Tips from Rich...

by Rich Mueller, sales rep in ND, SD, MN, IA, WI, IL, and MI

The subject for this ‘Tips’ is Staff Member records. This is a topic that departments ask me about a lot, especially volunteer and paid-on-call departments.

Staff members are entered into FH Staff Master records. There are only three required fields; Last Name, First Name and Staff ID.  The Staff ID is the unique value that identifies staff member records. Staff IDs can be up to 15 characters in length and contain any combination of letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores. All staff member detail records added to Staff Activity records and Training records are related back to the Staff Activity or Training record using the Staff ID, not the staff member’s name. FH uses the Staff ID to identify a specific staff member. This makes it possible to distinguish between staff members even if they have the same name!

Many departments use a simple numbering scheme for Staff ID, then reuse the Staff ID when a member retires or terminates. I recommend against reusing Staff IDs, but FH does support renumbering Staff IDs for staff member master records via the Form menu, Renumber Staff... option. You assign the retired staff member a new number, making the original number available to be reused. This is a department’s choice. When I do FH training, I recommend that the Staff ID should be like an employee number that remains with the person even after they retire or terminate.

How Can I Remove a Staff Member Who Retires or is Terminated?

The answer is why would you want to do that?  Remember, a staff member’s records for the year in which they retire are important to that year’s statistics.  Keep them around. I also feel that a member’s records should be kept for a number of years because of liability reasons.

How do I Eliminate Retired/Terminated Staff Members from Group Selects and Reports?

The Staff form Other... section of the staff member’s master record includes a check box in the upper left corner of the form labeled Hide this individual from staff group select and availability that, if checked, will ‘Hide’ that staff member’s name from the group select list as well as some of the queries and reports. Any query or report that lists staff members can be customized to use this check box value to either show a member or not.

I hope this information about Staff Member records clears up a number of issues.