Reference data

Most fields in GCM let members type whatever they want — but a handful of fields (gender, marital status, member type, country, state, city, meeting) are picked from a fixed list. Those lists live in reference tables, and this module is where you manage them.

Open Settings → Reference Data (or /misc-data) and you'll see the four tabs that an org admin can touch.

Two kinds of lists

Reference data splits along ownership.

Kind	Examples	Who edits	Why
Organization data	Member types, meetings	You (org admin)	Each church has its own membership ladder and weekly meeting schedule
Platform reference	Genders, relationship statuses, countries, states, cities	Genius Church Manager staff	Shared across every tenant so demographics roll up consistently and addresses can be geocoded

You'll see both kinds on the same page. The organization tabs have Add / Edit / Delete buttons. The platform tabs show the list but the action buttons are hidden — that's intentional, not a bug.

Why platform data is locked

Genders and relationship statuses feed cross-tenant demographic reports and analytics. If every church added their own values, the platform's "average congregation by gender" reports would be meaningless. If you genuinely need a value that isn't there (a culture-specific marital status, a new gender category), email support — the addition rolls out to every tenant.

What's in each tab

Member types

Your church's membership ladder. Common examples: Visitor → Regular Attender → Member → Volunteer → Leader → Pastor. Member types attach to every member record, drive most reports' filtering, and gate which workflows fire. See Customize member types.

Meetings

The weekly / monthly recurring services your attendance module tracks. Examples: Sunday Service, Wednesday Prayer, Youth Group, Cell Group. Each attendance row is tied to one meeting. Managed here on the org side; covered in detail in the Attendance section.

Genders

The platform's gender list — typically Male, Female, and any additional values the platform has accepted. Read-only at the org level.

Relationship statuses

Marital / partnership status — Single, Married, Engaged, Widowed, Separated, Divorced. Also platform-managed and read-only at the org level. See Genders and relationship statuses.

Countries, states, cities

Not on the org-level reference data page — these live behind the Platform Admin → Geography panel and are managed by Genius Church Manager staff. They surface in your member address fields, your map module, and your visitor form's country dropdown. CSV bulk-import is supported for big states/cities additions. See Countries, states, cities.

Who can edit reference data

Action	Org admin	Pastor / Shepherd	Member	Platform admin
View any tab	yes	yes	no	yes
Add / edit / delete member types	yes	no	no	yes
Add / edit / delete meetings	yes	no	no	yes
Edit genders, relationship statuses	no	no	no	yes
Edit countries, states, cities	no	no	no	yes

The reference data page is gated by the org_admin permission. Pastors and shepherds can see member type dropdowns inside member profiles (so they can edit a member's type) but can't add new types from this page.

Multilingual labels

Every reference table has a translations JSONB column. When you add or edit a row you get a Translations input that lets you fill in the label per language — English, Spanish, French, Portuguese.

{
  "en": { "name": "Visitor" },
  "es": { "name": "Visitante" },
  "fr": { "name": "Visiteur" },
  "pt": { "name": "Visitante" }
}

When a member views their profile in Spanish, GCM resolves translations.es.name and shows "Visitante" instead of "Visitor". If the Spanish label is missing it falls back to English, then to the legacy canonical name. See Multilingual labels for the full resolution order and when you should fill out non-English values.

Soft delete + reassign

When you delete a member type or meeting that's already attached to records, GCM stops you mid-delete to ask "what should happen to these 47 members assigned to the 'Visitor' type?" You pick one:

• Unassign them — the FK is set to null.
• Reassign to <sibling> — pick another member type to move them under.

Then the row is soft-deleted (deleted_at is set). It vanishes from dropdowns but the row is still in the database. Platform admins can restore from the data-logs module within 30 days.

Don't bulk-delete during the work day

Delete actions on a member type with thousands of references run an UPDATE across the entire members table. It's fast, but on a busy Sunday the row-lock can briefly slow the check-in app. Schedule reference-data cleanup for evenings or weekdays.

Next steps

1. Customize member types — set up the ladder your church actually uses.
2. Genders and relationship statuses — what's locked, why, and how to request additions.
3. Countries, states, cities — geography for addresses and the map module.
4. Multilingual labels — fill in Spanish / Portuguese labels for bilingual churches.