Carlsruhe Cemetery Success Story, From Lost in Fire to An Accurate and Highly Organised Cemetery Database

For a small-scaled cemetery like Carlsruhe, which only contains 300 burials and less than 100 plots occupied, it shouldn’t be that hard to maintain its accuracy of the database. But unfortunately Carlsruhe once was in an unpredictable accident that involved huge fire in Australia. Caused the data loss about 40 years ago in the Victorian bushfire. This cemetery is located Victoria and is known for being the final resting place of pioneer families in the area (Birrell, Chase, Clerk and Sandilands)

And like any other traditional cemetery which used conventional methods of keeping the data using papers and ledgers, Carlsruhe cemetery needed time to recover the data. Not to mention the problems that arise due to old aged-data, papers and limited number of staff. That was the reason why Carlsruhe required a simple cemetery management software that holds all data in place.

It is a huge challenge for both Chronicle and Carlsruhe cemetery staff itself, since the data of the deceased ones are kept in old-papers and ledgers. Matching the data with the plots is a time consuming process, moreover it needs to be done manually to ensure the accuracy of the records. 

On the other hand, Carlsruhe cemetery is a small regional cemetery which has a specific IT budget limit since it only does several annual internments. That means the allocation of the budget was not yet going to a huge portion of expensive IT software, which usually can cost thousands of dollars. 

By that, Carlsruhe needed a simple cemetery management software that can secure their datas and be disaster-proof that able to do:

• Organise, centralise and digitise their records

• Gain access to digital records anytime

• Create a real-world, interactive cemetery plan with access to the public

The process of integration needed quite a while, since the manual work had to be done at the very first place. Recovering from data loss that was caused by fire was not an easy thing. However, at the end of the day the effort paid off, after using simple cemetery management software resulting these points:

• Accurate records solutions at an affordable price

• “Days and months” saved in records-keeping

• Restored data, which once lost in fire

• A single database for cemetery information

• Records that can be published