Why Your Church Needs a Modern Accounting Program: The Complete Guide Aplos University

After reviewing the available options, PowerChurch tops our list thanks to its industry-specific features and decades of experience working with churches. You can also track your donations—how much you received, spent, and have left. Simplify the financial side of church management, from donations, expenses, taxes, and beyond.

Nice-to-Have Features

You can also use ZipBooks to view basic reports and stay updated on your church’s financial status. With over a decade of experience as a small business technology consultant, Alana breaks down technical concepts to help small businesses take advantage of the tools available to them to create internal efficiencies and compete in their markets. Her work has been featured by business brands such as Adobe, WorkFusion, AT&T, SEMRush, Fit Small Business, USA Today Blueprint, Content Marketing Institute, Towards Data Science and Business2Community.

• The software is very flexible and gives us the opportunity to make decisions based on actual data we’ve collected and not just hunches or stories we believe to be true.
• Compare budgets for preceding years, and create the next year’s budget automatically while tracking running balances for all accounts and exporting accounts and transactions.
• Their administrator notes, “The time we spent on proper setup and training has saved us countless hours of troubleshooting and corrections down the road.”
• Another benefit is the import rules feature, which lets you set up custom rules to automatically categorize transactions.
• Accounting software with audit trail capabilities can streamline oversight and enhance accuracy.

Aplos

MIP Fund Accounting lets you run your church’s accounts payable and accounts receivable processes in one interface. The material provided here is solely for informational purposes only without any warranty. Read the full disclaimer here.Unless otherwise specified, this website is not affiliated with any of the organizations mentioned above.

Honoring this trust requires transparent church financial reporting practices to ensure money is wisely spent and that spending aligns with community and outreach goals. Real churches have found that taking these implementation steps seriously pays off in the long run. For instance, First Presbyterian took six months to fully transition to their new system, but because they followed a careful implementation plan, they haven’t had a single major financial hiccup in the three years since. Their administrator notes, “The time we spent on proper setup and training has saved us countless hours of troubleshooting and corrections down the road.” Aplos is specifically built to serve the unique financial needs and dynamics of nonprofit groups and faith-based organizations.

Breeze

While it is not designed specifically for churches or nonprofits, Zoho Books is one of the most versatile and adaptable cloud accounting solutions. Zoho’s dedicated suite of products means churches don’t have to juggle multiple software platforms to manage different financial activities. From expense tracking to basic financial reporting, small churches can manage their financial operations without needing an accounting degree. Successfully implementing a new church accounting program requires careful planning and execution. Start by thoroughly assessing your current needs – look at your pain points, talk to your volunteers and staff about their challenges, and identify what’s working well that you want to keep. Set a realistic budget that considers not just the software cost, but also training time and any necessary hardware upgrades.

Create simple, step-by-step process documents that anyone can follow, and supplement these with video tutorials for visual learners. Schedule regular check-ins during the first few months to address any questions or concerns that arise. Remember to celebrate small wins along the way – when someone masters a new feature or finds a better way to handle a task, share that success with the whole team.

Top 15 Best Church Management Software for 2024

AccountEdge Pro is a small business accounting software that provides advanced financial management and inventory tracking tools. ACS is a fund accounting software within a church management system that allows a church to manage contributions, cash flow, and financial records. Nonprofits such as churches even receive a discount on the software through TechSoup, which is a nonprofit tech marketplace.

Handle the special needs of churches and pastors and apply housing allowances and insurance, so you can accommodate multiple cost centers, customize with the additions and deductions to pay. ChurchTrac is simple yet scalable, and it allows you to make deposits simple and easy to track, generate income statements, balance sheets, fund statements while streamlining the ideal budget for any occasion. All the software’s features integrate with one another, and, you can even access the functionality of online giving and text-to-give via credit and debit cards, eChecks, and recurring payments. In PowerChurch’s complete church administration church accounting software software package, you can maintain memberships, contributors, accounting, event scheduling, and record keeping functionalities at the highest level at a price that even the small churches can afford. Accounting features are considered an add-on to any plan and come at an additional cost. Includes a free mobile app (iOS and Android) for church staff and full congregation.

• Its free plan offers unlimited income and expense tracking, key reports such as Profit and Loss reports, the ability to add unlimited collaborators, cash flow tracking and an intuitive dashboard.
• This status exempts churches from federal income tax and often from state and local taxes, allowing more resources to be directed toward their mission.
• This provides deep insight into your donor’s funds and helps plan future projects.
• Of course, you can control which batches to post automatically and which ones to handle yourself anytime.
• In Desktop Premier 2021, you can categorize bank transactions with the improved matching capability with more detail by using enhanced rules and batch editing.
• To avoid running out of funds mid-accounting season, Charge Windows equips you with budget creation plans that help you outline the preceding expenses for any scheduled repairs, or something else.
• By estimating what your income and expenses will be, you can make plans for how you spend and save.

Although churches are not required to file Form 990, doing so voluntarily can enhance transparency and public trust by disclosing governance practices, compensation of key personnel, and major financial transactions. Best practices in governance, such as maintaining independent board members and documenting conflict of interest policies, support compliance and help avoid penalties or revocation of tax-exempt status. Understanding best practices in church financial management helps leaders make informed decisions that support both spiritual and operational goals. Sage Intacct, with its cloud-based architecture, is particularly beneficial for large churches that need centralized financial management across multiple ministries or locations.

For more information on how Sage uses and looks after your personal data and the data protection rights you have, please read our Privacy Policy. Effective financial management demonstrates accountability to congregations and builds confidence in the stewardship practices of your ministry leaders. Equipped with knowledge about giving trends, funding models, and spending predictions, your church leaders can speak to scriptural teachings around financial management, and demonstrate their commitment to positive community impact.

You can enter expenses, including attaching supporting documents for vendors and transactions, income, and other transactions, and switch between transaction types within any of these categories, making it quick and easy to enter another type. Reference numbers are automatically assigned to each transaction you enter. After you set up core accounts to use across multiple funds, departments, etc., you can create segments to track additional information such as subdepartments and campuses. Account segments are used when entering transactions, entering budget information, performing inquiries, and processing reports. Some churches will prefer paying a one-time fee for desktop accounting software instead of a monthly subscription plan. A robust reporting capability that consolidates and analyzes the data through easy-to-read graphs is what a church needs from accounting software for each staff member to understand how the organization receives and spends money.

Which Church Accounting Software Should I Pick?

This can help churches to identify new funding opportunities, apply for grants, and manage the grant-related processes. ChMeetings offers accounting features that keep track of contributions and other financial metrics. Finally, decide whether this software is the right fit for your church long term.