Blog

Use Halcyon’s Integrations To Keep Your Business Rolling

Halcyon’s available integrations and partnerships seamlessly incorporate many of the tools your business uses or may be interested in using. Intentional partnerships with Death Care Industry-specific services help your business run more efficiently. Halcyon lets you send the information you have already input into your Halcyon system to the integrated partner(s) which eliminates the need for duplicate data entry. Consider your business as a bicycle wheel where Halcyon is the “hub” for your business management needs, and your other business tools the “spokes”. Here we will discuss some of the integrations and partnerships, or the “spokes” from our wheel analogy, that Halcyon has available for your business to take advantage of. 

Website: 

When you integrate your website with your Halcyon system, you can seamlessly send decedent vitals, obituaries, and service information to your site. Our website partners are currently funeralOne, Tukios, Batesville, CFS, and Frazer, among others.

Answering Call:

Do you need to utilize an answering service? Halcyon partners with Answering Service for Directors (ASD). This integration allows you to create new cases in Halcyon by importing the first call information collected by ASD. Halcyon will also automatically send updates on service and obituary information to ASD any time information about upcoming events are modified.

Financials:

Halcyon has optional add-on integrations with business tools to facilitate accounting and bookkeeping needs. Our seamless, real-time integration with QuickBooks will keep your business and bookkeeper happy. Our credit card processing partnership with First American allows you to take payments electronically and have them applied to the case automatically. Included with our credit card partnership is our Empathy Funding feature, which is a crowdsourcing tool that facilitates donations from families and friends. Unlike other crowd-funding providers, payments made via Empathy Funding are applied directly to the decedent’s account balance ensuring all donations are appropriately allocated.

Documents & Forms:

Let Halcyon create and fill in the forms, contracts, and documents that you already use. You can even integrate with DocuSign for your documents with signatures, getting your electronic signatures completed easily either in-person or virtually over email. We’ll capture the completed electronically signed document and save it to the case’s file. 

More:

Other industry-specific platforms that Halcyon can integrate with include stationary providers (Bass-Mollet and Messenger) and at-need insurance funding (Express Funeral Funding and Claimpro.) Halcyon is always looking for updates and integrations. Our Google Calendar integration and Google Address Search tool are just some examples of recent updates to our software. 

All of these features are designed to make us more than just your Client or Case Management Software. Let Halcyon be the “hub” for all your business. To learn more about Halcyon, schedule a free demonstration.

July 2023 Newsletter

Halcyon’s July Newsletter covers how to fix an Adobe .pdf error that is happening on certain web browsers and how to fix it, the power of our Custom Reporting tool. Check out where to find us at NFDMA’s annual conference at the end of the month. Read the July Newsletter at the link below and make sure you’re subscribed!

Link to Halcyon’s July 2023 Newsletter.

Haven’t subscribed to our monthly newsletter? Click here to join!

Learn More About Halcyon’s Efficiency Tools

Halcyon’s efficiency tools are designed to save you time by eliminating redundancies and the need for multiple programs’ various business tools. Here we will briefly discuss some of our tools and how they can benefit you, your staff, and your business.

Our Notes tool lets you keep case specific notes stored in one easily viewed location, allowing staff to quickly access any necessary case notes. We also give you the ability to notify them immediately of the note if needed (via text, email, or even both)!

Want to notify a family of something? No problem. You can also send a message to anyone outside of your Halcyon organization and can even have a standard message generated to fit any scenario. We’ll store everything in one convenient area for your assigned Halcyon staff to review or add to as needed.

Set up Auto Tasks in Halcyon so when a case is added or a triggering event occurs, your list(s) of to-do’s are automatically pushed out to staff with any required due dates assigned.

Halcyon also lets you set up as many Custom Statuses for your cases as you’d like, letting you organize your case load with as much specificity as you desire.

As with all aspects of Halcyon, our interface and helpful tools are designed to flow seamlessly with your natural business processes. Our easy to use software is intuitive and robust, freeing up your time to spend with what really matters – your families and communities.

NFDA Announces Annual Inspiration Award

This year during Women’s History Month, The National Funeral Director’s Association has launched a new annual award – The “Inspiration Award” – to acknowledge an exceptional female or non-binary individual in the funeral service or related field. The 2023 Inspiration Award will be conferred at the Professional Women’s Conference in May.

Halcyon is proud to be a woman founded and woman owned company. Since forming in 2002, we are grateful to have witnessed just some of the diverse impacts that women in the funeral service industry have made. We look forward to learning more of current and future inspiring women/non-binary people in our field!

Do you know someone that is pushing the funeral service and industry forward? Nominate them today! More information about the first annual NFDA Inspiration Award can be found on their website following this link. Nominations are due on March 31st.

The Funeral and Crematory Business Is Tough — We’re Making It Easier

Since we launched our company in 2002, it has always been our number one priority at Halcyon to make life — and technology — easier for all of our clients and users.

With decades of experience in the funeral and cremation industry, we understand how tough it is to manage all the details, and we believe that every aspect of your software should be as simple and seamless as possible.

We also know that our software only provides value if your staff can use it effectively in their day-to-day roles — and if it lightens their workload. No concern is too small to us. We always pledge to continue innovating and improving our platform to make sure it serves you — and your team — in the most beneficial way possible.

That’s why we decided to partner with Matthews Aurora™ Funeral Solutions to create an exciting new integration between Halcyon’s state-of-the-art management system and the Matthews Aurora™ Solution Center Catalog.

“We are very excited to be bringing this new tool to our customers to help them run their operations more efficiently and seamlessly at no additional cost to them,” says Sara Gard, President of Halcyon.

With this integration, arrangers now can view, select, customize, and order Matthews Aurora™ products from within our Halcyon software. And even better: All pricing information is kept up to date automatically, so funeral directors never have to worry about sharing an incorrect cost with a family.

Here’s how this integration will work for clients on the Halcyon platform:

This eliminates the need to log into multiple websites to finish completing an order — or to go through the trouble of calling or faxing another company to place an order.

“This avoids the situation of making a promise you can’t keep to a family when they’re selecting products. You’re able to see the costs and availability of any product in real time instead of having to reach back out to a family later because you’ve told them the wrong price or something was out of stock,” Gard says.

At Halcyon, we are motivated by listening to our clients and learning what their biggest pain points are with all of the processes that happen every day at their businesses — and creating solutions for these issues.

Greg Rollings, the President and CEO of Rollings Funeral Service, says several of his funeral homes have been using this integration for the past few months.

“It makes the selection and ordering process seamless and has surpassed my expectations,” Rollings says.

We are excited to be able to partner with Matthews Aurora™, not only because they are a trusted partner in our industry but also because of the impressive quality of their wide array of products.

“We continue to focus on delivering the finest digital merchandising tools that help our funeral home clients educate families about our products and simplify families’ selection experience. This integration with Halcyon is a great advantage to our joint customers,” says Marty Strohofer, VP of Marketing and Product Development at Matthews Aurora™.

Want to learn more about our software? Request a demo with an expert by emailing demo@halcyondcms.com or by visiting https://www.halcyondcms.com/free-demo/ .

5 Great “Did You Knows”

Occasionally we will blog about Halcyon features that may benefit you and you might not have known about. Enjoy!

Monitoring Contract Changes

There are several contract-related actions that cause Halcyon to push out notifications to your staff:

  1. When a new At Need (or Pet Walk In) case is added. Go to Admin/At Need Case Add Notifications)
  2. When a new discount is given to an At Need Contract (or Pet Walk In). Go to Admin/At Need Case Add 

There are reports available to inform you about contract changes.

  1. Account Adjustments, Discounts & Refunds – Adjustments, late fees and discounts made to accounts over the reporting time period.
  2. Account Modification History – Report of all modifications made to case accounts within reporting time period.
  3. Contract Change History – Reports status changes and amount changes that were done to contracts within reporting period

See these related help articles:

Late Fees and Terms

Halcyon allows for terms to be setup so that late fees can be applied and then disabled on selected cases. Many funeral homes are against having late fees but the terms setup drives other helpful tools available even without late fees. Halcyon also allows for the Case/Purchases’ Balance Due Date to be automatically defined and for the terms text that is on the Statement of Goods and Services (aka contract) to be customized. See this help article for more information about setting up terms: https://halcyondcms.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033256751-Late-Fees-and-Terms

Notes and Tasks as Organizational Tools

Notes and tasks are organizational tools that you can utilize to help you keep track of all of the moving parts and different pieces of information associated with a case. Notes and tasks for each case will show up on their Case Overview tab. You can maintain notes and tasks here, including printing them or marking tasks as completed.

For convenience, you can add a note from any screen in the system using the blue “Add Note” button on the bottom right of the screen, next to the “Add Case” button. You’ll even see an option to send this note as a message to staff members who have their messaging preferences set up (see the Staff Maintenance help article for more information about messaging preferences).

If you find yourself using tasks often, you may be interested in setting up the Tasks Widget on the Dashboard to monitor them or creating Default Tasks. Default tasks are tasks that will be generated automatically with new cases- you can assign them based on either case type or service type.

Default Tasks

Default tasks are tasks that will be generated automatically with new cases- you can assign them based on either case type or service type.

Just like any task, you have the option to assign default tasks to employees. You can also assign a due date for the task either before or after the case’s Date of Death, Date Services Provided, or Case Date. If you have a default task set up, the task will appear on the Case Overview tab for any new cases that have been created with either that case or service type.

If you’re using default tasks, you may want to consider enabling the Tasks widget for your Dashboard. This is a handy tool to help you keep track of all tasks- it can also be filtered to view overdue/incomplete/all tasks, or anyone’s tasks/tasks that are just assigned to you.

Forms Availability

There are multiple places in your system where you can set forms up to run. There is a main forms menu and there is a section called “Frequently Used Forms” on the right hand side of each Case Overview tab. If you perform trade work, you will also be able to make forms available on your Partner Portal for partners to run. If you have Arrangement Assistant, you can set up forms to run from there as well.

You can maintain which forms are available in your system and where they are from the Forms Maintenance option under your Setup menu.

If you want a form to be available to your partner portal then select the checkbox within that column and then go to Admin/Partner Portal Access to make that form available to whichever of you partners you want to have access.

Select Maintain Forms button. And then select which forms you want to be available for this partner.