Post APCM parish audit FAQs 2024

CMS, or the Contact Management System, is the diocesan database of all clergy, lay officers and other roles for which we might need to contact people. It includes contact details for key roles in parishes and benefices.

The Post APCM Parish Audit is an audit of key lay posts within a parish following the APCM to check that we hold the correct contact details for each of those posts. You can find a list of the posts we are auditing in the step-by-step guide. 

In CMS, an audit of roles within a 'place' - in this case, a parish - is called a 'place audit'. 

The email has been sent to all PCC Secretaries for whom we hold contact details (and an email address) in CMS. We are asking PCC Secretaries to audit the key lay posts in their parish, as you already hold the contact details for officers in your parish. We hope that you will also be able to help us check details of the other posts in your parish. 

For parishes where there is no PCC Secretary record in the CMS database (or no email address for the PCC Secretary), we are sending the audit to another postholder, e.g. Administrator or churchwarden. If you are not the PCC Secretary, we’d be very grateful if you could forward the email to an appropriate parish postholder or carry out the audit yourself. For data privacy reasons, please do not share the link to the audit with anyone other than clergy and/or the administrator in your benefice or other office holders in your parish who already have access to¯the postholders' contact details.

The audit lets you tell us of changes to parish office holders after APCMs; this replaces the previous paper/email system. It will allow you to check that we hold the right details for your parish and enable you to enter changes directly into the database.

We also need to audit our records regularly to help us comply with data protection regulations.

We sent an email with the audit link for your parish on 10th May 2024 . We'd be very grateful if you could complete the audit by 30th June 2024.

All PCC Secretaries who are in our database will be sent an email which will include a link to the audit. The link takes you to a list of post-holders for your parish in CMS. If you can't find the email, please check your junk or spam folder. If you still can't find it, please contact cms.audit@oxford.anglican.org for help.

Please follow the steps on our Post APCM Parish Audit web page, which will take you through the full audit process.

We hope that it will take no more than half an hour. You might need additional time to check information with other people in your parish before auditing their details.

You don't need to do the audit all at once, and you can come back any time to continue it. There's no need to 'save' what you've done each time, as the system will save your changes automatically.

We are asking PCC Secretaries to be auditors, as they should already have access to the contact details for people we are auditing. For data privacy reasons, please do not share the link to the audit with anyone other than clergy and/or the administrator in your benefice or other office holders in your parish who already have access to the post-holders' contact details.

Yes, please; we'd be very grateful if you could confirm that we hold the correct details by following the process at Post APCM Parish Audit. 

If you don't know the exact date, please enter the approximate date they ended in the role. 

For each of the 'actions' you can take for a post, there is the option to re-set the audit. If you have completed the audit and realise you've made a mistake, please email us at cms.audit@oxford.anglican.org, and we can make corrections for you.

The 'Status' column on your audit screen shows you the 'action' you've made (no change, succeed, end, new). This shows if your changes were successful or not.

If you have added a new person to a role, their name will appear in the 'New post holder' column. 

We will moderate your changes, and they will then go live in CMS. If you have a login for CMS, you can look up your parish to make sure the changes have been made as intended. 

If there isn't a record for one of the roles you need to audit (PCC Secretary, Treasurer, Parish Safeguarding Officer), please email us and we will rectify this. 

If you are adding a completely new contact or amending contact details, please ensure you have their consent to enter their name and email address, and/or that this is permitted by your parish/benefice privacy notice.

All new post-holders will receive a 'contact audit' email¯from the CMS database, which will include a link to the¯Diocese of Oxford Privacy Notice. They will then be asked to check the personal details we hold for them. It would be helpful if you were able to let them know to expect this email. 

Contact details for your officers are held on the Diocesan Database, which can be accessed through the Church of England Portal. As a PCC/DCC Secretary, you can request access to the online diocesan database (Contact Management System) by following the instructions shown here. Everyone in a relevant parish, deanery or diocesan role can have access and see contact information that has not been marked as private.

If you still need help after looking through the Post APCM Parish Audit webpage and this FAQ page, please email cms.audit@oxford.anglican.org, and we will be in touch to help you.