What is the best accounting software for small churches? Or what accounting software do churches use? I’ll go through various software products, their pros and cons, and reasons you might select one over another. This is a great place to start if you are looking for a solution to manage your church’s finances.
Having the best accounting software at your small church or non-profit organization can play an important role in not only keeping your books organized but also ensuring you are meeting all of your requirements for reporting to different charitable giving organizations. Your accounting software should also allow you to easily run reports showing how much money was given by each person and the date they gave it.
FlockBase
FlockBase is an ERP for churches and businesses of all sizes and intended for accountants, treasurers and more. Its versions include cloud and desktop.
Unique Benefits
FlockBase comes with various benefits that set it apart from its competitors. These benefits include:
- Multiple Locations: If a church has multiple locations, you can draft a list of classes and delegate each transaction to a specific one. This function also offers profit and loss reports that you filter by each class.
- Closed Date: You can input a closed date that notifies other users or prevents them from entering or modifying a dated transaction before the close date. Manage the users list to determine which users can or can’t override the closed date warning.
- Data Backup: Leverage this tool to create a backup of their data files in case you accidentally lose critical information.
- Direct Deposit: Pay staff and vendors directly through their bank accounts.
Church Membership
Chronicle records of members and groups, contributions, pledges, attendance records, reports and communications with the church membership apparatus.
Online Giving
This module enables donors to schedule repetitive contributions. It’s also partnered with Forte Payment Systems for integrated online giving.
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 thanks to the payroll tool. This accessory commits every employee paycheck to memory and recalls the correct paycheck for particular employees. You may also track employee payroll and print year-end W-2 sheets.
Reporting
This attribute permits you to track balances, income and expenses by a specific fund. It handles multiple reports for profit and loss, balance sheets and general ledger, as well as more than 25 reports to pick and choose.
Budgeting
Track and compare actual income and expenditures to your projected budget with the budgeting apparatus.
Bank Reconciliation
Add new accounts to reconcile, evaluate reconciled accounts and uncleared transactions and review the difference in balance with the bank reconciliation appliance. You may also balance account and bank balances.
More Mentionable Modules
Although FlockBase has all the common features for this type of software, some additional features are worth mentioning to streamline your accounting practices. These additional accessories include:
- Fund Accounting: Administer general funds and restricted funds and implement a consistent numbering scheme to identify funds and accounts.
- Paycheck Management: Govern minister and non-minister paychecks and calculate paycheck hours.
- Deposit Import: Input deposits from contribution and membership tracking programs outside of Flockbase.
- Transaction Scheduling: Initiate future or regular interval transactions.
Limitations
FlockBase comes with a few limitations. These disadvantages include:
- Not closing years or starting an accounting period for a new fiscal year.
- Non-sequential checks, making bank statement balancing time consuming.
IconCMO
PROS
- Comprehensive church management features
- Childcare security add-on (separate fee required)
- Affordable for small and medium churches
- Includes unlimited users
CONS
- No fixed-asset tracking
- Expensive for larger churches
- Event registration feature requires an additional fee
- Can’t use Icon Check-in without an internet connection
Overall Score4.07OUT OF5
| RATING CRITERIA | PRICING | 3.98 | OUT OF | 5 |
| EASE OF USE | 3.25 | OUT OF | 5 | |
| GENERAL FEATURES | 3.75 | OUT OF | 5 | |
| CHURCH FEATURES | 4.44 | OUT OF | 5 | |
| EXPERT ANALYSIS | 4.38 | OUT OF | 5 |
Our Expert Opinion
We consider IconCMO our top pick because of its extensive list of accounting and church management features, including fund accounting, event registration, and online donation management. For an additional $15 per month, it offers a child check-in system (Icon Check-in), which is extremely helpful if your church runs a child care program. As a feature-rich church accounting software, it’s complicated to use. It requires more than basic bookkeeping training and experience. But once you get comfortable with it, IconCMO becomes a powerful tool for your church. If your church has paid staff, you can add payroll for unlimited employees for only $25 per month.
Pricing
IconCMO’s prices depend on the number of families your organization serves:
- 1 to 100 families: $35 per month
- 101 to 250 families: $49 per month
- 251 to 500 families: $59 month
- 501 to 750 families: $74 month
- 751 to 1,000 families: $84 per month
- 1,001 to 3,000 families: $94 month
- 3,000-plus families: $124 month
Available add-ons include:
- Icon Check-in add-on: $15 per month
- Icon Payroll add-on: $25 per month
- Event registration add-on: $15 per month
You can try IconCMO for free for 30 days with no credit card required.
ChurchTrac
ChurchTrac, founded in 2002 in a Florida church, includes features for membership management, donations, check-in, worship planning, event planning, website management, and of course, fund-based church accounting. In addition to all of the standard church accounting features, ChurchTrac also offers check printing, recurring transactions, advanced search, and more.
- ChurchTrac offers a free plan for up to 75 members, which includes membership management, imports and backups, and free tech support
- The Standard plan includes everything in the free plan plus track giving and pledges, online donations, child check-in, and more for $5/month
- The Plus plan, which starts at $15/month, includes advanced scheduling, worship planning, song library, and more
Prices increase based on the number of members, and churches can get two months free with an annual commitment.
Church Windows
Church Windows is the signature product of Columbus, Ohio-based Computer Helper Publishing, which has been publishing church management software since 1987. Church Windows is available as an installed desktop version, or as a cloud based software. The accounting features include fund accounting, recurring transactions, custom check-printing, and automated budgeting.
- Church Windows desktop version starts at $379 per module (accounting, donations, membership/scheduling, or payroll) with six months of updates and customer support
- After the initial purchase, updates and support start at $115/year
- The web version starts at $58/month after initial purchase and a 30-day free trial
There are discounts for multiple modules, and multi-module packages designed for small churches with limited needs.
PowerChurch Plus
PowerChurch Plus is an on-premise small business solution for churches and nonprofits catered to bookkeepers, treasurers and accountants.
A preview of PowerChurch Plus’ contributions tab.
Unique Benefits
PowerChurch Plus has unique strengths and capabilities that sets itself apart from the competition. These strengths include:
- Security: Leverage password protection to create numerous user accounts with audit logs that showcase important software activity, including transaction postings, backup restorations and operations that include dates, times and the user that carried them out.
- Backup and Restore: Create small zip file backups for program data as well as backups on floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, media cards and more.
- Integrations: You can integrate this program with Vanco Payment Solutions and Protect My Ministry. You may also electronically file W2 and W3 forms with the E-File tool.
Membership
This element enables you to record individual and family information, conduct group and attendance tracking and communication management.
Contributions
Trace giving history, chronicle pledges, import donations and develop reports with this attribute.
Budgeting
This accessory permits you to input budget amounts for individual accounts or share them by account groups. You may copy budgets from one year to another and change inaccurate ones. You may also export information as Access MDB, XLS, CSV, or DBF files for each account.
Reporting
Email reports directly from the screen preview and email them to one email address, selected members from the membership directory or members from a chosen activity thanks to the reporting appliance. There are 34 fund accounting report templates, 11 accounts receivable templates and 16 payroll report templates to pick and choose from.
You may save and recall report profiles, share report profiles with other users, and assign reports to a default profile. The custom report writer allows you to draft reports from each software module including fund accounting, account balances, accounts receivable data and payroll data.
Bank Reconciliation
Match transactions recorded in PowerChurch Plus to those reported on the bank statement with the bank reconciliation apparatus. You may also generate graphs for account balances.
Payroll
Record infinite payroll transactions for up to 9,999 employees with the payroll function. It comes with adjustable position, department and pay group fields. The fund accounting accessory automatically updates payroll transactions to trace employee contact information including addresses, two phone numbers and email addresses. This component tracks pastor salaries and housing allowances, supports every U.S. Federal and State tax table, installs and tracks pre-tax deductions including retirement and medical insurance and even tracks time off earned and used.
Conclusion:
If your church is looking for accounting software for small churches, or about the software do churches use, you should read this article. There are three major types of church accounting software. The best types of church accounting software are out there for you to select from if you are looking for what is the best accounting accountant for small churches.