It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the small business accounting software out there. It’s one thing to find software that works for you, but you also need to find something that will work for your church. I’ve worked in many smaller churches and have seen first hand how easily they can go over budget by using the wrong type of software.
What 5 key Church Accounting Software features should I look for?
Accounts payable
Keep track of what bills you owe and make sure you pay them on time. Process your outgoing payments, track invoices, store vendor details and print checks.
Accounts receivable
Effectively manage incoming payments. Billing codes allow for easier processing of recurring invoices, and payment codes make it possible to credit payments to multiple accounts at once.
General ledger
Track spending and budgets by department, committee, fund and project and maintain a complete record of all financial transactions. View transactions from specific accounts for a chosen date range to make budgeting and reporting simpler.
Payroll management
Handle the unique requirements of churches and pastors, including housing allowances and insurance for staff, as well as more universal payroll capabilities, such as direct deposit and vacation day/paid leave tracking.
Asset management
Centralize asset and inventory management to manage the entire equipment life cycle, from acquisition to depreciation and maintenance. Enables users to store documentation and make insurance claims for all church equipment and property.
QuickBooks Premier: Best desktop church accounting software for small churches
We typically recommend QuickBooks Online for small businesses, but that is not the case for small churches. If your church is on the smaller side, QuickBooks Premier, with its nonprofit capabilities, may be your best small church accounting software option.
Why do we recommend QuickBooks Premier — a desktop-based product — instead of cloud-based QuickBooks Online? Primarily, it’s because of donor reporting functionality. Although you can employ workarounds to make QuickBooks Online work for your church’s accounting needs, QuickBooks Online doesn’t provide any donor reporting, nor will it print end-of-year donation statements. QuickBooks Premier does both with minimal effort.
Using a desktop product like QuickBooks Premier means you lose the flexibility of anytime, anywhere access to your accounting records, unless you choose to pay for a hosting service like Right Networks. However, the functionality you gain with QuickBooks Premier — and the time you’ll save at year-end makes this inconvenience negligible for most small churches.
QuickBooks Premier requires a one-time purchase of $499.95, but nonprofit organizations can typically receive a significant discount if they purchase through TechSoup. If you need church accounting software with payroll capabilities, QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll is available for $31.50 per month plus $2 per employee per month.
| QuickBooks Desktop PremierREAD REVIEW |
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QuickBooks Premier add-on: Breeze
As your church grows, you might find you need more functionality than QuickBooks Premier offers alone. In particular, your growing church will need to manage volunteers and events, enable online giving, and possibly even run email campaigns.
Enter Breeze, a web-based church management software for small and medium-sized churches. Breeze is not a full accounting software, but it does produce most of the reports your church leadership will want. If you want a full church accounting software solution — and we do recommend using one — Breeze bridges the gap between QuickBooks Premier alone and more robust (and costly) church-specific accounting and management software.
You can integrate Breeze with QuickBooks Premier, or as this article on Breeze’s website explains, you can also make manual entries into QuickBooks — or any other church accounting software.
Breeze costs a flat fee of $50 per month for unlimited users, unlimited members, and all their features, including support, the Breeze smartphone app, and all upgrades — making it one of the most affordable church management options on this list. Back to top
PowerChurch: Best all-in-one church accounting software for small to midsize churches
Founded in 1984, PowerChurch Plus is one of the most established church accounting software programs on the market. PowerChurch Plus is a desktop-based church accounting software, but the company also has an online option: PowerChurch Online. Unlike QuickBooks where the desktop and online versions of the software differ considerably, PowerChurch Online is an actual installation of PowerChurch Plus on PowerChurch’s servers.
PowerChurch is a complete church accounting software, membership management, and recordkeeping system for your growing church. If you need more functionality than the core program offers, you can purchase additional add-ons, such as to handle check-ins or mass mailings. Keep in mind though, this will raise the price of your church accounting software — but if you were paying for these things anyway, it can streamline the process to get them all from the same provider.
The PowerChurch user interface isn’t anything fancy — in fact, it harkens back to the accounting software of 20 years ago — but it does what it’s supposed to do, and it does it well. However, one downside to PowerChurch is that it’s not form-based like QuickBooks; instead, it assumes a basic understanding of double-entry accounting–including which accounts are normally increased by credits or debits — making the learning curve a bit steep for someone with no prior accounting knowledge.
PowerChurch Plus is available for a one-time purchase of $395 if you download the software, or $415 if you order a physical disk for installation. Upgrades are an additional $159 for downloads or $179 for physical media. PowerChurch Plus only works on Windows PCs.
PowerChurch Online is $39.95 per month for two users, with the option to pay an extra $25 per month for every two additional users. If you opt for annual billing instead of monthly, you will save a marginal amount and pay $455 for the standard two-person license, or $275 per two additional users. All upgrades are included in this price, and you can use PowerChurch Online on any computer with an internet connection.
What 5 key Church Accounting Software features should I look for?
Accounts payable
Keep track of what bills you owe and make sure you pay them on time. Process your outgoing payments, track invoices, store vendor details and print checks.
Accounts receivable
Effectively manage incoming payments. Billing codes allow for easier processing of recurring invoices, and payment codes make it possible to credit payments to multiple accounts at once.
General ledger
Track spending and budgets by department, committee, fund and project and maintain a complete record of all financial transactions. View transactions from specific accounts for a chosen date range to make budgeting and reporting simpler.
Payroll management
Handle the unique requirements of churches and pastors, including housing allowances and insurance for staff, as well as more universal payroll capabilities, such as direct deposit and vacation day/paid leave tracking.
Asset management
Centralize asset and inventory management to manage the entire equipment life cycle, from acquisition to depreciation and maintenance. Enables users to store documentation and make insurance claims for all church equipment and property.
Aplos: Best cloud-based church accounting software for churches of all sizes
If you’re looking for a 100% cloud-based church accounting software option that will grow with your church, look no further than Aplos Church Software. Aplos Church Software is a cloud-based, all-in-one church management and accounting system that grows as your church does.
There are a number of pros to choosing Aplos Church Software:
- It was built by a CPA who is also a pastor, so the accounting behind the software is solid.
- It does true fund accounting, making it easy to manage your restricted funds.
- The all-in-one platform helps you manage everything you need as your church grows.
- It’s easy enough to use internally, but an assisted bookkeeping service is also available through Aplos.
Ranging from $24 per month for smaller churches to $199 per month for established congregations, Aplos Church Software’s pricing scales as your church grows, meaning you won’t overpay in your church’s infancy or outgrow the platform as your church matures. An Advanced Accounting option for larger churches is available starting at $179 per month (and requires an annual contract). Aplos Church Software will also work with you to create a custom church accounting software solution, known as their Thriving plan, which is quote-based.
If you’re looking for church accounting software with payroll, Aplos Church Software does not include payroll services in their own software, but they do integrate with Gusto for seamless and stress-free payroll management.
If you don’t have someone on your church’s administrative staff who is comfortable with accounting, Aplos has you covered with their bookkeeping service. Their team of specialized nonprofit bookkeepers will do all the accounting heavy lifting for you, starting at $300 per month without payroll or $400 per month for church accounting software with payroll and bill pay services included.
Conclusion
Many pastors are interested in purchasing church accounting software for their church or ministry to make bookkeeping easier. If you are an accounting professional, the best church accounting software for small churches would be different because of your understanding of why pastors need to know there financials.