Classroom Training - Course Descriptions
All classes assume familiarity with Microsoft Windows.
Church Office — 2 Days
Learn how to become efficient and proficient with PDS Church Office. This is an in-depth exploration of the financial, quick postings, processes, and reporting aspects of the program.
Prerequisites: This class assumes that you are comfortable with the fields found on all screens. You should know how to manually add, delete, and lookup information, maintain keywords, and use the listing screens. If you are new to the program or need a refresher on these topics, we suggest taking the online Self-paced Training class Essential Skills for Church Office.
Day 1 covers financials. In the morning, learn about the setup of funds for tracking contributions, capital campaigns, pledge drives, and more. Learn how to setup and use funds for families and members. See how to quickly posts contributions, payments, charges, and pledge cards for many people at once. The afternoon of day 1 explores the wide variety of quick postings and processes that are available to help enter and maintain your data.
Day 2 is primarily devoted to reports. Learn how to modify existing reports that ship with the program and create brand new reports from scratch using the ez-list and word-processor interface. (The advanced report writer is covered in a separate one day class). Explore the selections interface that lets you choose exactly which families and members to print. Learn how to take advantage of the EZ-Mail feature to save money on bulk mailings.
The class also covers a variety of tools for managing Users/Passwords and Security, Backup/Restore, Test Programs/Fix Damaged Data, and the Rescue program.
Formation Office — 2 Days
Learn how to become efficient and proficient with PDS Formation Office. This is an in-depth exploration of the financial, quick postings, processes, and reporting aspects of the program.
Prerequisites: This class assumes that you are comfortable with the fields found on all screens. You should know how to manually add, delete, and lookup information, maintain keywords, and use the listing screens. If you are new to the program or need a refresher on these topics, we suggest taking the online Self-paced Training class Essential Skills for Formation Office.
Day 1 covers financials. In the morning, learn about the setup of funds for tracking registration fees, sacramental preparation fees, fund raising, and more. Learn how to setup and use funds for families and students. See how to quickly posts contributions, payments, charges, and terms/rates for many people at once. The afternoon of day 1 explores the wide variety of quick postings and processes that are available to help enter and maintain your data.
Day 2 is primarily devoted to reports. Learn how to modify existing reports that ship with the program and create brand new reports from scratch using the ez-list and word-processor interface. (The advanced report writer is covered in a separate one day class). Explore the selections interface that lets you choose exactly which families, students, and catechists to print. Learn how to take advantage of the EZ-Mail feature to save money on bulk mailings.
The class also covers a variety of tools for managing Users/Passwords and Security, Backup/Restore, Test Programs/Fix Damaged Data, and the Rescue program.
School Office — 2 Days
Learn how to become efficient and proficient with PDS School Office. This is an in-depth exploration of the financial, quick postings, processes, and reporting aspects of the program.
Prerequisites: This class assumes that you are comfortable with the fields found on all screens. You should know how to manually add, delete, and lookup information, maintain keywords and use the listing screens. If you are new to the program or need a refresher on these topics we suggest taking the online Self-paced Training class Essential Skills for School Office.
Day 1 covers financials. In the morning, learn about the setup of funds for tracking registration fees, sacramental preparation fees, fund raising, and more. Learn how to setup and use funds for families and students. See how to quickly posts contributions, payments, charges, and terms/rates for many people at once. The afternoon of day 1 explores the wide variety of quick postings and processes that are available to help enter and maintain your data.
Day 2 is primarily devoted to reports. Learn how to modify existing reports that ship with the program and create brand new reports from scratch using the ez-list and word-processor interface. (The advanced report writer is covered in a separate one day class). Explore the selections interface that lets you choose exactly which families, students, and teachers to print. Learn how to take advantage of the EZ-Mail feature to save money on bulk mailings.
The class also covers a variety of tools for managing Users/Passwords and Security, Backup/Restore, Test Programs/Fix Damaged Data, and the Rescue program.
Advanced Report Writer — 1 Day
Learn how to use the advanced report writer that is included as a feature in Church Office, Formation Office, School Office, Ledger, Ledger/Payroll, and Facility Scheduler. This class is an exploration of some practical report examples. In the development of the reports, you'll learn the following skills:
- Placing objects on the workspace
- Preview the report
- Adding data to the report
- Integrating with page styles
- Getting a jump start with templates
- Printing information from multiple tables
- Add a standard header and footer template
- Quickly placing multiple fields using the data tree
- Refining object placement
- Positioning sub-reports
- Grouping information
- Adjusting runtime sizing and placement
- Renaming objects using the report tree
- Manipulating objects with embedded code - pascal scripting
- Summarizing information - counts and totals
Advisement: This class demonstrates programming in the Pascal Scripting section, but is NOT intended to be a programming oriented class. You do not need to be a programmer to understand the majority of this class. However, the topic will be introduced and implemented with a practical example. Also, this course uses PDS Church Office in the development of the report examples, but the concepts are applicable to all PDS programs.
Facility Scheduler — 1 Day
Learn how to become proficient with PDS Facility Scheduler. This is an in depth exploration of the program.
The day starts with how to setup facility features and how to setup and maintain facilities and organizations. Then learn how you can quickly schedule events using the wizards that step you through scheduling single events, a series of recurring events, a package of related events, using past history, or even to schedule events lasting over 24 hours. Learn how to handle conflicts and how to check for availability. Learn how you can maintain events on the events screen and how to alter an existing schedule or how to delete events. See the variety of calendar styles available under View Calendars and how you can view all scheduled events or use the filter to display what you want. See how you can easily view the information you want on facilities, organization, and events using the View Listing screens. Learn how to print listing, letter, and calendar reports and how easy it is to modify reports or create your own reports.
The class also covers a variety of tools for managing Keywords, Users/Passwords and Security, Backup/Restore, and Test Programs/Fix Damaged Data.
Ledger and Ledger Payroll — 1 Day
Learn how to become proficient with PDS Ledger. This is an in depth exploration of the program.
Morning – Ledger: The day starts with the foundation of your accounting system, the Chart of Accounts. Then, the class covers typical tasks such as paying bills, managing vendors, recording deposits, and other transactions types. See how the program can save you time with features such as recurring invoices and recurring journal entries. See how to quickly print the financial information you need in a variety of ways. Explore the selections interface that lets you choose exactly which accounts or transactions to print. Learn how Group Reports can make it easy to manipulate reports for a specific group of accounts.
Afternoon – Payroll: The day concludes with how to setup and configure the PDS Ledger/Payroll program. Learn how to enter employees, define their wages and withholdings, and print paychecks. See how the program can save you time with features such as direct deposit. Learn how to quickly print a variety of monthly, quarterly, and annual reports including critical items such as the 941, W-2/W3, and 1099/1096.
The class also covers a variety of tools for managing Keywords, Users/Passwords and Security, Backup/Restore, Test Programs/Fix Damaged Data, and the Rescue program
Ministry Scheduler – 1 Day
Learn how to become proficient with PDS Ministry Scheduler. This is an in depth exploration of the program.
Learn how the ministry scheduler is used to schedule altar servers, lectors, Eucharistic ministers, and other ministries. See how the Church Office program can be used to update the list of ministers.
