Settings

Settings is everything you configure once and then forget about: who your organization is, who can sign in, how letters are worded, what your transaction categories are, what happens automatically overnight.

Open it with the gear icon in the top bar. On a phone it is under the "more" menu.

Settings with the Organization panel open: a rail down the left listing Organization, Users and Access, Contacts, Financials, Communications, Automation, Account balance and cards, Members Portal and Integrations, each with a colored dot, and on the right the Locale and calendar settings with date format, currency symbol and CSV delimiter.

The rail on the left is the map of Settings. The dot next to each group tells you whether anything there still needs attention.

The Nine Groups

Group	What lives there
Organization	Date format, currency, location and time zone, phone format, yahrtzeit leap-year rule.
Users & Access	Your staff logins and what each of them is allowed to do.
Contacts	How families are addressed on letters and labels; titles and relationship types.
Financials	Departments, bank accounts, gateways, payment methods, categories, classes, solicitors, mailings, gifts, receipt and invoice numbering.
Communications	Letters, PDF templates, email delivery, outbox, text messaging.
Automation	What CMS does on its own: card charges, birthday and yahrtzeit emails, the CMS Today email.
Account balance & cards	Your prepaid balance for add-on services, and the cards that top it up.
Members Portal	The portal your families sign in to. Only when you have that module.
Integrations	Google Contacts, Google Maps, QuickBooks, MailChimp, iChessed, the AI Connector.

The Colored Dots

Every group carries a dot, and the hub page repeats it on a card with a line or two about what is set up:

Green — nothing needs you.
Yellow — set up, but unfinished. The card tells you what is missing.
Red — something needs action before that part works properly.

The first five groups check themselves each time the hub opens, so the dots may change a second after the page appears.

Getting Around

Financials, Communications and Integrations have sub-areas; they open on the first one and the rest appear in the rail underneath. Clicking any group in the rail takes you straight there — you never need to go back to the hub.

On a tablet or phone the rail folds into a single bar at the top showing where you are. Tap it for the list. CMS also tucks the main sidebar away while you are in Settings on a medium screen, to leave room; it comes back when you leave.

Two things that feel like Settings but aren't: Make a Payment, for paying your CMS subscription, and Premium. Both are in the user menu under your name.

Organization: the Settings Everything Else Depends On

Worth getting right on day one, because the rest of CMS follows them:

Setting	Why it matters
Date format	How every date in CMS is written and read.
Currency symbol	Applies to every amount in the app.
CSV delimiter	Used by every export. Comma, semicolon or pipe — whichever your spreadsheet expects.
Yahrtzeit leap-year default	How a yahrtzeit in Adar is observed in a Hebrew leap year: Adar 1 only (most common), both, or Adar 2 only.
Location	Search for your address and CMS fills in the city, ZIP, coordinates and time zone. The coordinates drive candle-lighting and Shabbos times; the time zone decides when "today" starts for everything else.

Article ID: 4862, Created: Yesterday at 7:52 PM, Modified: Yesterday at 7:52 PM

The Nine Groups

The Colored Dots

Getting Around

Organization: the Settings Everything Else Depends On

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