People without an account

Not everyone in your church will use the app — someone who has given faithfully by check for years, a visitor who dropped cash in the plate, a family you want on the books. Psalmly lets you keep them on your roster: a record the church owns, so their giving still counts and their year-end statement is still complete, even though they never sign in.

Roster people are admin-only. They never appear in the member directory and they can't log in. With an email address on file, they get your church's announcements and weekly bulletin by email (see Church email below). You'll find them in the Directory, in a "Roster · no account" section below your members.

Adding someone to the roster

Open the Directory, choose Add people, and pick Add to roster. Only a name is required; everything else is optional and there to help you:

• Name — required.
• Email and phone — optional. With an email, they'll get your announcements and weekly bulletin. It also lets Psalmly spot them later if they join your church with that same address (see When they join the app below).
• Household — a free-text label to group a family together ("The Nguyens").
• Notes — private to your admins; never shown to anyone else.

Bringing over a whole list? On the invite screen, Import a file takes a CSV or spreadsheet and sorts each row into people to invite (they have an email) and people to add to the roster (name only). The Paste a list box is for email addresses only. See Managing your church directory.

Because the person has no login to manage their own details, the church keeps them — open anyone on the roster and edit their fields right in their profile; changes save as you go.

Attributing gifts to them

This is the point of the roster. When you record a cash or check gift (see Recording cash and check gifts), start typing a name in the giver field and pick the roster person — they show a "No account" tag. Their gift is filed under their name, right alongside everyone else's. Someone new? Choose Add "…" to the roster right from the giver field.

You can also start from the person: choose See their giving in their ⋯ menu, then Record a gift on their giving page. It opens Record offering with them already picked as the giver. (This used to be Attribute a gift in the roster's menu.)

Recording gifts is part of the church's books, which come with the Community and Growth plans. On the free plan you can still keep people on the roster, see their giving, and download their statements.

Gifts that were recorded under a typed name, or given on your website, can be put on a roster person later, from Giving by person — on every plan.

Their giving and statement

A roster person's giving lives on their giving page, under Giving. The Directory keeps who they are — name, contact details, household, notes — and Giving keeps what they gave. To go from one to the other:

• In the Directory, open their profile and choose Giving · See their giving, or choose See their giving in their ⋯ menu.
• On their giving page, Contact details are in the Directory brings you back to their profile.

Their giving page shows what they gave for This year to date or any other dates you pick (Last year is the one to choose in January), their gifts newest first, and Download statement for a proper contribution statement in their name — for those dates, or for any other year they gave. Hand it to them like any other giver's. (Cash or check gifts recorded as anonymous are included on their own statement, just as they are for members.) See Giving by person for everything on the page.

Giving by person shows everyone at once, with a statement for all of them in one PDF.

Giving is limited to admins with finance access, the same as the rest of the giving ledger — see Managing your church directory for who that is. An admin without it sees no giving in the Directory at all.

They count toward your plan

Your plan counts everyone in your Directory: the people who have joined in the app and the people on your roster. So everyone on the roster counts, with an email address or without (see Managing your plan and billing). Archiving someone takes them off the count.

Church email

Someone on the roster with an email address gets your announcements to the whole church and your weekly bulletin by email, the same as your members. Announcements to one group still go only to that group's members. Every email has an unsubscribe link, and their profile shows whether they still get both. Only they can sign up again, from the link in any of your emails. Someone with no email on file isn't emailed at all.

If an email to them bounces or is marked as spam, Psalmly stops sending to that address and their profile says so, with the date: "Your email to … bounced on Oct 12, so we've stopped sending to it," or "… marked one of your emails as spam." For a bounce, check the address with them and change it in their profile; the next email goes to the new one. Someone who marked your email as spam is unsubscribed, and only they can sign up again. They still count toward your plan either way.

Psalmly also checks an address before its first church email. One that can't get email at all (a typo in the domain, or a domain with no mail server) is never sent to. The import flags it, Add to roster says "That address can't get email," and their profile says "We haven't emailed Ruth at …. That address can't get email." until the address is changed. Changing it checks the new one.

Inviting them to the app

If someone on the roster has an email address and would like to use Psalmly, open their profile and choose Send an invitation: it emails them a link to make an account and join your church. Their profile then says when it went, and the invitation waits in Pending invitations on the Directory until they join. Someone without an email on file, or who has already joined with it, isn't offered one. While their address has bounced or can't get email, Send an invitation is locked, and their profile says to change the address first.

When they join the app

If a roster person later joins your church with their own Psalmly account, using the same email, their profile shows a "This may be …" suggestion. Choose Link them and Psalmly moves their whole gift history onto their real account — so it lands on their own statements from then on — and archives the roster entry, keeping a link back for your records. Linking can't be undone, so Psalmly asks you to confirm. Like the rest of a roster person's giving, this is limited to admins with finance access — it moves money records, so only they see the suggestion.

Two entries for the same person

Sometimes the same person ends up on your list twice — "Rick Alvarez" and "Richard Alvarez," or a roster entry for someone who has since joined the app with a different email. Open the entry you want to retire and, under Same person as someone else on your list?, choose Merge into…. Pick the entry to keep — another roster person or a member — and confirm. The merged entry's recorded gifts, website gifts and pledges move to the one you picked, and the merged entry is archived. If both have a pledge for the same year, Psalmly shows both amounts and asks which to keep. Merging is limited to admins with finance access.

Archiving

When someone should come off the active roster, open their profile and Archive them. Archiving is gentle: their recorded gifts stay on the books (so past statements and totals are unaffected), they just leave the active list. There's no hard delete — that's deliberate, so gift history is never lost.

To see archived people, choose Show archived in the roster's header. Choose See their giving in an archived person's ⋯ menu to download their statement — useful for someone who passed away mid-year — or Restore to put them back on the active roster. Archived people who gave in the dates you're looking at also appear in Giving by person, tagged Archived.