Selecting a Church Check-in System

Tammy at Multi-Site Kids had an interesting post about how she would prefer to have better reporting solution for her check-in system:

For us, one area that makes me cringe is our check-in system. It’s not such a bad experience for families but we are doing a horrible job of capturing and entering data from our check-in that could be a huge help in generating reports.

For Tammy and others that are considering a check-in system, I’d like to offer up a few points before you go and implement an out-of-the-box or custom solution. These tips are based on my experience helping to implement three generations of check-in systems, both homegrown and commercial.

1. Honor the solution, not the technology by focusing on what you need, not what a solution offers. Often, it can be exciting to see all of those wonderful features and think that you need them all. Often, you don’t.
2. Members and visitors above reports and procedures – it’s about the user experience, not the reporting. There is nothing worse than a bad solution that produces reports, but deters visitors
3. Trainability above functionality – after the user experience comes the operator experience. Make sure that you can train your staff without expensive consultants or multi-day seminars – you will get more volunteers that way
4. Avoid data access excess – going into a solution is usually because you want better reports. Often, the solution forces you to put in more data than you can deal with and the process will bog down under the weight of the data. Go for simple over complex, as you’ll “file 13″ those reports you really wanted over time anyway – often for the most basic reports that tell you the most and are the easiest to generate
5. Security for the kids – if the solution doesn’t make the kids more secure by protecting them from out-of-favor relatives or walk-in strangers, don’t implement it

[tags]Church Management Systems, check-in kiosks, children’s checkin[/tags]

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