Church Data: Import, Export, Printed Directory & Deletion

Your church’s records belong to your church. The Church data page (Church data) and the Printed directory page (Printed directory) give church leaders one calm place to:

• Import people and households from a CSV spreadsheet or a Breeze people export, with a full preview before anything is written.
• Export your records at any time as a spreadsheet (CSV) or a complete structured archive (JSON).
• Print or save a congregation directory booklet formatted by household in two clean, alphabetized columns.
• Permanently delete a church (Owners only) if your church ever closes or moves off Parsonage.

Who can access Church data & the Printed directory

Owner

Full access to import people from CSV/Breeze, export the people CSV and full church JSON archive, open and print the congregation directory, and permanently delete the church.

Admin

Can import people from CSV/Breeze, export the people CSV and full church JSON archive (including their own private notes, but never another user’s private notes), and print the congregation directory. Cannot delete the church.

Member

Cannot import or export church data, open the printable directory page, or delete the church.

Whether you are moving from Breeze ChMS, exporting from a church spreadsheet, or starting with our template, the importer on Church data lets you bring in up to 2,000 rows (and up to 5 MB) per CSV file. Larger directories can be split into multiple files and imported one after another.

1. 1

   Download the template or export your CSV from Breeze

   Click Download the template on the Import people card if you want a clean starting spreadsheet (parsonage-people-template.csv), or export your people list as a .csv file directly from Breeze or Excel/Google Sheets.

2. 2

   Choose your .csv file and match columns

   Click Choose a .csv file. Parsonage automatically recognizes both our template headers and common Breeze column names—such as First Name, Last Name, Nickname (Preferred name), Birthdate, Email, Mobile, Home, Street Address, Address Line 2, City, State, Zip, Status, Baptism Date, Family / Household, and Family Role / Household Role. You can adjust any dropdown under Match columns to directory fields or set a column to Don’t import. First name and Last name are required.

3. 3

   Choose how matches and families are handled

   Check or uncheck the two import options under When a row matches someone (both are enabled by default): filling in blank details on existing records and connecting family relationships from household roles.

4. 4

   Click “Check the file” to review before anything is saved

   Clicking Check the file runs a dry-run preview without changing your database. You’ll see counts for New, Fills in details, Already here, Skipped, and Not imported, along with the number of new households, household memberships, partner links, and parent/child connections. Check Show only rows with notes to focus on rows with warnings or skipped fields.

5. 5

   Click “Import N new people” (or “Apply changes”)

   Nothing is written until you click the final import button. The entire file is imported together in a single transaction, or nothing is changed if something goes wrong.

Duplicate matching & “Fill in details” (safe repeat imports)

If a row in your CSV has the same name as someone already in your directory—and does not have a conflicting birth date or email address—Parsonage matches that existing person instead of creating a duplicate record:

• When Fill in details that are blank in Parsonage is checked, any fields that are currently blank on the person’s profile are filled in from the spreadsheet, and the row is marked Fills in details.
• Nothing already recorded in Parsonage is ever overwritten. Re-importing the same CSV file a second time is completely safe—already-complete records simply show up as Already here.

Households & automatic family relationships

Rows that share the same value in the Household / family column (such as a family name or a Breeze Family ID) are grouped into a single Household. Values in Household role like Child, Son, Daughter, Dependent, or Minor assign the Child household role; all other values (such as Head of Household, Spouse, or Adult) become Adult.

When Connect families from household roles is checked, Parsonage also creates explicit relationship links inside each household:

• A Head of Household and Spouse (or Husband / Wife) are linked as Married partners.
• Everyone with a Child role in that household is linked to the head of household and spouse as their children (with parent type Unspecified).

How invalid optional fields and plan limits are handled

• Unrecognized optional values are left blank with a note: If a row has an unreadable birth date, baptism date, email address, or membership status word, the person is still imported and that single field is left blank with an explanatory note in the preview table so staff can clean it up later.
• Plan people limits apply to net new people: Before importing, Parsonage checks whether the number of New people in the file would put your church over your current billing plan’s people limit. Updating existing people (Fills in details) never counts against your limit.

On Church data, the Export card offers two downloads at any time:

• People spreadsheet (CSV): Downloads a spreadsheet of everyone in your directory using the exact same 21 columns as the Parsonage import template (including names, birth and baptism dates, contact details, address, status, household name and role, deceased status/date, and Do not email / Do not text / Do not mail flags). Because the columns match the template, a exported CSV can be re-imported cleanly.
• Everything (JSON): Downloads a complete, machine-readable JSON archive of your church’s records for backup or migration.

What “Everything (JSON)” includes vs. leaves out

The full JSON export includes:

• People, family and partner connections, households, and groups
• Events, tasks, and bulletins
• Notes that Owners and Admins can see, plus your own Private (just me) notes (with attachment filenames and metadata)
• Visitor cards, prayer requests, email lists, opt-outs, and sent email history

For privacy and security, the JSON export intentionally leaves out:

• Other staff members’ private notes and earlier revision versions of notes
• Attached binary files (the export lists each attachment’s filename; download the files themselves directly from each note)
• Team logins and billing details

Click Open the printable directory on Church data (or visit /app/directory) to prepare a booklet-style directory for your congregation.

• Choose which membership statuses to include: Use the Include checkboxes at the top of the page to toggle Member, Regular attender, Visitor, Inactive, and No status recorded. By default, Member, Regular attender, and No status recorded are checked.
• Deceased records are excluded automatically: Anyone marked as Deceased on their directory profile is never shown in the printed directory.
• Formatted by household in two alphabetized columns: People who belong to a household are grouped into a single entry with adults listed first (for example, Hale, Walter & Ruth) followed by a Children: line, the shared household street address and home phone number, and each adult’s individual mobile phone and email address. People who are not in a household appear in the same alphabetical sequence under Last name, First name.
• Print or save as PDF: Click Print or save as PDF to open your browser’s print dialog. The filter card and navigation automatically hide when printing (@page { size: letter portrait; margin: 0.6in; }), leaving only the church header, today’s date, the two-column directory, and a footer reminding readers that the booklet is for congregation use only.

At the bottom of Church data, church Owners have access to the Delete this church card (Admins and Members do not see this section).

When an Owner clicks Delete church…, types the church’s exact name to confirm, and clicks Delete permanently:

• If the church has a paid Stripe subscription, Parsonage cancels it immediately first (if Stripe cannot cancel the subscription right then, deletion stops safely so your church is never billed after being deleted).
• All stored note attachment files for the church are permanently deleted from storage.
• The church and all of its records—people, households, family links, groups, pastoral notes, tasks, events, bulletins, prayer requests, visitor cards, email lists, and sent email history—are permanently removed from the database.
• Team members lose access to the deleted church, while their personal Parsonage login accounts remain intact so they can still sign in to any other churches they belong to.