Hi,
we use HelpCounter on a donated computer that sits in the office.

This is for volunteer management. It is attached to the district's email, so emails can go out from the system.

For example, this morning I (and the Volunteer
Coordinator) received an email stating that we have "A new volunteer interested in Field Trips" and the system logged her into that category and also that classroom. It also is set up to send us an email when someone logs a certain number of hours. For example, "Susie Sample reached 40 hours of volunteer time at your school." I then send a note to Susie thanking her for her time and dedication to our school.

The system records time by keeping track of when you sign in and out. (Click on your name and then click on your activity) You then sign out at the end of your shift, or field trip, or Halloween party, etc.

It emails our district's community officer the total number of hours each month-end for her state reporting. It emails me too and I report the hours and number of volunteers at our monthly PTC meetings.

Also, we can use it to email say, all the Book Fair volunteers about the set-up this Friday afternoon. We take the data from volunteer sheets given out in our Welcome Back packet on the first day of school. Parents can sign up for all the activities at once and the system keeps track of the volunteer, what classroom(s) they are attached to and activities plus phone and email. IT IS GREAT -- WORTH EVERY PENNY

www.helpcounter.net

I should add that the Futures Program keeps track of volunteers, what they want to do, how many hours they've volunteered and stuff like that (same thing for students), but it doesn't have any 'treasury' stuff in it. We use a version of Quicken that our bank gave us-it's the simplified version.

[ 12-08-2004, 10:39 PM: Message edited by: PTOPres03 ]

Wow, JHB, you sound like a real 'techie'. I can't imagine signing up for something like that! We use the Futures Program to keep track of our volunteers and students. It is easy to use and there aren't a lot of rules about whereit can be used or installed, which is important as JHB mentions. There's free support, although I don't think we've used it. We like it a lot. The website was recenty updated it so it has better information if you want to take a look. The address is: www.schoolvolunteer.org

Sure would make life easier! I love what you have set up JHB, I have a good friend with his own business and would love to "recieve" one of his computers that he replaces. He laughed when we last talked and felt bad he didn't even think about offering one of his laptops to us! Next time...

I would love to have a universal program for newsletters, accounting etc on one computer we can all have acess to.....but they say I'm a dreamer...I know.

By the way, this may be of interest to some PTO's that already use Microsoft products. Microsoft is coming out with a small business accounting package that will be available stand-alone or as part of Office 2003. The new version of Outlook will also have much stronger contact management.

Testers get a free copy of the software.

**************************

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Published: November 8, 2004

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www.microsoft.com/office/editions/prodin...accounting/beta.mspx

Sign in to the survey by using this Guest Account ID: smallbizsolutions.

[ 11-19-2004, 03:44 PM: Message edited by: JHB ]

We looked at some options a few years ago. But the often-discussed-here issues made it a better decision to use common end-user tools like Excel.

**expense
**who owns the software?
**where is software loaded?
**who maintains the software?
**legal number of copies?
**will school IT department allow it?
**continuity and training with officer changes

We have a designated area on the schools server to centrally store our data. But volunteers often share copies of the information move it back and forth between their home computers and our official files. That's just too difficult with proprietary software for niche areas.

Other gotcha's can include ADA compliance. Anything owned by or touched by the school really needs to be 100% compliant. Some of these custom packages and home-brew solutions aren't.

Our treasurer does often use Quickbooks or Quicken. But that's become a pretty commonly available tool and the info can be pushed into Excel easily enough.

It might be worth considering specialty software if it's affordable, intuitive for new users, has very easy import/export features that interface with other tools, and if the PTO has a structure where this type of tool/knowledge can be successfully transferred from one year to the next.

One idea that might be useful for a wider audience would be well-developed templates usable in Excel, Word, etc.