With a $2.5 million dollar annual operating budget and over 1,700 families, Holy Family Catholic Church in Brentwood, Tennessee serves one of the most affluent communities in the country.

Husband and wife team Sanford and Pam Comeaux manage the church’s use of Parish Data System (PDS) from inside and outside the church. Sanford owns a systems consulting firm that operates as the systems consultant for the parish, and he also serves as the Parish Finance Committee Chairperson. Pam is the church office manager. Their combined experience with PDS totals nearly 30 years.

Due to Sanford’s consulting expertise, he has been able to set up a network of 25 workstations and has even set up terminal access so that staff can have a secure login from their home computers. The church uses PDS for nearly ever aspect of their work, and as Comeaux notes, “I couldn’t imagine living without it.”

Financial Management. “Our parish is only as old as our use of PDS,” comments Sanford Comeaux. “It’s the only census program we’ve ever used. I’m familiar with a lot of software packages because I sell them, and I’ve looked at hundreds of data management programs. I wouldn’t want to use anything different.”

Holy Family uses the contributions portion of the software on an everyday basis to track incoming contributions and pledges. Comeaux keys in the contributions and pledges as the church receives them and utilizes the software’s built-in reports to furnish data for the stewardship director.

“Every time our stewardship director has a meeting, he asks me for a contributions report. With PDS, it’s very simple and straightforward,” Comeaux notes.

Holy Family has three main funds that Comeaux tracks: 1) annual pledges to the diocese 2) annual pledges to the parish and 3) ongoing capital campaign pledges.

Because the data was organized efficiently in the software program, Sanford Comeaux, Parish Finance Committee Chairperson, was able to provide the board with historical contribution data that was instrumental in planning for the church’s future.

“I was able to help out a great deal with the fundraising campaigns by providing historical contribution data—we’ve been able to use this information very effectively,” comments Sanford Comeaux. “We would have struggled more in our development projects if we didn’t have PDS to gather this valuable information.”

Improved Operations. Holy Family had used version 17 of PDS for a long time and attended training seminars on the new Church Office in order to prepare for the transition to the new platform and take advantage of the enhanced features within the software. Pam Comeaux is excited about creating unlimited numbers of funds within Contributions. She notes, “This is a major improvement and it is already working well.”

“We are so happy about the new version because we can tie contributions to the education link,” Sanford adds. “We are now able to have our stewardship director look up members’ talents in the software. I’m trying to deploy it on a much larger scale so that key people within the parish can have access.”

Holy Family is also excited about the new Report Writer functions in Church Office.

“Report Writer is incredibly powerful and flexible—I’m anxious to get my hands around this,” exclaims Sanford Comeaux. “With the different levels of reports that are available and the ability to filter information, I’m going to make 25 less visits a year to the parish to get them a piece of financial data they need,” he continues. “Now the office staff is going to be able to pull up data themselves to provide reports for the diocese. We’ll still need PDS support to help use occasionally with a custom report, but overall, Church Office will help us take a giant step forward with reporting.”

Pam Comeaux finds that generating reports from within PDS helps her easily provide detailed information for the diocese annual census, for Rome, as well as for the Catholic Directory. Having the ability to generate reports on the number of first communions, deaths, marriages, baptisms, etc. is invaluable to the church.

“As far as vertical, industry-use software, I’ve never seen a better one. The software has an extremely strong user interface—it’s logical, intuitive, and extremely easy to use,” Sanford Comeaux comments. “It seems like the engineer who designed the software actually uses it.”

About Holy Family Catholic Church
On July 19, 1989, Bishop James D. Niedergeses, Bishop of Nashville officially decreed and published the boundaries and limits for a new Brentwood parish and named Father Edward T. Alberts as the pastor. On August 6, 1989 the first community-wide Mass was celebrated at 10:30AM in the Brentwood High School's Auditorium. The parish was known as Brentwood Catholic Community until it became officially known as Holy Family Catholic Church. With close to 300 registered families and over 400 students in the Religious Education program, the parish was up and running. Since its inception, Holy Family has added numerous youth programs, a preschool, grown to 1,600 families, and built new facilities to house its burgeoning congregation.

Parish Data System Products & Services Used
Church Office

Web Site
http://www.holyfamilycc.com