Send to Auditor Tips
Back in 1968, three little numbers were chosen to be used when anyone, anywhere in the US needed help. Those numbers were 911.
Jewel has three little words for our treasurers to use when they need help. Those three words are:
Send to Auditor
If you need a donor name fixed, or if you are having trouble with your bank reconciliation, or a check was written in Jewel incorrectly, you can contact your tech support to let them know what the problem is, then send them your database and they can fix it for you.
Then you can receive your database back, and like magic, your problem is solved!
Well, not quite magic. Quite a bit is going on behind the scenes. This is what is happening.
You click on “File / File Transfer / Send to Auditor.” Jewel then sends an exact copy of your database to the Jewel server where it waits for tech support to go pick it up. The Jewel server is like a database waiting room, and your database will sit there until they go bring it in to their computer, where they can work on it.
From the Jewel server, they download an exact copy of your church’s database to their computer. Including your error.
They go to work, and they fix the error. The mistake is now gone, and their copy of your church’s database is clean.
Then from their computer, tech support sends the cleaned-up database back to the Jewel server database waiting room and tells you to go receive it by clicking on “File / File Transfer / Receive from Auditor.”
When you click on “Receive from Auditor,” Jewel on your computer connects with the database waiting room and looks for a database with your church’s name on it. Jewel finds it, brings it back to your computer and “overwrites” the database that had the error on it with the one that tech support fixed. “Overwrites” means that your database with the error is gone. Replaced.
So now you also have a clean database and are very happy with it!
But sometimes things can go wrong. Like this.
Let’s say that you have sent tech support the copy of your church database with an error and they are busily fixing the error. In the meantime, while you are waiting, you think to yourself, “I think I will write a check!” So you do. And it is taking tech support a while so you decide to enter an offering as well.
So while tech support is removing the error on thier copy of your church database, you have also changed your copy of your church database. The two copies are no longer alike at all. Yours still has the error, but also it has a check and a new offering. Tech support's copy of your church database has no error, no check and no offering.
Now we have a problem. If tech support sends their brand-spanking new database back to you, and you click on “Receive from Auditor,” what will happen?
The database from tech support will write over the database on your computer – it will replace it. The error will be gone, but so will the check and the offering. Gone. Poof! And you will only have what they sent to you. This can be puzzling for a treasurer, unless you know how it works and what happened.
It is important, that if you send to auditor to have something fixed, that you not enter anything new in Jewel until you hear back from them. Because you will lose it.
Jewel 911 Rules:
- When you “Send to Auditor,” you are creating and sending your support person a copy of your database. You still have your copy on your computer.
- If you are sending a copy so that your person can fix something, don’t change anything on your copy while they are fixing it, because it will just be erased when you receive their copy.
- No matter what changes your person makes on their copy, if you don’t Receive from Auditor when they tell you to, the error you asked them to fix will not be fixed on your copy.
- Just because you “Send to Auditor” doesn’t mean you have to receive back before you can keep going. Sometimes your tech support will ask you to send it to them just so they can look at it. But if they don’t make changes to your database, there is no need for you to receive back, because their copy is still the same as yours.
- Always Receive from Auditor if they tell you to, and don’t Receive from Auditor if they don’t tell you to. The best idea, if you are not sure, is to ask them if you should receive or not.
See, not magic. But so handy, once you understand how it works and can use it correctly.