Closing a funeral on the MuchLoved system can be done in the Settings area of a tribute. Closing a funeral removes the details of the service, committal and reception from the front of the tribute. This means the focus of the site can change away from the details of the funeral to the longer term remembrance of the individual.
Your branding will remain on the site, but the funeral time and address information and the google maps will no longer be visible. The information isn't deleted, instead the funeral details are archived on the tribute and can be re-instated at any time (for example if a funeral is closed by mistake).
Closing the funeral also generates a snapshot of all donations up to the point of closure. Whilst the sites will remain open to future donations in memory of someone, for example at a birthday, it is typical to give the family and the charities a summary of donations, usually six to eight weeks after the funeral.
Funerals can also be closed automatically after a set number of days - see later in this post for information about autoclosing funeral.
Step 1: Login into your Partner area via www.muchloved.com
Click 'Login', add your email address and password and click 'Login'.
Step 2: Once in your Partner Area click on the 'Settings' button for the funeral that you wish to close.
Step 3: Click on the 'Close funeral' button in the Funeral Notices section.
A pop up box will appear on the screen confirming details of the funeral notice that you are about to close.
Step 4: Click 'Yes' to confirm that you want to close the funeral. An email will be sent to your email inbox with a report summarising the donations added to the tribute up until this point.
The settings for the funeral notice will now be updated to show that the funeral has been closed. A third report will appear alongside the two pdf reports that were already available. This is the same report that was emailed to you in the previous step.
What do the different donations reports show?
Closed funerals don't appear in the main list on your Partner Area homepage. To view a full list of tributes, including those where the funeral has been closed, uncheck the 'Hide closed funerals' tickbox in the top bar of the page. Closed funerals are displayed in the list with an icon that is a closed prayer book.
Re-opening a funeral notice will reinstate the funeral details on the front of the tribute and remove the 'Funeral Donations only' report for a tribute. To re-open a funeral notice, simply click on either the closed prayer book icon or the 'Re-open funeral' button in the settings of the tribute.
Your account has the facility to autoclose funerals. Simply tell us how many weeks after a funeral you would like the notices in your account to be closed.
In the settings for a funeral you will see a message showing when the funeral is due to close, and a button that allows you to bypass the automatic closure for that particular funeral notice. When the funeral autocloses you will receive an email telling you that the funeral has closed with a copy of the Funeral Donations report attached.
Ask your account manager about setting up autoclosing of funerals for your account.
When you create a funeral notice on your Partner Area, the third step asks about which charities the family would like to receive donations. Once a charity or good cause is added, a blue box appears asking if you would like to add a family member as a contact.
You can skip through this step, but if you want to add a contact, click on the 'Add donations contact' button. A form will appear asking for contact details for the NOK or family member. Name, email and address information are required fields but it is helpful to charities if they also know the relationship of the individual to the deceased.
At the bottom of the form is a tickbox asking if the person is happy to also act as the tribute owner.
So what is the difference between a Donations Contact and a Tribute Owner?
The main difference is that a tribute owner has the ability to amend both the funeral notice and the tribute that sits behind the notice.
A tribute owner can do this because they have access to the settings of the tribute - something only the owner can see. Many of these settings are the same as the ones that you see in your Partner Area.
For example, a tribute owner can amend the Words of Tribute that appear on the front of a tribute. They can add pictures to the funeral notice, update details of funeral if the time or place change, and invite friends and family to visit the site and add messages or light candles.
We know that saying thank you is important for charities, but not every family has someone who wants to look after a tribute. In this case, leave the 'Make this person the tribute owner too?' tickbox unchecked. The contact information will still be passed to the charity, as a Donations Contact, but the individual won't receive login details for the tribute or be able to make updates to the tribute.
Step 1: Login into your Partner area via www.muchloved.com
Click 'Login', add your email address and password and click 'Login'.
Step 2: Once in your Partner Area click on the 'Settings' button for the funeral that you wish to check on.
Step 3: If the tribute doesn't have an owner yet, you will see a blue box with a message asking for a Tribute Owner or Donations Contact to be added. Click the 'Change tribute owner' button.
What's the difference between a Tribute Owner and a Donations Contact?
Step 4: Add the email address of the new owner. Please make sure the individual is aware of our terms and conditions before entering their personal data, in particular, that their email address will be shared with any charities they have chosen as the recipient of the funeral donations. This is so that the charity can thank the family directly.
Step 5: After adding the email address, click 'Next'. If the individual doesn't already have a MuchLoved account you will be asked for a few more details. There is an option to notify the new user of their login details at this stage; so the new tribute owner will receive an email notification. Click 'Next' to add the individual as the new owner of the tribute site.
Step 6: If a tribute owner forgets their login details then you can send an automated password reminder to the email address of the owner (which is shown on the Tribute Settings). This email will include a link which lets the individual login to their MuchLoved account to reset their password.
Step 1: Login into your Partner area via www.muchloved.com
Click 'Login', add your email address and password and click 'Login'.
Step 2: Once in your Partner Area click on the 'Settings' button of the funeral notice to which you would like to add your candle or gift.
Step 3: Scroll down the settings page and in the 'Tribute Info' section find the 'Add/edit contributions' line.
Step 4: Click the 'Candle' button and you will see the Tribute Candles page for that tribute. Any candles that have previously been added to the tribute will show here, for example candles added by family members or grateful charities. To add a new candle click 'Add a candle'.
Step 5: You can choose from several types of candle, each of which 'burn' (display on the tribute page) for different lengths of time. You can also choose the background colour for your candle; simply make your choice from the options in the top left of the page.
You can add a message and add a name say who the candle is from. We suggest keeping the message brief, to no more than a couple of lines.
Lastly, add the date that you would like the candle to appear. This can be in the future - if you would like to be prepared in advance for an occasion - for example the one year anniversary of the death.
Step 6: Click 'Add a candle' and the candle will be added to the tribute (unless you have chosen a date in the future).
Step 7: If you need to edit the wording accompanying a candle simply click 'Edit' in the corresponding row of the Tribute Candles list. You can amend the wording of a candle at any time and you can amend the date a candle was lit up until the time it expires.
To add a gift to a tribute page, simply follow the same steps as adding a candle. At Step 3 select 'Gift' rather than 'Candle' at the 'Add edit contributions' stage, and you will be able to view the range of gifts available. Follow the same steps to add your message and who the gift is from (both optional) and click 'Add gift'.
Something else in mind?
Our range of gifts was developed primarily with the friends and family of the deceased in mind. Please let us know if there is a gift you think Funeral Directors would find useful and appropriate - we may be able to add it to the options available.
Within the Reports area we offer three reports on what donations have been made:
Step 1: Login into your Partner area via www.muchloved.com
Click 'Login', add your email address and password and click 'Login'.
Step 2: Once in your Partner Area, find the funeral that you want a donations report for and click on the 'Settings' button.
If the funeral notice has already received donations, there will be a section called 'Reports (pdf)' within the Funeral Collection area of the settings. If no donations have been made then this section will not be visible.
For each report you can 'View' which will open the report in your internet browser, 'Download' which will save the report to your computer or have the report sent in an email to your email address (the address you use to log in to the Partner Area).
The first page of the 'All donations to date' report is a summary of all the donations made. It shows all donations to the funeral notice, displaying how much has been raised and over what period these donations have been given.
Next you will see a breakdown of the total donated, detailing what donations have been given to each charity. Each charity is listed separately on a new page, so that you can send individual pages to a charity as a record of the donations given for that funeral. You will be able to see the donor's name and the amount donated, the date of donation, as well as any Gift Aid collected and fees deducted.
The 'Donations summary' report is a simpler report. The first page is once again a summary of all the donations made for a funeral but this time, the pages that follow are summaries for each charity.
If a funeral has been closed, this report will become available. This report is date specific, and is a snapshot of all the donations only up to the point the funeral was closed.
The report has the same structure as the 'All donations to date' report, showing a detailed breakdown of donations to each charity, but it only includes the donations up to the point the funeral notice was closed. For more information on closing a funeral notice please visit this page.
As families can choose to keep their tribute, and to keep fundraising, the donations shown in the 'All donations to date' report can continue to build long after the initial six to eight weeks after the funeral service.
A short training video to demonstrate how to request reviews from your families via the MuchLoved Partner Area (Control Panel).
There are three levels of privacy settings available to choose from:
You can list a funeral on your website without any time or location information. This means friends and family can still make funeral donations via your website.
Create the notice and add the date, time and location of the service. Tick the 'Private Funeral' tickbox under the 'Service details' section.
Please note, ticking this box will remove any default text from the funeral message as this default information includes the time and location of the funeral.
The thumbnail and title for the funeral are included in your listing of the funeral, but the details about when and where are replaced by the confirmation that this is a 'Private Funeral'.
An example of how a private funeral notice displays on a website:
You can update this tickbox at any time by going to Settings> 'Add/ edit notice'.
Information entered in the committal or reception section of a funeral can be easily hidden. Each of these sections has a privacy tickbox, like the one for the service. Ticking 'The committal is private' or 'The reception is private' means the information for that section is hidden in the funeral information that is listed on your website.
If a family decide that they do not want any details to show on your website, then you can hide the funeral notice by making the tribute private.
In the list of tributes on your Partner Area homepage, click on the grey padlock in the line of summary information for the funeral
Click the button next to 'Tribute is private' and click 'Save changes'
Private tributes show in your Partner Area with a red padlock. To switch back to a public tribute, simply click on the padlock again and click 'Tribute is public'. You can then amend any particular details you choose as per options 1 and 2.
Step 1: Login into your Partner area via www.muchloved.com
Click 'Login', add your email address and password and click 'Login'.
Step 2: Once in your Partner Area click on the 'Settings' button for the funeral that you wish to check on.
Step 3: Click the 'Charity payments' button in the Funeral Notice section of the Settings.
Each charity that has received donations from the funeral will be listed. For each charity, the amount we have paid to date is shown, alongside any payments due to be paid.
Step 4: To see what payments have been made to-date, click on the arrow next to the charity name to show a list of the individual payments made to the charity. For each payment, we provide the bank reference we used when transferring the donations to the charity, the date the monies were paid and the amount paid across.
Step 5: If you would like to see the status of an individual donation you can check this in the 'Donations' table below the payment summary information.
For each donation to the funeral, we show complete information including the bank reference of the payment in which the donation was included. If the payment is pending this will be shown in the 'Payment Info' column.
Step 1: Login into your Partner area via www.muchloved.com
Click 'Login', add your email address and password and click 'Login'.
Step 2: Once in your Partner Area click on the 'Manage' tab along the top and then again on 'Funeral Locations'.
Step 3: Click 'Add a Location'.
Step 4: Enter your details and click 'Add Location'.
Now that you've added the location to your list of default locations you will be able to select it when you add the service details or committal details to a funeral notice.
If you are logged in with a branch login you will see the funeral locations that have been set up for your branch in the 'Search your locations...' dropdown list when you add a service or committal. And if you add a funeral location it will be added to the list of locations for your branch.
If your login is not tied to a branch (e.g. Head Office) then you can add and edit address details to the Head Office custom locations and also the custom locations of your branches.
A short training video to demonstrate how to login to your MuchLoved Partner Area (Control Panel).
Funeral Arranger training providing an introduction to the benefits and features of the tribute page service for families.
Training webinar providing detail on functionality for adding or editing funeral collections for charities, as well as reporting on all donations.
