Using PlanMaker

PlanMaker takes information from you and creates your Plans easily and accurately. You can enter information for up to 200 Preachers and compile a Plan for up to 100 Churches for up to 30 dates. To do this, you need to enter:

• The names and addresses of all the Preachers who are to go on to the Plan
• The status of the Preachers - Stipendiary, Ordained or Lay etc.
• The Churches where the Services are to be held, and the times of the Services
• The dates on which Services are to take place
• Any options you wish to apply for the Preachers
• The exact number of times each Ordained Minister is to go to each Church (this may be zero)
• Any preferences or associations relating to Lay Preachers or visiting Ordained Ministers
• When Preachers are available to conduct Services
• Whether Services are Sacraments, Family, Parade or Baptism Services, or have any other feature

Armed with this information, PlanMaker can produce a Plan without further intervention from you. Sacraments, and Family, Parade and Baptism Services will in general be conducted by Ordained Ministers; PlanMaker will not allocate unauthorized Preachers to conduct Sacraments, and will not allocate the same Lay Preacher to consecutive Services in the same Church.

If you prefer to allocate the Ordained Ministers - or any other Preacher - yourself, you are able to do this and PlanMaker will fill in the rest. You can also prevent Preachers from being allocated to specific Churches, if that is your wish.

You do not need to worry about losing information while PlanMaker is running - it automatically saves the information it needs as you provide it.

It is envisaged that the Plan and other items created by PlanMaker will be used to compile another document and will not generally be used directly from the program. Access to the finished Plan and other items is via the Windows Clipboard, so they can be pasted into whichever application you use to produce your final document. You may use any word processor or desktop publishing application that supports pasting of Rich Text formatted data or any spreadsheet that supports pasting of "text and tabs" data. If you are unsure whether your preferred application supports these features, contact the vendor.

When you want to make a new Plan, all the information about Preachers and Churches is retained and is available for use in the new Plan, so you don't have to enter it all again.