Best Church Management Software

Planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling are the building blocks of a successful business model.  Enterprises are using these management principles to scale up their business growth and streamline their processes. They have been leveraging enormous benefits by deploying these management principles into their system. Inspired by business firms, the non-profiting organizations are also actively inculcating them into their system. The church community is one of them, and they are actively adopting these management principles for regulating their activities. Although the management principles are effective, the traditional or manual approach of church management is fragmented and time-consuming.  Church authorities need a centralized mechanism that can provide flexibility to manage the entire church operations and help in overcoming the ambiguities underlying the manual approach. 

Church management software has set the tone for the church's seamless functioning as well as empowering members to serve the church better. However, selecting the right church management system is crucial for delivering the best experience to congregants and managing everything under one roof.  

This buyer guide is designed to help church authorities, members, and pastors study in detail the church management software and understand key considerations before buying the best church management software. 

Management is critical for Churches as they don’t operate similarly as an organized business enterprise does.  They are mission-driven organizations that are loosely structured and do not have a hierarchy pattern.  Even if there is a  hierarchy pattern, it is quite disoriented and unaccountable. They work with a handful of volunteers, whose scant presence and lack of commitment can bring more trouble for Churches. It means nobody knows who is responsible for what.

Besides that, Churches managing public funds have a bigger responsibility of protecting the public trust. They have to show that public funds are allocated correctly, and there are no discrepancies, which requires a high level of financial oversight. Large Churches may still follow strict rules for monitoring and auditing the fund, but small Churches do not have financial control. They do not follow any standard procedure to keep track of the funds.  It could result in a breach of public trust and makes it difficult for the Churches to raise funds.   

Parallel to standard operations, the church authorities also have to work on the leadership aspects. Churches with a lack of leadership values often struggle with prioritizing their efforts and resources. Besides conducting worship services, preparing weekly sermons, and preaching, Pastors have to exhibit leadership qualities that include continuously communicating with the advisory council, church members, and congregants to shape the church’s mission.

Church management ensures that underfunded and understaffed Churches keep serving the communities in difficult times. It also assists Churches in navigating numerous procedural, interpersonal, and structural challenges in the process of guiding the team towards the completion of goals.

• Lack of transparency:  The church involves managing and allocating funds. With a manual approach, it becomes difficult to record all the monetary transactions taking place towards managing the church’s routine work.  If any transaction error exists, then there is a risk that it can go unnoticed, jeopardizing the church’s financial health.
• Membership management: Managing church membership is essential for building the community and uniting people sharing the same ideology.  But managing a church membership manually could be a tiresome job, for instance, maintaining members’ profiles, updating them about the meeting, adding new members, etc.
• Fundraising: One of the biggest challenges that the Church authorities or the pastors face is to effectively allocate the financial resources to church activities. It happens when pastors don’t have clear visibility about the church expenses and do not raise funds quickly. The traditional approach does not give a clear view of the total expenditure, making the pastor less accountable for fundraising.
• Hiring staff and volunteers: Church often requires temporary staff during events and conducting various religious activities. Searching for volunteers or staff can be a laborious process.

The conventional approach to managing the church stands as an impediment to the church's growth and visitor retention. It does not allow the church to work as a unit and employ its resources efficiently. To eliminate various complexities within the church operations and assist the organization to achieve its mission without any friction, church management software is highly beneficial for Churches. 

Church Management Software is a set of tools that help Churches to manage their routine tasks and all the other activities that are necessary to run the church efficiently.  It includes scheduling tasks, tracking attendance, accounting, managing the library, organizing events, managing memberships, etc.  Church management software can be deployed as an on-premise system or as a cloud-based platform.

Churches are no longer functioning in the same way as they used to before.  They have fast-paced their routine work and enhanced their services to deliver a better experience to visitors. It is modified from a mere worshipping place into a community development center. They have excelled in every aspect, whether it is conducting events, engaging attendees, allocating resources, or making connections with the visitors. It is all possible because of the church management software. The church management software has been assisting church pastors to get better control over the administrative work and get away with all the redundancies associated with the church management process.    

Not just administrative work, it can track the church’s belongings and resources too. While hosting private events, the church allows guests to use their equipment and resources, and during the event’s celebration, sometimes the equipment is misplaced or gets damaged. To have a bird’s eye view of the church’s resources, the church authority can add all its amenities such as laptops, chairs, lighting, acoustics, etc., to online church management software and track their current status.

It becomes quite easy to contact people with church data management software as it stores all the information about the attendees. The connection can be made through emails, text messages, and voicemails. The top church management software can even handle tasks like handling taxes or processing payroll. The versatile nature of top church management software further extends its role in managing donations, accounting, membership, marketing, etc.

A lot of church activities are on the shoulders of volunteers; when these volunteers complete their service period, the church authority looks for new hires. It is a common practice in most Churches, but Churches should also take care that they re-engage previous volunteers. It can make a lot of difference in organizing future activities.  By holding all the information about the volunteer’s previous work, it becomes easy for the church to designate their duties. The top church management software can assist Churches in managing the records of previous and current volunteers. It doesn’t allow missing any single volunteer who has shown their interest to serve the church. Recruiting, training, and supporting the church management system can help in all the activities that are required for engaging the volunteers.

Churches working for the upliftment of society can contribute more towards their efforts by optimizing their efficiency with the best church management software. This demands a  complete insight into the church management software benefits.

• Managing events: The church organizes various types of events around the year, the majority of these events are hosted by the church itself, but they also host private events.  With so many events to handle sometimes, it can cause issues such as double-booking and conflict with the host. Robust church management software solutions are laced with event management and booking features, which eliminate all the confusion related to booking events and management.
• Schedule tasks: The top church management software helps users schedule the task and manage volunteers’ shift rotation.  The software display gives a clear view of the task assigned and its availability.  The automated reminders further help the pastor or person in charge to save their time and efforts in taking follow-ups of the team members. 
• Minimizes fraud: The church management system monitors financial transactions and facilitates online payment.  The church staff can even print the statement of the giving by the donors and assess the financial transaction details.  It increases the transparency in the process and reduces the risk of fraud.
• Centralized database:  The church data management software enables users to access any data from a single interface, and it becomes quite easy for users to manage all tasks. The user can check various activities such as attendance for a particular month or week, financial transaction history, volunteer’s task schedule, events organized, etc.
• Better congregation management: The top church management software allows church authorities to stay in contact with their congregation and develop a strong relationship with them.  The church management software solutions help to stay organized and facilitate smooth communication with the congregation.  It offers features such as membership management, fast communication, smooth check-in process, small group management, etc., which help Churches to deliver a better congregation experience.
• Gifts / Giving Management: Church receives gifts / giving in various forms; it could be mobile giving, text giving, kiosk giving, check, or cash. The top church management software enables users to track and manage their giving from a single place. They can do a myriad of things with a church management system, such as scanning checks, automatically importing gifts received via the website, storing details of the checks or capturing images, etc.
• Third-party tool integrations: The best church management software supports the integration of third-party tools, which further enhances its efficiency.  Third-party tools like background check software or marketing automation software can help church authorities to check the background of the volunteer or send automatic emails in mass.
• Multi-site management:  Some church authorities or pastors have to manage multiple Churches. It is not feasible to keep running down all the places and gather details about the church's functioning. In that case, church management software can be quite helpful. It provides a centralized system to control and manage all Churches from a single location.
• Create survey forms and mobile keywords:  Church authorities can use church management software to encourage people to join the church’s mission.  They can create survey forms to collect the feedback from the congregants, and based on their answers; the church can modify their congregant’s engagement strategy.  There are church membership management software solutions that have gone more innovative and allow the audience to communicate their interest without filling the survey forms. Mobile keywords are an innovative way through which Churches can identify people’s interests and build a community. The church officials send a text message to the audience with specific keywords, and the people who respond to the message are the ones who are ready to contribute to the church’s particular activity.  The software provides a range of mobile keywords, which can be used in many ways, such as capturing audience data, categorizing contacts, running a campaign, collecting feedback, etc.
• Social media: Top church management software allows accessing social media accounts directly from the interface itself and provides an exceptional opportunity to connect with people outside the church. 

The potential application of Church management software extends far beyond the benefits it offers. Fortunately, it does not require lengthy SOPs to discover its capabilities; the users just need to go through some time-saving features of the church management system.

• Event booking and management
• Mobile app
• Customize reports
• Accounting and finance
• Manage and track church attendance
• Child check-in
• Membership management
• Donation management
• Sending bulk emails
• Resource scheduling
• Library management
• Track giving and generate giving reports
• Data import/export and backup
• Tech support
• Follow up tasks
• Communication tools
• Workflows
• Taxes and deduction
• Multi-site management

• Pricing: Church management software pricing is an important factor for church authorities to make their decision on buying the software. The software could cost more than the actual pricing if the users are not aware of the hidden charges. Hidden costs like data conversion cost or software setup cost could add extra to the tool’s original price. Ideally, one needs to check and clarify the cost factor with the vendors directly. 
• ROI: For any software buyers, the ROI is the key concern, especially for non-profiting organizations. Church management software solutions could be productive if the user can align its requirements with the software features.  Users who have analyzed their requirements like the number of attendees, volunteers, expenses on staff-training, etc., can choose software packages with high ROI.
• Scalability: If the church management software is not scalable, it can consume a lot of money, time, and manpower to reset new software in the existing infrastructure. 
• Easy to use:  A friendly user interface can pace up the underlying processes and reduce the error rate. The software that is complex in its operation can see low adoption and poor user experience.
• Congregation management: The church data management software should maintain all the information about their members and visitors. Besides common church management software features, the software should have the member tracking capability to check which members have missed the event or meetings.
• Security: Church management software can hold important information such as funding, member’s personal information, donation details, etc. It is essential that there are security features like permission-based access, data recovery, and data encryption to protect these data.

• Online visuals and videos (3D and AR): The church management software supporting media files like photos and videos can give a better idea about the church facilities and various social activities carried out by the church authorities. To engage more people, the church management software is enhancing its support for media files and advanced technology like 3D and AR.
• Proactive use of social media: Social media, as we all know, is the best platform for promoting anything and reaching people in mass. The church authorities are taking social media more seriously in recent times, and they are proactively using social media to reach more people. Church Management Software integrated with social media platforms is at the heart of the people as it keeps them connected with all the updates happening in the church.
• Live Streaming events: Live streaming events are becoming quite popular these days, and church management software with live streaming support can add more thrill to the event.  Churches with live streaming facilities are among the favorite destinations for the hosts who want to ensure that their event celebration has all the elements to make it unique.
• Digital giving:Digital giving is gaining enormous attention from the church, especially text-giving. The text-giving is much more secure and gives a sense of trust to the donor.  Text-giving features in church management software can give donors the flexibility to donate from anywhere and on any day.  There is more focus on digital giving, and more efforts are made to make it easier and more smooth.
• Chatbots: Church management system can provide convenience to reach visitors and inform them about the latest updates and programs. However, answering some questions could be a daunting task for church authorities.  Chatbots integrated with the church management system could be quite helpful in that respect; on top of that, chatbots can collect a massive amount of data from various visitors, which can assist them in exploring new ways to engage visitors.  It can even answer queries regarding online giving.

The users can notice a lot of variations in church management software pricing, and the primary reasons for it could be the number of features or the number of user accounts. The church management software cost could be anywhere around $9/month to $220/month or more.  Some church management systems could be ideal for small and medium-sized Churches, while others work best for large Churches but could be expensive and over-loaded for small Churches. The software can be deployed on-premise or over the cloud infrastructure.  

• Church management software for managing small Churches:  Small Churches with limited staff and fewer events could settle with the less expensive church management software such as Iglesian en Conexion. Iglesian en Conexion is the best online church management software for small Churches at a starting price of $9/month. The tool offers all the basic church management software features like event management, accounting, attendance record, membership management, etc.  This church management software for small Churches allows multiple users with access restrictions to each module. There are plenty of other tools that fall in the category of best church management software for small Churches, including PastorsLine, Working Church, AgapeWORKS, etc.

• Church management software for managing large Churches: Large and medium scale Churches that have to handle large attendees and events can choose church management software such as ChurchTools which comes at a starting price of $29/month. The tool is equipped for delivering the best experience to the users with features like hosting, backup, email support, check-in, chat, and mobile app. The software exclusively provides an extra data storage facility to store and organize church-related files, documents, videos, and important information. The tool offers a 30-day free trial.  If users seek software in the medium price range, which allows customization, they can choose Breeze ChMS. It offers a single and simple pricing structure that comes with a starting price of $50/month. The Breeze API allows users to customize applications with any programming language. There are a few more tools that qualify as the best church management software solutions for large and medium-size Churches, which include Elexio, Churchteams, and ChurchPro. Some Churches are massive in their size and drive more attendees than any other church. They operate on a large scale and require end-to-end church management software solutions to envelop all the activities related to the Church. For such Churches, a premium Churches tool like ShulCloud is an ideal option that offers its basic or standard version at a price of  $109.99/month. It offers a wide range of features that take care of every segment of church management. Other premium tools that help users with their rich feature sets include UCare and GraceSoft Church Reservation System.

• Free and open source church management software:  For those users who wanted to build a more advanced version of the church management software without developing it from scratch, free and open source church management software is the best alternative. Besides customization options, the low software prices and a strong developer community make it the first choice for small and medium-scale Churches.

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In the last few decades, Churches have widened up in their scope of functioning. They have grown in their attendee’s numbers, events, giving, volunteers, social services, etc. The traditional approach is outdated for managing church activities, and it often results in errors. A robust church management system can help address all the concerns related to mismanaged processes and strengthen Churches to perform their duties without any obstruction. Pastors or church authorities who are planning to invest in church management software or paying unnecessarily for one or more tools for managing their church should not miss the list of best church management software, exclusively prepared by Goodfirms.