Let’s face it: finding the best accounting ERP for your place of worship is like pulling teeth—especially if you or your staff lack accounting skills. You want church accounting software for bookkeeping and managing members, contributions and payroll.
Our insightful research team compiled a list of the best church accounting programs in the market. We also have a breakdown of the pricing considerations and how to choose the right church accounting software.
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What This Article Covers
Best Church Accounting Software
Here are our top picks of the best church accounting software. Take some time to peruse each solution’s benefits and features. You can also use our in-depth requirements template to draft ideal software modules and compare them to this product list.
FlockBase
FlockBase is an ERP for churches and businesses of all sizes, intended for accountants, treasurers and more. Its versions include cloud and desktop.
A preview of Flockbase’s member management tool. Source
Top Benefits
- Manage Multiple Locations: If a church has multiple locations, draft a list of classes and delegate each transaction to a specific one for streamlined organization measures. Leverage profit and loss reports for class filtering and rapid retrieval.
- Minimize Errors: Input a closed date that notifies other users and prevents them from entering or modifying a dated transaction before the close date to reduce mistakes. Manage user lists to determine who can override closed-date warnings.
- Advocate for Reliable Data Backups: Create a backup data file to avoid losing critical information. You can also quickly retrieve archive information.
- Perform Rapid Payments: Compensate staff and vendors directly through their bank accounts for speedy, hassle-free payments. You can also perform automatic direct depositing.
- Obtain Thorough Account Data: Check account names, types, numbers, funds, 1099 codes and more, giving you all vital details. You can also review income and expense account records for in-depth auditing purposes.
Primary Features
- Church Membership: Chronicle member, group, contribution, pledge, attendance and other records, reports and staff communications in one centralized hub. This centralization makes it easier to store and find essential information.
- Online Giving: Schedule repetitive donor contributions. Perform integrated online giving with the Forte Payment Systems partnership.
- Payroll: Automatically cipher and retain federal taxes, track and record state taxes withheld on employee W-2 forms, and pay staff while complying with IRS regulations. Commit all employee paychecks to memory and recall the correct wage for particular employees. You may also track employee payroll and print year-end W-2 sheets.
- Reporting: Track balances, income and expenses by a specific fund. Handle multiple reports for profit and loss, balance sheets and general ledgers. Choose from more than 25 reports.
- Bank Reconciliation: Add new accounts that need reconciling, evaluate completed accounts and uncleared transactions, and review the difference in balance with the bank reconciliation appliance. You may also reconcile account and bank balances.
Limitations
- Doesn’t close years or start accounting periods for new fiscal years.
- Non-sequential checks, making bank statements balancing time-consuming.
- Doesn’t perform automatic calculations or state tax withholdings.
Platform: N/A
Company Size Suitability: S M L
QuickBooks Online Advanced
Devoted to small companies, QuickBooks Online Advanced serves the church, nonprofit, legal, service, food and beverage, accounting, and construction industries. It’s cloud-based and offered as a mobile app for Android and iOS devices.
An example of QuickBooks Online Advanced’s cash flow module. Source
Top Benefits
- Tailor Operations: Create custom roles, enable custom fields management, personalize and automate workflows and assign work to specific members. For example, sales representatives can access invoices, sales transactions, estimates and more to increase accountability and shift duties to the right people.
- Increase Data Security: Save data into the cloud and manage access permissions to centralize and safeguard vital information as backup options. Supervise user access with customizable roles and permissions for better delegation.
- Boost In-House Collaboration: Work with bookkeepers and other members in real time and manage changes in a detailed activity log to catch all mistakes or revisions. You may collaborate with 25 users at a time without extra costs.
- Obtain Professional Reviews: Permit bookkeepers, CPAs, tax preparers, inventory specialists or accounting professionals to review and verify your books to gain an extra pair of eyes on your numbers. This collaboration also reduces human errors.
- Upkeep Numerous Profit Types: Track various revenue types with several tracked classes and locations to stay on top of different revenue classes. Run particular reports by category and location for more straightforward pinpointing methods.
Primary Features
- Reporting: Receive real-time insights on income statements, balance sheets and other reports. Tailor documents with relevant information and keep accountants up to speed with email updates.
- Collecting and Recording Donations: Obtain offerings online or in-person with credit and debit cards and automated clearing house (ACH) bank transfers. Label and tag donations for specific programs or fund accounting for record-keeping purposes.
- Bank Synching: Link bank accounts and receive expense tracking and cash flow updates. This tool also provides real-time information.
- Payroll: Compensate employees and contractors with paper checks or direct deposits. Input worked hours and promptly cipher taxes and deductions. Develop year-end W-2 forms. If users recruit contractors, i.e., musicians or caterers, payments are tracked throughout the year to allocate and file 1099 sheets.
- Estimates: Construct sophisticated estimates such as discounts, product stock-keeping units (SKUs), payment terms and other line items. This tool improves the forecasting process.
Limitations
- Doesn’t track goods sold costs.
- Not suitable for multiple jurisdiction taxes.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
PowerChurch Plus
This church accounting software is an on-premise, small-business solution for churches and nonprofits catered to bookkeepers, treasurers and accountants. This system also provides APIs to craft detailed integrations for technical developers.
A preview of PowerChurch Plus’ interface. Source
Top Benefits
- Boost System Security: Leverage password protection to create numerous user accounts with audit logs that showcase important software activity, including transaction postings, backup restorations and operations for dates, times and more. This security safeguards all financial and member information.
- Enhance Data Storage: Create small zip file backups for program data for better information storage and retrieval. Save backups on floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, media cards and more.
- Centralize Workflows: Merge this program with Vanco Payment Solutions and Protect My Ministry for increased centralization. You may also electronically file W2 and W3 forms.
- Protect Employee and Donor Information: Keep contributor account numbers and employee social security numbers safe with database encryption. This protection measure keeps hackers from seeing sensitive information even if they could hack into the solution because you need an encryption key to decipher the code.
- Maintain All Vendor Purchases: Chronicle recurring transactions, print mailing labels and mark inactive suppliers in one centralized hub. This consolidation streamlines operations and maintains total visibility.
Primary Features
- Membership: Record individual and family information, track groups and attendance, and manage communications. Keep tabs on all membership information.
- Contributions: Trace giving history, chronicle pledges, import donations and develop reports for consistent visibility. You can also keep this information for tax and audit purposes.
- Budgeting: Input budget amounts for individual accounts or share them by account groups. Copy budgets from one year to another and change inaccurate ones. Export Access MDB, XLS, CSV, or DBF files and other account information.
- Reporting: Email reports directly from the screen preview and send them to one email address, selected members from the membership directory or members from a chosen activity. There are 34 fund accounting report templates, 11 accounts receivable templates and 16 payroll report templates to browse and utilize.
- Bank Reconciliation: Match transactions recorded in PowerChurch Plus with bank statements. Generate graphs for account balances.
Limitations
- The search tool has limited filter numbers and types.
- You need coding skills to make reporting customizations.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
IconCMO
IconCMO is an all-size, cloud church accounting software for accountants, bookkeepers and treasurers. It’s also available as an app for iOS and Android devices.
An example of IconCMO’s member directory tool. Source
Top Benefits
- Maintain Compliances: Work with reports that meet FASB compliances, including their number 95 and 117 standards. Aligning with regulations ensures you avoid lawsuits, fines or jail time.
- Strengthen Data Protection: Utilize secure, modern data transmissions and storage methods for better protection. These security measures also reduce the risk of information falling into the wrong hands.
- Manage Multiple Fund Accounts: Access contribution and fund accounts in one consolidated solution. This account merge lets you stay on top of transactions and changes.
- Supervise All Payable Types: Input credit card payables in real time. Maintain all payable types for easy documentation and retrieval.
- Streamline Banking Procedures: Craft checks, input deposits and balance checkbook protocols for organizations that leverage cash-based bookkeeping methods. Streamlining these and other banking processes reduces stress and increases productivity.
Primary Features
- Budgeting: Develop a church budget for every fund to manage revenues and expenses. Compare actual income and costs to projected budgets.
- Bank Reconciliation: Reconcile account and bank balances and input deposits that didn’t clear on bank statements. Input uncleared checks and circulate checkbook balances to individual funds.
- Reporting: Work with complete financial reporting organized by funds, such as revenue and expense reports, profit and loss statements and balance sheets. You may also create net asset changes, detailed general ledgers, activity statements and more.
- Payroll: Determine withholdings, print payroll checks and craft reports to file W-2 and 941 sheets automatically. These automations streamline processes and increase efficiency.
- Chart of Accounts: Review chart of accounts, rename accounts, move an account, create a new account and more. Access a single chart of accounts and allow every fund access to every account.
Limitations
- Users can not import extensive data from Excel to the database for free.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Aplos
Finally, Aplos Church Accounting Software is a cloud software designed specifically for small and medium-sized churches to help accountants, bookkeepers and more.
A preview of Aplos’ main interface. Source
Top Benefits
- Consolidate Payroll Options: Integrate with Gusto and Aplos Accounting to automate payroll and tax payment tracking. Gusto automates calculations, payments and federal, state and local payroll tax filings, W2s, 1099s and new hire forms to improve protocols and remain compliant.
- Make Better Decisions: Receive drilled-down reporting and extract information for funds, departments, projects and locations. These reports allow you to make better business choices.
- Protect Vital Information: Manage Payment Card Industry (PCI) regulations and implement the same protection levels banks use, such as multi-firewall protection and 256-bit secure socket layers (SSL) encryption. This protection layer improves data safeguarding.
- Implement User-Level Access Permissions: Give specific users limited access. These permissions keep the wrong employees from seeing sensitive data.
- Streamline Accounting Practices: Add bank transactions, track and pay bills, print checks, draft invoices, obtain invoice payments online and more with in-depth, automatic accounting tools. These features simplify bookkeeping operations so you can focus on other vital tasks, boosting efficiency.
Primary Features
- Bookkeeping: Access financial statement management, records management, user books utilization and bank reconciliation. Access journal entries for fund transfers and payroll imports, bill paying and tracking, check printing, 1099 tracking and more.
- Budgeting: Draft budgets by a specific fund or tag. Track your church’s financial health with in-depth budgeting reports. Compare projected budgets to actual income and expenses.
- Accounting Reports: Implement account segments and tag filters for detailed reporting, review profit versus loss on income statements and examine assets and liabilities with balance sheets. Leverage advanced tag reports to view income and tag statements or transaction lists.
- Payroll: Initiate automatic calculations, payments and federal, state and local payroll tax filing with this Gusto add-on tool. Access direct deposit and unlimited payrolls in all 50 states. Allocate payday emails, lifetime accounts, direct deposit and more to employees.
- Donation Management: Create personalized, mobile-friendly giving documents, extend weekly or monthly sharing and provide a protected portal for members to manage their giving. People may also utilize their preferred payment method, compensate transaction fees, manage how often they donate and pinpoint their donations’ purposes.
Limitations
- The general ledger doesn’t post entries for online credit card donations.
- Doesn’t offer help to user profiles with internal controls.
- Doesn’t save payment information.
- Has limited autopay options.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
How To Choose the Right Church Accounting Software
Finding the ideal church accounting solution is difficult if you don’t know what you’re looking for or are unsure how to get started.
Our Lean Selection methodology, a nine-step technique that helps you find the right business software for any company size or industry, gives you a blueprint of the software selection process from start to finish. Here’s a quick rundown:
Here’s a quick rundown:
- Establish: Determine why you need new software.
- Collaborate: Create a software selection committee consisting of internal and external stakeholders, department leaders, end-users, IT personnel, and more.
- Define: Compile ideal software requirements for features and modules.
- Distribute: Compare how vendors stack up to your requirements list and create a shortlist of potential software providers.
- Justify: Conduct a discussion with your software selection committee. Do you need a new solution or add-on modules for your current software? Do you want to end your software selection journey?
- Prove: Ask your shortlisted vendors for demos, use cases or proofs-of-concept (POCs) to exhibit how their solutions perform according to your requirements list.
- Rank: Score and arrange vendors according to their demo scores and total cost of ownership (TCO). You should have two or three potential programs to streamline your operations.
- Negotiate: Converse with your top-rated vendor about their terms and conditions. Seek additional legal advice if the contract seems sketchy. Repeat this step with your next-best software provider if you can’t reach a compromise.
- Sign: Review and sign the software provider’s contract and establish a solid implementation process.
It wouldn’t hurt to review software customer reviews and speak with colleagues about their church bookkeeping systems.
Purchasing Considerations
Buying new software has various considerations you should think over. This software type is no exception. How big is your church? How much are you willing to spend? Do you want on-premise or cloud programs?
Before shopping for a new solution, you should have a complete answer to these and other questions.
How much do you want to spend?
Investing in new software can cost anywhere from a few bucks to $100,000 or more. Establishing a realistic budget and sticking to it is essential.
You should also allot extra funds for unforeseen fees like implementation costs, maintenance, training and more. The idea is to find a solution that meets your needs and doesn’t make your wallet cry.
How big is your church?
Size matters when it comes to the software realm because programs suit various business sizes. Is your church a megacomplex in the city or a humble building in a residential area?
It would be pretty embarrassing to invest in a solution that caters to megachurches when your flock consists of 20 to 50 members or a small church accounting platform when your congregation surpasses 1,000 members.
Are you interested in a cloud or on-premise solution?
Do you want to invest in a cloud or on-premise strategy? Both have pros and cons. On-premise software is only available on internal servers. This method is ideal if you don’t mind monitoring your funds and data from one location and license.
However, the cloud option is your best bet if you want to access your funds, member information, campaigns and more from mobile devices.
Most vendors provide diverse security tactics such as two-step or multi-factor authentication, user controls and restrictions, data encryption and more.
FAQs
What is church accounting software?
Church accounting software is a solution dedicated to bookkeeping for places of worship.
You can also manage compliances, taxes, members, donations and more in one centralized hub.
Is it best for churches to do cash basis or accrual accounting?
Most churches and nonprofits side with accrual accounting because it follows the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).
Accrual accounting is a method that records earned and pledged revenue and incurred expenses. Cash basis, aka cash accounting, is a technique that chronicles received money and finances used for spending or paying bills.
What are best practices for church accounting?
Some ideal church accounting methods include:
- Reconciling accounts monthly
- Keep track of tithes and other monetary donations
- Understand and comply with GAAP and IRS requirements
- Keep multiple ledgers for tithes and profits
- Manage numerous financial statements (i.e., activities, financial position, functional expenses, cash flows, budgets and more)
- Develop and follow policies for handling church finances
- Use reliable church accounting software
- Develop a fundrasing plan
- File the right tax forms
Is QuickBooks the right solution for church accounting?
QuickBooks Online Advanced and other QuickBooks products can streamline your church accounting needs. Like other church bookkeeping systems, you have to take time and find the system that best meets your needs.
Should a pastor be involved with church finances?
A pastor can have some involvement in church finances. In some instances, especially with small churches, pastors wear many hats to keep their congregation afloat.
However, a treasurer and responsible board member or trustee should also have their name on the church bank account.
What happens if someone misuses church money?
Mishandling church funds is considered embezzlement and fraud, leading to jail time and fines. You also damage your reputation and lose public trust.
How is a church tax-exempt?
A church or religious organization is tax-exempt under 501(c)(3) as long as its profits don’t go to private shareholders or individuals. This organization cannot participate in campaign activity for or against political candidates and must follow other 501(c)(3) requirements.
Next Steps
Picking the proper church accounting software is like picking a new suit—you want something finely woven and tailored to your accounting needs. Just remember to choose the solution that best aligns with your church’s needs.
Ready to take the next step? Review our free, in-depth comparison guide of accounting solutions.
How has church accounting software helped your bookkeeping processes? Which software in our roster is your top pick and why? Let us know in the comments!
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