Understanding the “Kind” Setting for Categories and Parent Categories
Overview
When creating a category or parent category in Church Metrics, you’ll be asked to select a Kind. This setting determines how the data for that category is displayed and, in some cases, how it can be used in advanced reporting.
Available Kinds:
Attendance – Displays numbers as plain integers.
Contributions – Formats numbers with currency symbols in input fields and reports (e.g.,
$500).Salvations – Displays numbers as plain integers.
Other – Displays numbers as plain integers for miscellaneous data.
Practical Impact for Most Users
For most churches, the difference between Attendance, Salvations, and Other is purely visual—they are all stored as numeric data and behave the same way in standard reports. The Contributions kind is the only one that changes formatting, adding dollar signs and currency-style formatting.
Advanced Reporting Use
If your team is using the Advanced Report Editor and Liquid scripting for custom reports, the Kind setting can be used to filter or organize data in more sophisticated ways. Developers can reference the Kind when writing custom report code to ensure categories are grouped or displayed appropriately.
Recommendation:
Use Contributions for any financial categories so they format properly in reports.
Use Attendance for headcount metrics.
Use Salvations or Other for all other non-financial numeric data.