Working a funeral: stages and checklist

A funeral case moves through clear stages, and a checklist keeps the many small tasks from slipping. Together they make a stressful week manageable.

The stages

Death → Notification → Planning → Vigil → Funeral Mass & Burial → Aftercare. Click a stage to advance the case; moving backward asks for confirmation.

The checklist

• Each case has a checklist drawn from your parish's practice — notifications, musicians, worship aid, obituary, the planning meeting, the luncheon, and more.
• Tick an item to mark it done; Vianney records who and when.
• Older cases automatically gain any new checklist steps when you open them, so nothing is missed as your practice evolves.

Set your parish's practice

In Funerals → Settings, edit the standard checklist and the list of who gets notified, and toggle whether a planning meeting and a luncheon are part of your norm. New cases follow these; open cases keep their own copy.

Recording in the death register

Once the funeral has taken place, open the case's Liturgy pane and use Record in death register in the Death register section. You can enter the register volume and page and write the annotation yourself; leave the annotation blank and Vianney composes a plain one naming the deceased, the funeral date, and who entered it.

• Who may do it. This is the Write death register permission in the role access matrix — it is not locked to the priest. In the parish console today the final click is still reserved to a priest, and the office or deacon prepares the annotation text for him.
• Once only. It can happen once — Vianney refuses a second entry.
• Where it shows. It is not a tick in the checklist above. The Death register section itself changes to "Recorded in the parish death register" with who did it and when.
• The paper register stays canonical. This cites and annotates the bound book; it never replaces it. When the deceased is linked to a person record, recording also writes that person's funeral entry into their sacramental record.

Tips

• A completed case becomes read-only, preserving the record.
• Set up your checklist once and every future funeral inherits it — see also Funeral arrangements.
• If your parish uses the Cemetery module and you have access to it, an Interment tab sits alongside this checklist — its content adapts once the deceased is linked to a person record. See Funeral arrangements for how it works.