St. Peter R.C. Church, located in Lewiston, New York, uses PDS (Parish Data Systems) to manage its membership and accounting. Maxine Menshon joined the staff of St. Peter’s in 2019. She also used PDS in 2018 at another parish and a school, so she is well-versed in PDS and how it works.
Maxine has used Faith Formation, Church Office, and Ledger modules within PDS. She currently uses the OnDemand version, which allows her to work from anywhere. She said that she was on vacation recently, and a significant snowstorm came through, and she couldn’t get home. With PDS OnDemand, she could work from where she stayed, including pulling financial reports for a board meeting that evening.
One thing that Maxine loves about PDS is how robust the reporting is. She can quickly pull her reports together at the end of every month when she does her month-end closing and reconciliation in Ledger. She said the main reports she does as a Bookkeeper are an Income Statement, a Balance Sheet, and a General Ledger report. Then, at the end of the month, when it is time to do month-end closing, she pulls check register reports to aid in reconciling her bank accounts.
Maxine says she is always learning exactly how powerful the PDS software is.
“There are things that this whole program can do that I don’t even know about; I just know how powerful it is. You have to play around with PDS. What is it you’re looking to do? Ask yourself what you want to accomplish, and there will be a way to accomplish that task.”
Maxine Menshon – Bookkeeper – St. Peter R.C. Church
If you can’t figure out a way to accomplish your task, you can call support; they are always ready and able to help you. In one case, Maxine needed all children born in a particular year whose baptismal sacrament was unchecked. When she couldn’t figure out how to pull the report, she called the support line, and they walked her through finding exactly what she needed quickly.
Maxine’s favorite support story was when she wanted to get a registration event going that could be paid for online. She called support, and someone walked her through creating the event, getting the online payments set up, and getting it to the point where her parishioners could just click a link, put in all their information, and pay for it. Once that happened, all the information the parishioner entered went into PDS, and the money went straight to the bank.
In her previous role, Maxine used Faith Formation. When a child is born, you record their baptism; when they are seven, they start their formation classes. You can hit a button, and all that information is transferred from PDS Church into Faith Formation. Now, the student is all set to begin classes.
With Faith Formation, you can build classes, a schedule for the classes, and whatever you need for Kindergarten through 10th grade. It also allows you to keep attendance records.
Maxine says there isn’t one feature she thinks everyone should use. She says she uses everything really, and it is all very important.
“It’s all just like part of my daily duties, right? I have to do checks. I like the way the bank reconciliation works. It’s nice because it keeps track of all your checks that need to be cleared. Without that, we would still be doing reconciliations manually.”
Maxine Menshon – Bookkeeper – St. Peter R.C. Church
Whether she is pulling reports for finance meetings, closing their month(s) and year(s) out efficiently, or just doing daily checks and balances, PDS helps Maxine and St. Peter R.C. Church perform efficiently and accurately.
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About Stacey Smith
Stacey joined the ACST team in 1998 in the support department and joined the marketing team in 2021 as an Associate Marketing Coordinator. Today she runs the ACST Ministry Champions program, which involves all references, reviews, and testimonials for all of our products and services. When she isn’t at work, she is spending time with her husband, two teenage daughters and furbaby Copper.
