Church Software

Just so there's no confusion, there is no one best accounting software for churches-unfortunately. Life would be so much easier for everyone, if there were a benchmark accounting software that could be recommended to all churches as the perfect software, but, there are trade-offs that must be balanced.

The first thing that most church administrators will need to do is to analyze the needs of their church and ministries. Once this preliminary phase has been conducted, church administrators would do well to studiously evaluate the software that is available before suggesting any software to their church.

Take the vendors up on their company's trial offers, have the tech reps to sit down with the accounting staff and analyze the reports they need to see how these reports can be customized for your church, and compare the features available with the features available from other software providers.

The best accounting software should have a multitude of features that ease the work of the accounting staff when making reports and maintaining an audit trail. Audit trails should show the posting date, the period specified by the entry, and any changes made to these entries, and voided checks.

Another important feature of the accounting software should be security controls that help avoid duplicate postings and identification numbers. Since the advent of Sarsbanes Oxley Act, many in the non-profit sector believe that this type of legislation will be put into effect in the non-profit sector as well.

Therefore, it is a good idea to be prepared and have effective controls in place to eliminate any questionable ethics and demonstrate complete transparency in the accounting processes.

Many church workers, especially in smaller churches, are volunteers with little training in accounting practices. Thus, it becomes important that the software is user-friendly and intuitive. Screens should be designed so that accountants find them logical.

Software should be reliable. No one needs programs that crash and lock up. In addition, the budget of many churches depends on donations for operating funds, so every effort must be to purchase programs from companies that are reliable. For this reason, while start-up companies may have a terrific product, a church administrator must question their reliability. Will they be around in two years or not?

Accounts receivable and donations are different from sales profits, so church accounting software requirements should be taken into account. Is the program able to handle both open items or balance forwards?

Is it possible to store data on the vendor's remote servers and to access it by Internet thus eliminating any need to purchase software and up-dates?

Can the user scan documents and use hyperlinks to show the show the source of the information being used?

Does the software contain the functions necessary to handle school billing or fundraising?

Customization is critical to some ministries. If the vendor customizes the accounting software, it is usually for a price. If the user does so, it may not be compatible with newer up-dates from the vendor when the source code has been modified.

Pricing is a complex subject, and it is often hard to evaluate the price of one program against another program since the basic module may have different sub-modules from other vendors. Too, costs for training, support, and multiple users after the initial trial period are usually extra.

Church accounting software is a field where the major players are willing to help you establish the best software solution for your church, but the needs analysis and evaluation rests squarely on the shoulders of the end user.