Core Docs - Church Management - Intro to Metrics

Rock Version: v19.0
Last Modified: 2025-12-22 9:24 AM

"What’s measured improves."

Using metrics can help provide your organization with a framework for improvement by tracking key performance indicators. Metrics describe what’s going on under the hood of your organization.

Rock includes a full set of features for tracking and displaying metrics. First let's walk through how we define metrics and then we'll look briefly at how we can present metrics in some useful ways.

Anatomy of a Metric

Metrics are defined with categories, very similar to data views and reports. This allows you to organize them in a way that makes sense for your organization. One thing that is unique about metrics is that they can be linked to more than one category. This allows you to re-use them in several areas of your metric hierarchy.

So how do we create a new metric? Administrating metrics is done under Tools > Metrics. For our example we'll create a new metric that displays the number of adult members and attendees we’ve had each week. Here are the details of the completed metric with callouts for each field.

Supercharge Your Metrics with Lava
Using Lava as the data source for your metrics is powerful. With Lava entity commands you can now access data from external systems and include it in your reporting. For example, you can use the web request command to make remote API calls and pull bank account balances from your accounting system, data from Planning Center, or info from Church Metrics. When it comes to Lava and reporting, the sky is the limit! To learn more about Lava, go to https://community.rockrms.com/lava.  

Measurement Classifications

Measurement Classifications help Rock unlock deeper insights from your metrics by adding meaning and context to the data they capture. Each metric in Rock can be assigned a specific classification that indicates exactly what that metric measures. For example, you might classify a metric as "Total Weekend Attendance" to give Rock a clear, consistent understanding of that data point across all systems.

The Measurement Classifications that ship with Rock are listed below:

Using one metric for each classification ensures that we have a single, reliable source of truth for critical data like attendance or giving. This accuracy allows Rock to automate tasks, create reports, and even generate future features that draw directly from your specific metrics, tailored to match what each metric represents. Without Measurement Classifications, Rock could only see raw data points. Now, it knows what each one means.

To use Measurement Classifications effectively, select the correct classification for applicable metrics and be sure to configure your metrics precisely as specified. Each classification is associated with a Defined Value, which outlines essential configuration requirements for that metric. Think of these requirements as a blueprint. They help ensure the data tagged with a classification fits consistently within Rock’s framework. If a metric doesn't exactly match these requirements, it shouldn't carry the classification, since even small discrepancies could lead to inaccurate results.

Total Weekend Attendance

Total Weekend Attendance is a core metric in Rock. It answers a simple question: how many people attended this weekend. It also powers several features that depend on solid attendance totals.

How it works

Rock uses the Metric that uses the Measurement Classification intelligently named... Total Weekend Attendance.

How it's calculated

Out of the box, Rock uses a SQL script that does the following calculation.

Total Weekend Attendance =
 Total Adult Attendance
 + Total Volunteer Attendance
 + Total Student Attendance
 + Total Children's Attendance

Where it's currently used

These are only current examples as Rock references Total Weekend Attendance in several areas. Getting this metric right keeps those areas accurate.

Partitions are Important
You can change our SQL if your organization totals attendance differently, but you need to keep the Campus and Schedule partitions so totals roll up and display correctly across reports and dashboards.

We plan to expand how Rock uses this metric over time with more insights and automation.