We've made managing your library books a little easier and safer for your librarians. We added a Settings link to the Library page menu and moved the Delete Library option to the settings page, where it is less likely to be triggered by accident.

We've made a small update to the library section today. Previously you could only export your library to CSV. We've now added the ability to export to Excel as well.

Today's update is for our friends in New Zealand. We just added first-class support for donation receipts that follow the Charities Services' requirements.

From the giving settings page you can now add an IRD number in addition to your Charities Services registration number. You can also add a church logo to include in the letterhead at the top of the donation receipts.

In addition we have updated the tax fiscal year for New Zealand churches to be from April 1st to March 31st.

Today we made it a little easier to search for past sermons. On the sermons page you'll now see a new search input, which lets you search for sermons by the title, description, author, texts, and series.

You can even search for a specific Bible chapter by wrapping the search query in quotes. For example, find sermons on Matthew 8 using "Matthew 8".

We've made adding library books a little easier. Now whenever you create, import, or update an item in the library section, we will automatically try and load a cover image for it from the openlibrary.org database.

Note, for this to work you must have an ISBN number set for the book.

We've updated the member "Address book" print format to include the following new option:

What would you like to include?

• Addresses
• Phone numbers
• Email addresses
• Maiden names
• Membership markers

This gives you a little more control over what is included in the generated address book, similar to the existing "Sheets" option.

We've just released an update to schedules in Church Social that gives churches more control over who is able to see a particular schedule. When creating or editing a schedule, you'll now find a new "Who can see this schedule?" setting, which includes the following three options:

Everyone

With this option everyone can see the schedule and the entries within it. This is exactly how schedules have always worked in Church Social, and is what we recommend by default unless there is a specific reason to keep the schedule hidden.

Only those on the schedule

With this option only those who are included on the schedule are able to see it in Church Social. This option is useful for situations where it doesn't make sense for everyone in the congregation to see that particular schedule. For example, a schedule that organizes meals for a struggling family, or a schedule that arranges visits to elderly or widowed members.

Only those on the schedule, and they can only see their own entries

This option takes the previous option one step further by hiding all schedule entries that aren't your own. This option provides the most privacy, and is useful for schedules where it doesn't make sense for anyone else to see what you're schedule for. For example, a schedule that organizes home visits by elders or deacons.

We just fixed a small issue where the contributions were not sorted correctly in the contribution summary of emailed tax receipts.

A super small change for our US-based churches — we've updated the giving section to say "check" instead of "cheque".

Librarians can now add library barcodes to your church library books. Many libraries use their own barcode system to track books, CDs, DVDs and other library resources. This means that in Church Social you can now keep track of items that don't already have a product barcode (ISBN or EAN) and situations where you have more than one copy of a library resource.

Treasurers can now export the list of contribution receipts to CSV and Excel. You can find this option on the contribution receipts page in the three-dot dropdown menu in the top right of the page, and then selecting "Export (CSV)" or "Export (Excel)".

Treasurers can now filter contribution receipts by the date they were issued. This is done from the "Filter" dropdown on the receipts page.

We've updated the member contributions statement in the giving section to now include the member's giving numbers. This is a small change to help members learn their giving numbers and encourage members to use them.

To date, in order to receive emails from Church Social, such as messages or schedule reminders, members (and guests) had to have login access enabled on their account.

We've just updated the app to remove this requirement. Now any user with an active membership (member or guest) and a valid email address can receive emails from Church Social, even if they cannot login.

Removing this login access requirement can be helpful in situations where you want a specific person, such as a regular guest at your church, to receive email communications from your Church Social account, but where it's unnecessary to give them full access to the app.

Note that those who receive emails but do not have login access are still able to unsubscribe from emails via the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of each Church Social email.

You can now search for past messages! On the message page there is a new search input where you can search for past messages by the sender's name, the message subject, body, and even comments.