The Contact record has several key data points to help you have a clear picture of a person's participation in your church.

Contact Status

Contact Status is the status of this Contact in relation to the church. These values can be managed manually or via automation (for CloudServices subscribers).

Manual

If you manage this value manually, the values:

• Are required and should be set manually based on the activity level of a Contact at your church.
• May or may not be a summary of database activity depending on how they are managed.
• Helps answer the question: Is this contact still here? Will they return?
• Include a small number of fixed values that a church should not change: Active, Inactive, Deceased, Temporarily Away, Homebound.

Important! Changes or additions to these values are ill-advised and will adversely impact all routines, integrations, and reports.

Automated

Automating the management of Contact Status is available and highly recommended. See Contact Status Management for details. If enabled, the values:

• Are automatically set and updated by a nightly routine according to your church's rules for inactivating or re-activating Contacts based on Participant Types. See Contact Status Management for details. 
• Can be manually set when needed (e.g. new record set to Active, elderly Contact set from Active to Home Bound).
• Are based on database activity.
• Helps answer the question: Is this contact still here?  Will they return?
• Include a small number of fixed values that a church should not change: Active, Inactive, Deceased, Temporarily Away, Homebound.

Household Congregation

While not directly tracked on the Contact record, the Contact's Congregation is a valuable data point and is tracked on the Household record.

Household Congregation is an indication of a Household's primary venue of worship. The values:

• Are optional, and if desired, should be manually set based on what Congregation the Household is most engaged at. See Managing Household Congregation.
• Are not at a summary of database activity.
• Impacts what this Household may appear if the Global Filter is applied for a User.
• Help answer the questions: Where does/did this Household worship?

• Include the list of Congregations (languages or locations of worship) at your Church. We recommend at least two "administrative" values for "Friends and Internet" and "Church-Wide".

For other key data points to be considered in conjunction with these, see:

• Donor Tracking
• Participant Tracking