through One Church Software. For example, you can send your congregation a direct link to a registration form, you can provide easy registration for groups (or anything else) in the mobile app, or you could even create a custom QR code that sends people to a survey.
With all this is mind, you can take your forms to the next level by utilizing the following features you may not know about:
1) Uploading files through forms.
Did you know that you can collect practically any type of file using One Church Software forms?
This could mean that you can collect a signed waiver at the time of registration for an event.
Or you might be trying to get pictures and stories from a community outreach initiative that your church sponsored. Create a form with a field to upload files and you’ll be able to not only get details and stories from the ministry event, but also photos all in one form.
The options here are vast!
2) Collecting payments.
Gone are the days of paper lists to keep track of who has and hasn’t paid for an event. You can add payments to a form to collect the fee for an event, Awana registration, etc. You could even use the payment option for a t-shirt or Bible study purchase.
If you have One Church Giving, you can utilize the payment option in forms. With this feature, you can also set-up a promotion or coupon code for an item and allow people to cover the processing fees as part of their total payment amount.
3) Creating conditional fields on a form.
The conditional fields feature allows you to create an experience that is relevant to everyone. Conditional fields are submission fields that will only appear if someone answers a question a certain way. For instance, when collecting registration for an event, you don’t have to ask every single person how many children they need childcare for. You can make that question depend on if they answer “Do you require childcare?” with an affirmative answer.
Perhaps if Awana registration requires a waiver for a special activity for a specific age group, you can create a follow-up question only for people with children who are in that age group.
Conditional fields can be a great tool to help streamline the experience for each person!
4) Automating emails and task assignments.
We do a deep dive into some processes you should automate here, but it’s important to consider that your forms can be a trigger to kick-off any automation you create.
For example, if you are looking for volunteers, you could create an automated task assignment for your worship leader when someone checks the box for “Worship” under the areas they are interested in serving in.
For special events, you can have form responses go to each team leader rather than one person trying to send each response manually.
You can even set-up an automated email to send after someone completes the form to thank them or give them some important follow-up information.
As you can see, there are many different ways you can utilize forms in One Church Software to benefit your church. By considering how you might use these form features to make your systems more seamless, know that the sky is the limit! This is just one of the many features we have worked hard on in order to provide an effective church management system for you to utilize.
Need additional help setting up a specific form for your church? Reach out to our team anytime!
If you don’t have a church management system or are considering switching, you can also try One Church Software FREE for 30 days to see all the ways it can help you care for your members, empower your volunteers, and serve your community.
