Experience.FellowshipOne.com

My understanding of the use for status comments (basic page of an individual upper right hand corner) is to reflect the reason their status has changed.  For example: Newcomer to Attendee, Attendee to Inactive and so on.  I've also noticed that on some reports this field is a filter question....which leads me to believe that we should be standarizing our choice of comments.   Otherwise this can be come a rather large filter choice. 

My questions: Is this how others are using this field? If so, are you standardizing your comments and what are some comments being used?

I have put in a request to Support to have this area be a drop down menu which would make it easier.

Jen, Sorry for the late response but I just came across this post.

While primarily we use Status Comment to reflect the reason a status has changed (i.e. "StartingPoint" which is our equivalent to a Membership class) we do use it for more detailed information than a drop-down choice would provide.

Some examples are:
Moving/Moved - we actually include the state they have moved to.
Spouses - If a spouse does not attend our church instead of creating an account for them and defaulting them to Inactive (which we did for years) I will place a note that indicates this in the Status Comment area.
Resistance (for lack of better verbiage) - If someone has become inactive due to leaving our church under less than amicable terms that is also reflected in Status Comment.

As long as all comments are standardized (i.e. "Moved to Texas" "Moved to Illinois", "Spouse (Richard) does not attend" "Spouse (Susan) does not attend") they are search-able using key words (moved, spouse). I'm not sure if these are best practices but they are what works for us.

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"Grace is the understanding that God is a better savior than you are a sinner." - Christopher Love