Practice sandbox: what's safe to try

Until the church moves onto the new system, the back office runs as a practice sandbox. It looks and behaves like the real thing, but it holds only made-up people, and nothing you do in it can reach a real person, card, bank account or ledger.

When to use this

Read this before you start exploring, and share it with anyone you invite to test. It answers the question everyone asks first: "Can I break anything?" (You can't.)

The one rule

Don't enter real data until launch. Use invented names, phone numbers, email addresses and amounts. No real members, children, gifts, medical details or prayer requests, even "just to see how it looks".

The striped banner at the top of every page is there to remind you. It never goes away, because the sandbox and the real system will look almost the same.

What's safe to try

Everything. In particular:

• Add, edit, merge and archive people and households. Nobody is ever deleted, even in practice.
• Check children in and out, print labels (on screen) and jam a printer on purpose to see what happens.
• Record gifts, key a whole check batch, refund a gift, set up a recurring gift and open year-end statements.
• Run the QuickBooks sync and sign off a bank match.
• Write and "send" messages to any audience, and text STOP from a pretend phone.
• Build forms and events, publish them on the website preview and fill them in as a visitor.
• Turn optional features on and off in Features and settings.

What never happens

You do this	What actually happens
Send a text or an email	It lands in the Captured outbox. No message leaves the browser.
Take a gift or refund one	It's simulated in Stripe's test mode. No card is charged and no money moves.
Run the QuickBooks sync	Entries go to a pretend QuickBooks company, inside your browser.
Print labels or a paper kit	Labels are drawn on screen; the paper kit uses your normal printer, marked SANDBOX.
Submit a form on the website preview	It arrives in the back office's Website inbox, and nowhere else.

Your changes are also private to your browser. Other people testing the sandbox don't see them, and a different browser or computer starts fresh.

Start over with Reset sandbox

1. Click Reset sandbox in the striped banner at the top of the page.
2. Confirm. Everything you added or changed in this browser is cleared, and the made-up starting data comes back.

Reset only affects your browser. It's a good idea before showing the back office to someone new.

Good to know

• Real church facts, invented people. Service times, Sunday classes, funds, ministries and events are the church's own. Every person, child, donor and gift is synthetic, on example.org addresses and 555-01xx phone numbers.
• Private windows forget. A private or incognito window clears the sandbox when you close it.
• At launch, the banner changes. The real system will say so clearly; until then, assume you're in practice.

Top tips

• Practise with a story: invent one family and follow them through a whole week, from their first visit to check-in, a gift and a follow-up message.
• Press Reset sandbox before you demonstrate something, so the starting point is clean.
• If anything you do in the sandbox seems to have reached a real person, stop and send feedback at once with "Blocking"; it should be impossible, and the team will want to know.

Troubleshooting

Something I added is gone. Check you're in the same browser, not a private window, and that nobody pressed Reset sandbox. If it vanished on its own, send feedback from the page where it should be.

I entered something real by mistake. Press Reset sandbox to clear it from this browser, then let the team know through Feedback (without repeating the details).