New Hampshire Cemetery Association
General-Purpose Software for Cemetery Management
Links:
This page is for people who have already read the presentation material and will implement a set of cemetery management tools themselves or with the help of technical assistance. If you are buying a cemetery-oriented, complete package from a software vendor, this page is not really for you. If your support will be provided by a professional Information Technology organization, you and your IT people should read the presentation material and this page. This page is not yet finished.
Topics:
- Computerization
- Integration or the lack thereof
- Budgets
- Financial (day-to-day)
- Town reports and the audit package
- Lot ownership
- Burial and stone records
- Miscellaneous
Computerization
With active cemeteries dating back to the 1700's, most, if not all, of our records are manual and only recently typed. Scanning the typed records and then converting them to editable text will be time consuming and error prone but better than just retyping. The author, who was a small part of the team that scanned and/or manually entered all available records for Mont Vernon, does not know of an easy way to surmount this ugly task. Once the data is in, however, the computer can help detect errors and inconsistencies, mostly by sorting the spreadsheets in almost every way. Some of the problems will be in the original records.
Maps are relatively easy (assuming you are using Deneba Software's Canvas® where transparent layers are the paradigm for mixing bitmaps and vector objects.) Divide the map into workable sections that will later make sense when printed on one page. Scan these sections into a layer named scan; set the color over-ride to a color of choice. [This will later make it easy to distinguish between that layer and another.] The next steps are for roads; other features are handled similarly. Create a work layer and copy the scan layer onto it. Erase all but the roads. Auto-trace them, and while the tracing vector is still selected, move it to a layer named roads. Hide the work layer, and tweak the roads. Alternatively, if your hand is steady and the concept of auto-tracing is not, then hand trace the roads. Layers for graves, trees, text, etc. are easier.
Integration
Integration means a way to keep the various parts of your data coherent. For example, when you sell a lot and immediately bury someone in it, you better use the same lot number in both the burial and the ownership files; an error in typing can cause grief at a later date.
This is the major difference between do-it-yourself and a well done commercial package. A professional software design can shield the users from the details of file updates and can avoid most inconsistencies. Strong technical assistance can accomplish the same with a scripting "front end", but such people are hard to find and harder still to be persuaded to do it pronto. In both the commercial package path and the local wizard path, long term support should be a real concern. On the other hand, the approach used by Mont Vernon and described here depends on daily meticulous care by the person(s) updating the files to properly update all in a coherent manner. Even very meticulous people can make errors, so some data auditing is recommended; computerization does not, in itself, avoid mistakes. Written procedures are recommended, and examples will eventually be supplied here. [Such detailed procedures are the only way to avoid dependency on the "only person who knows how to do that."]
Budgets
Mont Vernon uses a spreadsheet as a tool to develope and discuss the cemetery budget. For an example, download an extraction of their file. [You must be able to open a MicroSoft Excel 95 spreadsheet to see this file.] This extraction, when printed, has explanations and guides on the first page, their 2002 budget on the second, and actual numbers for 2001, 2000, and 1999 following. [The original file goes back 29 years.]
The leftmost columns contain the categories and sub-categories by which they choose to track expenses. A single column has the total expense for those categories. [You should consider inserting columns with a breakdown of those expenses, perhaps by project.] Then there are columns with a breakdown of inflows followed by a net expense column.
Below this matrix there are a few details for burials and lot sales. Formulas in some cells convert these few numbers into entries for the appropriate cells in the matrix.
This file has two relationships to their Quicken data: 1) The Budget & History categories are reflected in Quicken and 2) Quicken provides the actuals for the history pages.
The author admits that he had not, until writing this, considered using Quicken's Budgeting and Tracking capability. An exercise for the reader.
Financial
This needs much more editing.
Intuit's Quicken [or Quickbooks] product, for all of its shortcomings, is essentially the "only game in town" for easy, safe financial record keeping on a pc or Macintosh for a New Hampshire town cemetery that keeps its own books. [The State Attorney General, Division of Charitable Trusts, has ruled that the law permits a municipal cemetery to maintain its own checking account, provided: 1) Its budget is approved by the voters, 2) There is public visibility of its transactions, and 3) Disbursements are supported by vouchers.] The system used by Town Hall may not provide complete visibility of cemetery finances with frequent inflows from various trust funds and customers. However, there may be local reasons to use the Town Hall system. If so, consider using Quicken reports to generate requests to Town Hall [an untried idea.]
As an example, download an extraction of Mont Vernon's Quicken file. You must have Quicken version 7 or later to see this file. This extraction provides examples of categories and "memorized transactions." A companion screenshot lists the "memorized reports."
Town Reports and the audit package
At the end of the year the appropriate Quicken "memorized reports" can provide the data required for the financial part of the Cemetery page of the Town Report. Inserting that data is a manual process.
The package for the auditors is mostly built during the year. For an example, see Mont Vernon's Handbook and their cover sheet for the package. At year end a copy of the checking account register is printed from Quicken not as a "memorized report" but as a File Menu command, PRINT REGISTER.
All the rest of this stuff is, at the moment, under construction.
Burial and stone records
Lot ownership
Miscellaneous
For more information, contact Mary
Shaw at Forest Glade Cemetery, 1 Government Way, Somersworth, NH, 03878-3192,
692-4266, 
About these pages
These web pages are intended to help the cemetery managers of New Hampshire
do their job better.
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with questions or comments.
Last changed 2002
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