Version 1.00 — Out of Alpha, in Production

Parish Record Keeper leaves its Alpha stage. Parishes use it for their daily work, so it is now simply Parish Record Keeper 1.00. There is no separate “stable” and “test” version to choose between: every installation updates itself to the latest release, so the whole team always works with the same program.

Development goes on, and updates come often. Please bear with an occasional bug — and when you meet one, inform the developer at developer@parishrecordkeeper.com, so that the next update can put it right.

The Parish Archive

The documents of the parish — minutes of the parish council and the finance council, pictures of parish events, letters, reports — now have a place on the server where the whole team can reach them. Open it with Control Panel → Server Actions → Parish Archive. It is part of the workspace and costs nothing extra.

• Uploads arrive in one place. Members send files into “recent_uploads”; an administrator sorts each one into the folder where it belongs.
• A bin for mistakes. A deleted file can be restored for 14 days.
• Your own copy. One button copies the whole archive to your computer. The server is a convenience for the team, not a backup — keep your own copy up to date.

The Phone App: Parish Ledger Entries, and More Than One Parish

Two additions to the PRK Admin app on the phone. Contributions of a person were already recorded there; now the rest of the parish's money can be, too.

• A P-Ledger tab. New entries in the parish ledger — a Sunday collection, a bill paid, money taken to the bank — either as a cash book (cash in or out against one account) or as a double entry, with an optional area for an area account. They travel as change notes like every other correction, and the computer writes them exactly as its own PA-Ledger forms would. A note sent twice is recognised and never booked twice.
• Change data file. One e-mail address can belong to several parish workspaces. A button on the Data tab now lists them and downloads the one you choose, and the phone always asks for the parish whose copy it holds — so notes can never land in the wrong parish.
• In PRK Finance, too. A reports login that may send corrections and sees the whole parish gets the P-Ledger tab as well.

Keeping Your Datafile in Step With the Master — Automatically

Team sync now runs by itself. Two tick boxes on the Server Actions window, both set on a datafile rather than a computer, decide how much of it happens without a button press.

• Sync with master, every start. Each time Parish Record Keeper opens, it works out what changed in this datafile since the last round, sends those changes as change notes, and — for the administrator — takes in what everybody else has sent. Nothing is asked and nothing is noticed unless there is something to look at afterwards; a datafile that cannot post its changes as notes says so and asks for the whole file instead.
• Take new masters automatically, where that is wanted. A second, separate tick box replaces the whole datafile with a newer master the moment one appears on the server, keeping a dated copy of the old one first. It waits and asks instead whenever this datafile holds work the server has not received yet. Left unticked, a new master is still offered with one click.
• Send on the way out. The full round runs when the program opens. Leaving with EXIT after changing records asks whether to send your changes straight away, so the administrator has them the same day. Leaving only sends — it never takes anything in — and answering NO loses nothing: the next start sends them. Every run is written to Logs\SyncIncorporated.txt.
• Your work survives a new master. With both boxes ticked, your changes are sent before a new master is taken and put back on top of it afterwards, so you keep seeing your own work while it waits for the administrator. Both tick boxes now stay with the computer when a master replaces the datafile, and they are no longer cleared from the settings table at every start.

Joining the Team From an Empty Computer

A team member who has just installed Parish Record Keeper no longer needs a datafile of their own before they can reach the server. On the Welcome screen, or with SERVER ACTIONS in the Control Panel, they sign in with the email address and password the administrator gave them under Server Members.

• The parish's datafile, in one step. The program finds the workspace the account belongs to and downloads its master as the computer's datafile. From then on the datafile carries its own Backend ID and the sign-in is remembered.
• Also for a blank datafile. A newly created, empty datafile that is not linked to any workspace now offers the parish's datafile before offering to register a new workspace. The blank one is kept as a dated copy.
• Nothing more than before. This way in can only look up the account's workspaces and download the master; everything else still needs the linked datafile.

Team Sync — Everybody's Changes, Without Sending Whole Files

One button, SYNC ALL ON SERVER in the Server Actions window, keeps the datafiles of a team together. Instead of a whole datafile it exchanges change notes: only what somebody actually changed since the last round — a corrected name, a new financial entry, a deleted entry, a card filed under another area.

• Send, take in, refresh. Your datafile is compared with the base copy it keeps of itself, your changes are sent, an administrator takes in what the others sent, and the base copy is renewed. Members only send; there is still one master and only an administrator publishes it.
• Conflicts are filed, never lost. If two people changed the same thing, money is never merged, the later edit wins for text, and whatever lost is written to a Sync conflicts file you can review, note by note, in plain words.
• The app knows when notes are not enough. A new or merged account or area, a repair that rewrites identities, or a restored backup make the button stop and ask for the whole datafile instead — so two copies can never quietly drift apart.
• Deletions travel. A deleted person, baptism entry or ledger entry is remembered, and reaches the other computers instead of being undone by the next sync.
• A record of what was taken in. Every administrator's take-in is logged in Logs\SyncIncorporated.txt.

Merging a Member's Version — Online or Offline

When several people work on one parish datafile, the administrator brings everybody's work together into the master. There are two ways, both in the Server Actions window, and both follow the same rules — so a version merged one way can later be compared or synced the other way without duplicates.

• Online sync — when you trust the source. Compare on the server checks a member's version against your data, and the import takes everything in one go: corrections, new families with their cards and links to other cards, persons moved to other cards, new baptism entries. Tick boxes decide what to take; only notes with a warning, and every deletion, are still shown one by one.
• One pass to everybody. The same window keeps a dated copy of your datafile first, then publishes the result as the new master — with the online search database if you wish. Every team member gets the new master at their next start, and a datafile set to take new masters automatically takes it without asking (never while it holds work that has not been sent; the old datafile is always kept).
• Offline sync — for a detailed comparison. Download selected and sync opens the SYNC form with the member's version already loaded, local and import records side by side with every difference pointed out. The right choice for a version you want to check record by record, a large or unfamiliar import, or a parish without the internet.
• Families and cards as the SYNC form handles them. A new person joins the card where their family already is — a new wife her husband's card — and new cards take the next number of your datafile. A person the member moved to another card is moved here too.
• The merge queue keeps what is not merged. Publishing a master no longer empties the queue: only versions marked as merged leave it. A compared version is marked by itself, a synced one when you confirm it, and any version by hand on the workspace page.
• A warning for the wrong datafile. When nearly everything is already in the datafile that is open, the import says so before anything is written — the member's own version is probably open instead of yours.

Export the Whole Database as SQLite

A new button on the Export screen, Export full database as SQLite, writes every table of the datafile into one SQLite file — the widely used open database format that many programs on Windows, Mac, Linux and phones can open without Access. Names, numbers, dates and line breaks come through exactly, the same on every computer. Like the text export, the file is readable, even when the datafile itself has a password, so keep it as carefully as the datafile.

Copies for the Diocese

A diocese can now keep a safe copy of the records of each of its parishes on parishrecordkeeper.com. If a parish computer is stolen, breaks down or is wiped, the registers and the closed years of the parish accounts are not lost: the diocese has them. It is custody, not sharing — once a copy has been sent, the parish can no longer see, download or delete it, and nothing the parish does to its own workspace afterwards reaches it.

• One button for the parish. The workspace administrator presses Copy for the diocese in Server Actions. The datafile travels together with the archive files of the closed accounting years — starting a new year empties the parish ledger, so those years exist nowhere else — and the program reminds a diocesan parish to send a copy right after it has started a new year.
• Collections run by the diocese. The diocese asks its parishes for copies with a deadline, and every parish administrator is told when Parish Record Keeper starts. A parish may send as often as it likes: a new copy replaces the previous one until the diocese endorses the collection.
• Nothing bloats, nothing good is lost. The diocese keeps its most recent collections and the year-end ones it pins; the accounts archives are kept for ever. A copy with suddenly far fewer records than the one before is flagged, and never pushes out the last good copy.
• The same desktop program. The diocese works in its own Diocese Office window, downloads the copies of one parish or of all of them, and opens any copy like an ordinary datafile.

Open a diocesan workspace at no extra cost. Each parish that sends keeps its own Workspace, and a diocese that pays centrally buys a bracket of places — up to 20, 40 or 60 parishes at one flat price for a term, spare places waiting for parishes still to register — the table is in the FAQ.

And a diocese may ask for a free trial first. Write and say how many parishes there are, and the diocese is given places for them free for three months, so that the office, the finance council and the parishes can see the whole arrangement working before anybody is asked for a figure. During the trial nothing is different: parishes join with the join code, send their copies, and are contributed for. When it ends they simply go back to contributing for themselves — no record is touched, no copy the diocese holds is deleted, and no workspace closes. There is nothing to cancel and nothing is owed.

Dioceses that would like to open a diocesan workspace, or to ask for the free trial, are welcome to write to developer@parishrecordkeeper.com.

Datafiles Now Travel Packed

Publishing a master, handing in a version and downloading the master are now about five times quicker on a slow line: the datafile is packed (zipped) before it travels — a 24 MB datafile goes up as about 5 MB — and unpacked and checked at the other end before anything is done with it. Nothing has to be set up. Computers with a Windows older than the Windows 10 of 2018 simply send and receive the files unpacked, as before.

Try a Workspace Free for Six Months

A parish can now try the whole online Workspace before contributing anything. With a free-trial token from the developer, typed in where the "Register a new workspace" window asks for an activation code, the Workspace is set up at once and runs free for six months — the shared master file, the online search, the phone apps, transport booking, shared report logins and copies for the diocese. Each email address can start one trial.

The start screen shows how long the trial has left. A contribution before it ends keeps the Workspace exactly as it is; without one it closes, and nothing on the parish computer is affected.

Find and Merge Duplicate Church Records

Over the years the same person is often entered twice — a family re-registered at a new station, a register typed up a second time, or two parishes synced and the same person arriving from both sides. This new tool searches the whole set of church records, scores every likely pair on how alike they are, and lets you review and merge them two at a time — or let the safest, highest-scoring pairs merge automatically.

Nothing is guessed blindly: the search leans on your own Synonymous Names table to handle spelling variants, weighs dates of birth and baptism entries far more heavily than names alone, and remembers every pair you mark "not the same" so it is never offered again. A merge carries children, contributions and family files across correctly, keeps a full history of what was moved, and can be undone.

The Server Actions Panel

Everything the "workspace" page of parishrecordkeeper.com does in a browser can now be done directly from inside Parish Record Keeper: publish a new master datafile, rebuild the online search database, hand in a version for the administrator to merge, download the master or a queued version, or clear the workspace on the server — all without opening a browser. Corrections made on the phone are now carried into the database with one click, without first downloading and reimporting the change notes as was done in the older versions.

It is built for parishes with a slow or occasional connection: uploads and downloads run in real chunks with a visible progress bar, a failed chunk is retried instead of losing the whole transfer, and a large master file can be sent in the background so the computer stays usable while it goes up. Sign-in is remembered per datafile, and the start screen quietly shows whether the current datafile is registered and connected to its workspace.

Parish Transport Booking

A parish hires a bus or a lorry that picks people up at several outstations. There are only so many seats, the fare comes in instalments over the weeks before the journey, and the people taking the bookings are catechists and outstation leaders with a phone, far from the parish office. This new register holds all of it in one place — the journeys, the pick-up areas with their own seat allocations and fares, the passengers, the waiting list and every payment.

There are two ways in, and they are the same register: the catechists book at parishrecordkeeper.com/transport.php using one shared username and password that the parish administrator creates — no email address and no account of their own — while the office works in the TRANSPORT window inside Parish Record Keeper. A seat taken on a phone is gone from the office screen at the next refresh, and the other way round. Free seats are counted on the server under a lock, so two people taking the last place at the same moment simply cannot happen, and what a passenger was told to pay is frozen at the moment of booking even if the parish changes the fare afterwards.

Sharing Parish Figures with People Who Have No Account

A parish treasurer, a section leader or a stewardship committee often needs to see the figures they are responsible for — but they have no email address, no account on this website, and giving them a full parish account would hand them the whole database. This new feature does what the transport booking page does for catechists: the parish administrator creates one shared username and password, hands it out, and that is all the person needs.

What such a login may open is decided when it is created:

• The whole parish, or one area only. A treasurer can be given everything; a section leader can be tied to their own station, prayer centre or section, and then sees only the people of that area — nobody else appears in their lists at all.
• Which reports. The contributions search (who has given what, with a spreadsheet download), the account ledger with its running balance, and the area sheet that totals the accounts per area — the same views the parish office uses on its own computer.
• Read-only, or allowed to suggest corrections. A login can be left as read-only, or given the right to send corrections when a figure looks wrong or a contribution is missing.

A correction never changes the parish records by itself. It travels to the parish office as a note, exactly like a note from the offline phone app, and the administrator goes through the notes one at a time and decides which to accept. Nothing is written until they do.

Because the password is shared, everyone using it is asked for their own name once, and every sign-in, every report opened and every correction sent is written to an access log the administrator can read. A login can be switched off at any moment, which locks out everybody using it immediately — including phones that are signed in at that second.

It works on a cheap phone and, once the copy has been downloaded, the ledger and area sheet keep working out where there is no network.