Importing Data

Hourglass provides import functionality from three systems: KHS, TSWIN, and The Secretary. The step-by-step procedures and necessary utilities are available from Congregation, Import in Hourglass. Please read the About Importing section carefully; it contains some caveats regarding the process. Additionally, note that the focus of importing is on publisher records and field service reports. Information such as emergency contacts and other data that may be stored in these other systems is not imported.

When you import, the system does not know exactly what was submitted to the Branch in a given month. Thus, when you view monthly summaries for imported months, you will see a note that indicates that the month was marked as submitted when your congregation was imported. If you were to delete a publisher from your congregation, this could affect those monthly summaries, because their totals were not submitted through Hourglass.

The most important thing you can do to have a successful import is to ensure that names match. If the first, middle, or last name (or suffix) differs at all, Hourglass will assume that this is a different individual and create a new publisher record for them. This can be especially problematic if the record of a Congregation administrator, such as yourself, is duplicated. The result of this is that one publisher record has all the historical reports, while the other has the Congregation Admin role. If this happens to you, it can be resolved by taking the following steps, with the end goal of moving the Congregation Admin role to the publisher record with the reports:

  1. Alter the last name of the publisher record that currently has the Congregation Admin role, but has no reports. Make it obvious that this is the one to be deleted, to avoid confusion. For example, if the last name is “Smith”, change it to “Smith-DELETE” or similar.
  2. Go to the Congregation, Profile & Permissions page and add the newly imported user as a Congregation Admin. This is the one without the changed name.
  3. Add at least one other Elder as a Congregation Admin. By doing this, if you are unavailable or lose access, someone will be able to access your congregation in Hourglass.
  4. Now you need to log in with the new, imported publisher record. You can do one of two things:
    • Send an invite to one of the other Elders you made a congregation admin. Have them accept it with a web browser, delete the old record (with the changed name), and send an invite to the new, imported record.
    • Alternately, you can send an invite to the new, imported record, as long as it’s to a different email address. Accept it, log in, and then you can delete the record with the changed name.

If you have trouble with the above, or any other issues with importing, please contact support@hourglass-app.com.