Choosing Features

ParishCRM ships many modules. A small church that only wants a member directory doesn’t need events, accounting or Sunday School cluttering the sidebar. Settings → Features (/settings/features, ADMIN role only) lets you tick the features your church uses and come back later to switch more on.

Using it

Sign in as an ADMIN and open Settings → Features from the sidebar (or the Choose features → link at the top of App Settings). Flip the switches you want and press Save. The change applies to every user straight away.

Accounting features sit indented under Accounting. While Accounting is off they are greyed out with “Needs Accounting”, and Subscription dues also needs Membership forms. Their own on/off choice is remembered, so switching the parent back on restores them.

People, families, users, settings, the audit log, CSV import and help are core and can’t be switched off.

What “off” means

A switched-off feature is hidden and blocked:

• its sidebar links, dashboard tiles and settings sections disappear;
• its pages, print pages and export links return “not found”;
• its actions refuse with “This feature is turned off. An admin can enable it in Settings → Features.” Public forms (membership, family update, event checkout) instead show a plain “no longer available” or “not found” message;
• its scheduled jobs (event reminders, celebration emails, the clearance digest) skip. A skipped run doesn’t count; turning the feature back on during that job’s open window still runs it for the period. The clearance digest’s window is the first seven days of the Sydney month.

Your data is never deleted. Switching a feature back on restores everything exactly as it was.

Event organisers aren’t left stuck when Events is off: their home page sends them to their Sunday School classes, or shows a short notice if Sunday School is off too.

Card payments already in progress still settle when Events is off: the Stripe webhook and the checkout sweep keep running, so a family that was mid-checkout still gets their registration.

Features with public links

Turning these off shows a warning first, because links you have already shared stop working:

Feature	What stops working
Events	Public event pages (/e/…) and registration links
Membership forms	The public membership application form
Family self-updates	Update links already emailed to families

The list

Feature	Covers
Birthdays & anniversaries	Celebration lists, dashboard tiles and greeting emails
Child-safety clearances	Working With Children checks and expiry digests
Family self-updates	Families update their own details via a private link
Membership forms	Public membership application form and review inbox
Welcome letters	Welcome letters for new families
Sunday School	Classes, teachers and attendance
Events	Events, registrations, check-in and online payments
Accounting	Transactions, accounts, funds and financial reports
↳ Bank reconciliation	Matching transactions to bank statements
↳ Bank import	Importing bank statement PDFs/CSVs
↳ Petty cash	Petty cash sessions and counts
↳ Subscription dues	Member subscription dues (also needs Membership forms)
↳ Giving receipts	Emailed giving receipts and the send log
↳ DGR receipts	Tax-deductible (DGR) donation receipts
↳ Invoices	Invoices and customers
↳ Budget	Annual budget and the budget-vs-actual report

Accounting-wide reports (P&L, balance sheet, trial balance, cash flow, general ledger, giving summary, funds) stay available whenever Accounting is on.

How it works

The choices are stored as one AppSetting row (features) holding only the values that differ from the defaults. A new install, or one upgraded from an older version, has no row, so everything is on. Every save is recorded in the audit log as UPDATE_FEATURES with the before and after values. Saving is disabled in the public demo.