The Best Church Accounting Software

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Shepherd's Staff Software Screenshot

Shepherd's Staff Software

★★★★★
★★★★★
(3)
Shepherd’s Staff is a church management software designed to track and manage various aspects of ministry. It includes five main modules - Membership, Attendance, Contributions, Finance, and Scheduler - to help churches streamline administrative tasks, manage congregational data, track finances, and organize events for churches of various sizes.
Price Range
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Starting Price
$499 (perpetual license)
Client OS
Windows
Deployment
On-Premises
Gabriel Church Management Screenshot

Gabriel Church Management

Gabriel helps churches manage Family and Member information including Language, committee/ministry membership, Fund Raising (Pledges/Contributions), Religious Education, Ministry Scheduling and more. It is built using the latest Microsoft .Net technology and integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Office 2003 products. Gabriel has successfully passed the Microsoft testing for Windows XP Compliance. Emerald is proud to be a Certified Microsoft Partner with a special competency designation for
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Starting Price
$20/month
Client OS
Web
Deployment
Cloud Hosted
IconCMO Screenshot

IconCMO

★★★★★
★★★★★
(1)
IconCMO provides a comprehensive, low-cost, web-based church software solution with excellent support, automatic upgrades, nightly back-ups, and top of the line security as well as compliance with both the IRS and FASB regulations. The seamless integration of all modules including but not limited to membership, donations and fund accounting will save you time and hassle allowing you to focus on what really matters in your organization. Icon Systems also offers a CMO+ version for District
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Starting Price
$35/month
Client OS
iOS, Android, Web
Deployment
Cloud Hosted
ZionWorx Screenshot

ZionWorx

The process of developing quailty software takes a lot of effort, and we want to use our time and skills to create something that is truly affordable. Why? Because there are many church communities around the world that are simply too small or financially under-resourced to be able to afford expensive commercial software licences, and we believe that cost shouldn’t be a barrier to churches that want to explore using technology in worship. Developing this software is our ministry and calling.
Starting Price
$249 (perpetual license)
Client OS
Windows
Deployment
On-Premises
Seraphim Screenshot

Seraphim

We are passionate about churches, not just software. We started Seraphim to bring modern technology to churches. We saw that in our professional and personal lives, technology has erased barriers like location and time, but in churches some of these barriers still existed. We believe that churches should be able to connect and engage with their congregation more than once or twice a week and with Seraphim Software you can do that. We are passionate about helping you reach people faster and more
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Starting Price
$10/month
Client OS
Windows, Web
Deployment
Cloud Hosted
ShelbyNext Financials Screenshot

ShelbyNext Financials

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★★★★★
(2)
Shelby2000 is a totally integrated system - financial modules among themselves as well as with the database and accompanying records for members and participants. Designed on true fund accounting principles following FASB guidelines. Financial modules include:General Ledger (with Budgeting), Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Payroll, Bank Reconciliation, Purchase Order, and Fixed Assets. The software is multi-company, multi-department, multi-fund, allowing operation on an accrual, partial
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Starting Price
$79/month
Client OS
Web
Deployment
Cloud Hosted
CDM+ Church and Non-Profit Management Screenshot

CDM+ Church and Non-Profit Management

★★★★★
★★★★★
(3)
CDM+ is a church management software for congregations, denominations, and non-profit organizations. Key features include accounting, payroll, and contributions management. CDM+ also handles attendance, membership, event registration, check-in/check-out, and facilities management. The platform provides a mobile-friendly portal for online giving, billing, and member photos directories.
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Starting Price
$25/month
Client OS
Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Web
Deployment
Cloud Hosted
Acolyte Church Management Screenshot

Acolyte Church Management

Acolyte Church Management System maintains church records of: Parishioners and family members; All ministries and parish organizations; Weekly and special collections; Multiple funds and pledges; Baptisms, Confirmation, Death, First Eucharist, Marriage; Mass/Liturgy schedules, stipends, and attendance of both parishioners and visitors; and Schedules for meeting rooms and other parish facilities. Entering weekly collections is one of the major uses of Acolyte. We have therefore ensured that this
Client OS
Windows
ACS Screenshot
ACS Technologies’ software is a church management solution that assists staff in managing member records, contributions, events, small groups, volunteering, and check-ins. It features tools for calendaring, scheduling, registration, attendance tracking, and bulk email communication. Additionally, it provides accounting tools for finance management and contribution tracking, supporting various types of donations and generating automated tax statements​​.
Client OS
Windows
Deployment
Cloud or On-Premises
CCIS AccountAbility Screenshot

CCIS AccountAbility

CCIS AccountAbility is a true fund accounting program designed especially for churches and non-profit organizations. The program is sophisticated enough to meet all your accounting needs, while simple enough to keep your office running smoothly. You simply enter checks, deposits and invoices and AccountAbility does the accounting for you. AccountAbility is a fully featured fund accounting software program. Accounts Payable, Cash Disbursement, Cash Receipts, General Ledger, Vendors and Budgets;
Client OS
Windows
Church Growth Software Screenshot

Church Growth Software

To grow a purpose driven church there are church growth principles that need to be applied. Church Growth Software is a church management software, that makes it easy in applying Purpose Driven principles. You will spend less time in keeping track of members/visitors, attendance, ministries, events and finances. And besides being able to maintain efficient records, you will be able to track important data needed to maintain a healthy growing church and make sound decisions. It does not matter if
Starting Price
$179 (perpetual license)
Client OS
Windows
Deployment
On-Premises
Church Helpmate Screenshot

Church Helpmate

Provides church leaders, administrators and secretaries an easy-to-use yet effective tool to ease their administrative burdens, and better serve their congregation and community. Church Helpmate…simply powerful…powerfully simple! ::: alert This software was acquired by ACS Technologies and is no longer sold or supported. They recommended you consider Realm as a replacement. ::: Church Helpmate has been designed for churches looking to ease their administrative burdens and better serve their
Client OS
Windows, Web
Deployment
Cloud Hosted
Church Office Online Screenshot

Church Office Online

Give individuals in your church access to their personal information through our church management software. Individual access provides secure access per individual where they can update their own information, view contributions, pledges and the church calendar. It may sound unbelievable, but text messaging is included for free in our church management software. It is easy to use and an incredibly powerful communications tool. Our church management software also integrates with MailChimp, a
Client OS
Web
Deployment
Cloud Hosted
Churchsoft  Assist 7 Screenshot

Churchsoft Assist 7

★★★★★
★★★★★
(2)
Assist 7 is a professional, full featured church management software package for Windows. Assist 7 is state of the art, user friendly church software that is being used by thousands of satisfied churches nationwide. Assist 7 was designed and developed by a pastor from over 35 years of pastoral experience. With a five star rating in usability, Churchsoft is offering tomorrow’s technology today. Assist 7 will track your membership, attendance, contributions, fund accounting, payroll, events,
Client OS
Windows
CMTS Screenshot

CMTS

This developer is no longer in business. As such, OMS is no longer sold or supported . Please visit the church accounting software guide for alternatives. Are you tired of shuffling papers or typing updates to church rosters and mailing lists? Are you able to track donations and print annual donor statements without hours of work? Are you able to effectively organize financial records and provide the finance committee with timely monthly reports? Could your congregation be better served if more
Client OS
Windows
Church Windows Screenshot

Church Windows

Church Windows software provides an easy way to track the church congregation, its happenings and its giving. Available in its classic form or under one of nine denominational versions, Church Windows efficiently handles the church receipts and disbursements, its budget and its employee payroll. Available as individual modules or as an integrated program, the modules include: Membership maintains family records and members’ involvement in the church; integrates with Donations and with Scheduler.
Client OS
Windows
Deployment
Cloud or On-Premises
ParishSOFT and Church Management Solutions Screenshot

ParishSOFT and Church Management Solutions

★★★★★
★★★★★
(1)
ParishSOFT data management is designed to meet all the needs of a Catholic church. Spend more time on your people, your programs, and your ministry — ParishSOFT will take care of the administrative details! Across the US and Canada, ParishSOFT helps parishes of all sizes reduce their administrative burdens and streamline productivity. This cloud-based church management software includes family and member records, parishioner portal, online giving, volunteer management, and more. Church
RDS Advantage Church Management Software Screenshot

RDS Advantage Church Management Software

RDS Advantage provides churches, not-for-profit institutions and denominational offices with easy to use features for ministry management. Managing a church’s finances is important for good stewardship. Solid accounting applications with electronic funds banking in all modules are provided by this advanced system. With RDS Advantage’s church accounting features, taking care of the monetary side of worship is accomplished. Our church accounting system has secure audit trails, nearly limitless
Client OS
Web
Deployment
Cloud Hosted
Logos II Church/Donor Management Screenshot

Logos II Church/Donor Management

Often, the culprit in people leaving a church not plugged in or unnoticed is because of lack of organization. We know you are shepherds at the core and it breaks your heart to hear stories of people falling through the cracks. With that in mind, LOGOS has designed LOGOS II, a database office system to streamline your procedures. Family and individual information with highly flexible profiles; Child check-in; Customizable reporting; Track strengths, talents and ministry roles, attendance;
Price Range
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Client OS
Windows
CCIS Membership Management Screenshot

CCIS Membership Management

CCIS’s Membership Management program allows you to manage your member’s Contributions, Pledges, Activities, and Attendance. In Contributions module, you can establish fund goal amounts, group funds, print contribution statements and labels, and specify funds that renew themselves annually or that begin and end on specific dates. CCIS’s Membership Management program allows you to manage your member’s Contributions, Pledges, Activities, and Attendance. In Contributions module, you can establish
Client OS
Windows

We searched and searched, but we couldn’t find any products in our database that match your criteria. Perhaps our team of software experts can help? They’d be happy to provide a list of free the best church accounting software recommendations that meet your exact requirements.

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Buyer’s Guide

Software exists to help with almost every aspect of running a business, so it’s no surprise that there are an equal amount of tools available for nonprofits, and thus, faith-based organizations such as churches.

Finding out what motivates church accounting software buyers is very useful information for not just the companies that sell the software, but also companies that are in the market for the solution. Finding our common motivations can help paint things into an easier light for you to make decisions. If you feel you are in the same boat as a different church who is shopping for software, perhaps it’s time you looked at doing so as well.

This guide will offer information on the following topics:

What is Church Accounting Software?

Church accounting software provides basic accounting to track income and expenses (or since churches typically don’t have any income, “money in” and “money out”). Money moving throughout the accounting books from a church usually come from donors, fundraising activities, or grants/funds received from a variety of sources.

While some churches could be considered as “for profit” (and thus have income), for the sake of this discussion, we’ll go with the more common discussion of churches being classified as a nonprofit entity. Given this clarification, you can understand why church accounting software would offer similar functionalities as traditional nonprofit software, such as donor management and fundraising. So why the distinction?

One important difference in how software may (or should) be operated from a church compared to a standard nonprofit organization is tracking member contributions and attendance. While almost all nonprofit organizations will have some form of membership, churches will regularly set up group meetings such as Sunday School, Bible studies, confirmation classes, or other services that need to be tracked separately from the general fund.

If one were to poll many of the most successful churches in an area, they would likely learn that these churches have taken advantage of all tools and resources at their disposal to get where they are. So what benefits are being utilized within church management software?

Features of Church Accounting Software

While each software solution will be different, these are some of the most commonly found features in a church accounting software solution:

  • Accounting: Covers things such as accounts payable (AP), accounts receivable (AR) and a general ledger (GL). Given the nonprofit status of most churches, the AR functionality will usually work in unison (or be replaced) with a donor management, fundraising, or fund accounting functionality.
  • Payroll: Manages employee compensation: wage calculation, ACH deposits, check printing, and compensation tax reports
  • Donor management and fundraising: Know how much each member has given on a weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual basis and provide annual giving statements to the members for tax reporting purposes. Solicit donations with targeted campaigns. Create campaigns that to encourage smaller donors to contribute more.
  • Membership tracking: Manage information on your members such as attendance, frequency of gifts, personal information such as address, volunteer details, interested, activities, and more. Analyze trends to see when attendance is increasing/decreasing.

Benefits of Church Accounting Software

The best kind of church organization has taken advantage of two things: knowledge, and efficiency. While recording information via paper spreadsheets may be cost-effective, is not the most efficient way of your time. Having to go back through records in different file cabinets or different offices is slow and cumbersome. The key is finding the right balance.

Organize Your Member Contributions and Attendance

A majority of church income comes from member contributions, so tracking member contributions is a needed function to give you insight into how much each member has given on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. Now only does this allow you to give annual giving statements to members for tax reporting purposes, but it also helps keep your financial reporting as clean as possible.

Having more advanced reporting on who is giving, and when, can help you solicit donations with targeted campaigns. Larger donors can be targeted for capital campaigns, or even encouraged to have the church listed as a beneficiary when they are creating their estate plans. Smaller donors can be worked to contribute more frequently based on numerous small events or projects the church may be working on.

Get A Better Grasp At Finances With Church Accounting

Accounting will work as accounting should. So what features make it exclusive to managing a church organization?

One ability that may go overlooked is the ability to print accounts payable and payroll checks in a self-mailer format. Mailings may seem like a thing of the past with the prevalence of emails and online newsletters, but sometimes an old-fashioned mailer sent to a members home is a great reminder of their past gifts and an easy way to encourage them to keep giving. It is especially beneficial for the technology-averse crowd.

Nonprofits should look for a solution with the intent of saving time. Online training is a great tool for self-paced learning, which is beneficial when you have a part-time staff composed of volunteers.

Will A Generic Accounting Software Work For My Church?

The question may get asked by someone in the organization: “Why purchase a solution geared toward religious organizations? Can’t a generic (and likely less-expensive) software found on the shelves of a retail store meet my needs?” Simply put, those solutions are not designed for not-for-profit organizations, let alone churches.

The most simple way to describe it is that nonprofits and churches alike are pursuing a mission rather than profits, which changes the landscape of how you record your accounting. Things are no longer looking to be recorded as profit and loss in a nonprofit setting, since (as the name implies) there is no profit.

Churches and nonprofits stand to lose benefits when they purchase an accounting program that is not designed specifically for them. Instead of having the freedom of movement, they are forced to operate within the restrictions of general accounting principles.

Nonprofits, in particular, have to worry about fund accounting, which is the management of resources that have been designated for specific uses. This means that a generic accounting system won’t be able to create a trial balance by the fund or provide the necessary reports or checks/balances to ensure resources are being allocated as needed.

Typically in a nonprofit, a fund will be in the form of a grant that was awarded to them by the government. The nonprofit will need to prove to the government that the money was spent for it’s intended purpose and not on other areas of need. Funds can also come in the form of large donations, where the donor has asked that the money from the donation be put towards something specific.

For example, a church may receive a large donation from one of its members. The donor indicates that 100% of the donation must be used on their pipe organ restoration project that they’ve recently started. However, a sudden rainstorm causes some flooding in the church’s basement, and they need to pay a contractor to fix some water damage. Not only is it unethical to use the donated funds towards this new problem, but it will cause reporting issues when the church is trying to show in their accounting ledger where the money to pay this contractor came from.

Best Church Accounting Software For Mac

Finding a true Mac church accounting software can be difficult, as the options are limited. Instead, companies will ask that you use their online church accounting software which can be ran from a web-browser and thus work on both Windows and Mac devices. However, for those looking for an offline, locally installed church management solution, we’ve found a few that will work for you:

1 Servant Keeper

This software is a complete church management system that is available to work on both Windows and Mac O/S. The primary church related functions include managing members and volunteers, managing donors and contributions, running child check-in & security, maintaining sacrament tracking, and more.

It is also available as a web based church management software with mobile accessibility.

Price: All versions of Servant Keeper start at a one-time cost of $299.

Servant Keeper Church Accounting Software Letters
Send customized letters to your church members in Servant Keeper.

2 Ministry Scheduler Pro

As the name implies, this software is more limited in functionality compared to many church management solutions, as it’s focus is on scheduling. Ministry Scheduler Pro was developed for church organizations to better improve their schedules.

From collecting availability, creating schedules, sharing with volunteers, and setting reminders via text and email, this software will improve your church volunteer process and ensure no program or event is left short-handed.

Ministry Scheduler Pro has desktop versions available on both Mac and Windows. They also have an online version available.

Price: Plus Edition (desktop) starts at $400/one-time plus $31/month for maintenance.

Ministry Scheduler Pro Ministries and Scheduling
Send customized letters to your church members in Servant Keeper.
Ministry Scheduler Pro Screenshot
Ministry Scheduler Pro lets you schedule service times easily.

Free Church Accounting Software

Many church contribution software systems may offer free trials of their solutions, which can be easy ways to test out if a software is worth the investment. Some church tithing software may actually have a completely free version you can use, but often they will come with restrictions, such as only allowing you to record a certain amount of data before you are asked to pay to continue forward. However, these free trials are great for the church that’s on a budget, and wanting to really make sure they don’t buy something that won’t be of much use. When speaking to a church accounting software provider, make sure you ask what sort of free trial they have available.

1 Bitrix24

Bitrix24 is a business management software that provides a number of functionalities that surround around communications, tasks and projects, CRM, contact management, and website creation. Keep in mind that this solution is an industry-neutral solution and was not developed with churches in mind. However, that does not stop plenty of churches and congregation from using it as their top free church acounting software solution.

Bitrix24 provides social tools for engaging your congregation, like social network, user groups, polling, media gallery, shared calendars, video conferencing and more. It can also help you manage your church board by organizing your structure, and keeping a church directory.

Price: Free version for up to 12 users. Paid versions start at $69/month.

Bitrix24 Church Accounting Software Communications
Bitrix24 includes a communications hub to organize messages to your congregation.

2 CahabaWorks

CahabaWorks is a free to use church management system from CahabaCreek Software. This solution was developed with churches in mind, and provides contributions management, fund accounting, payroll and more. It also has the ability to accept online payments and donations from your members.

The free version of CahabaWorks is intended for use by small churches and does have a limited feature set, as well as only giving access to 1 computer.

Price: Limited free version available. Standard version starts at $350/one-time.

CahabaWorks Free Church Maangement Software
CahabaWorks provides fund accounting functionality.

As recent as 2018, the primary motivation churches are looking for new software is to replace an older system. A similar report that dove into the buying trends of companies purchasing fund accounting software (which, as mentioned before, is a software primarily used by nonprofits) found that they too had the same primary motivation.

Church Accounting Software Buyer Motivations
29% of church accounting software buyer’s said “replace a dated system” was the top reason they needed a new software.

Why are churches coming from older systems? Common sense may tell you that churches will tend to postpone technology purchases compared to other organizations or small businesses due to budget constraints. Many organizations just don’t have money in the budget to upgrade their technology every year, and a complete volunteer-ran ministry may need to develop the attitude of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. This mindset may lead to churches hanging on to the same software for years, surpassing many recommended updates from developers.

An alternative scenario is a church that has the means (usually the funding) and the motivation to pursue a new software solution. However, they need to ensure that they have the resources available to train their staff. Some churches, especially smaller churches, may have many unpaid staff members who will need to utilize the software, and training them on their own schedule can prove to be time-consuming and costly.

While a solution that was developed specifically for the church is recommended, you may find success using solutions found in these related software categories.

  • Nonprofit Accounting Software contains industry-specific functionality developed to meet the accounting needs of the nonprofit sector.
  • Fund Accounting Software is designed to enable improved allocation management of resources which have been designated for specific uses.
  • Fundraising Software and donor management software applications allow for tracking the acquisition of donor contributions and for facilitating related communication and data management tasks.