Best Accounting Software For Churches: Top Picks & Reviews

It aims to provide churches with an easy-to-use and comprehensive solution for their financial management needs. Many churches use church management software (ChMS) to handle membership databases, attendance tracking, and event planning. The right accounting software should integrate with these tools to sync financial data with church operations. The best accounting software programs all provide similar features, so when considering which one is best for your business, you need to consider which features are the most important to your situation. Certain software is best for actions like accounts payable (A/P) and banking and cash management while others are geared more for retail companies, offering cost tracking, inventory management and collecting and submitting sales tax. Other features you may want to consider include whether the software has a mobile app, how good its customer service is and how well it does with accounts receivable (A/R) and financial reporting.

Top 5 Accounting Software for Churches

Church accounting software enhances financial oversight by improving accuracy, transparency, and efficiency in managing church funds. Churches handle multiple revenue sources, such as tithes, donations, grants, and event fees. Without structured accounting, funds can be misallocated, records may become inconsistent, and compliance risks increase. PowerChurch offers full-featured accounting software with general ledger, bill pay, income management, payroll processing tax management, donor pledge and giving management, statement generation and printing capabilities. Many church contribution software systems may offer free trials of their solutions, which can be easy ways to test out if a software is worth the investment. Some church tithing software may actually have a completely free version you can use, but often they will come with restrictions, such as only allowing you to record a certain amount of data before you are asked to pay to continue forward.

best accounting software for churches

Online training is a great tool for self-paced learning, which is beneficial when you have a part-time staff composed of volunteers. You’ll have clear, real-time visibility into how much has been given, where it’s going, and what remains in each fund. Designated gifts let people support the areas of ministry that matter most to them—like missions, youth retreats, or building projects. In Desktop Premier 2021, you can categorize bank transactions with the improved matching capability with more detail by using enhanced rules and batch editing. Update the latest payroll tax tables for your employees and pastors to get paid appropriately. Through the members module, you can view information about the people in your church and their households, with the flexibility to set up households, assign relationships, enter notes, view contributions, and manage pledges.

PowerChurch Plus

ChMeetings is a comprehensive church management software that helps churches organize finances, track contributions, and manage operations all in one platform. While primarily known for member and event management, it also includes financial tracking tools that allow churches to monitor funds, track expenses, and generate visual financial reports. Aplos accounting is a cloud-based accounting software for churches and nonprofits considered the best church contribution software. It has functions including monitoring donations, managing expenses, and financial reporting. Additionally, it interfaces with other platforms for communication and fundraising that are frequently used by nonprofits.

Online payments

Some churches, especially smaller churches, may have many unpaid staff members who will need to utilize the software, and training them on their own schedule can prove to be time-consuming and costly. It connects your giving platform with your church accounting in a way that actually makes sense, so that the numbers work with your ministry, not against it. You’re not tracking profit margins—you’re stewarding tithes, offerings, designated funds, and ministry budgets. Behind every donation is someone consciously choosing to be part of your mission. Good donor management software helps you treat that person like more than a line item. With so many options available, here are some key factors to consider when choosing your church accounting software.

Overall, Vyapar is a reliable and cost-effective solution for streamlining business operations. As a small organization of fewer than 10 employees, Xero proves to be a cost-effective solution for our company’s requirements. Xero provides real-time insights, which overall help in making immediate actions with up-to-date financial data. The security and compliance standards ensure up-to-date accounting standards are used. Not all church staff are financial church accounting software reviews experts, so strong customer support and training are essential.

• Bitrix24 is a business management software that provides a number of functionalities that surround around communications, tasks and projects, CRM, contact management, and website creation.
• The software’s multidimensional data model is especially pertinent to religious institutions.
• Ministry Scheduler Pro was developed for church organizations to better improve their schedules.

• Larger churches, however, have dedicated finance teams or administrators to manage their books.
• From collecting availability, creating schedules, sharing with volunteers, and setting reminders via text and email, this software will improve your church volunteer process and ensure no program or event is left short-handed.
• Ramp automates bill payments, reimbursements, and ministry-related expenses with corporate credit cards, ensuring accurate categorization.
• I have been using this application for 1.5 years, and it’s very user-friendly.
• Keep in mind that this solution is an industry-neutral solution and was not developed with churches in mind.

In its most affordable plan, you can create church member and staff profiles and offer a selection of donation methods, devices and even schedules. You can also track donations on giving dashboards, enter and manage donor pledges and manage restricted funds. Its Connect plan further allows churches to engage members in personalized ways.

QuickBooks Online: Scalable and flexible accounting solution

Automating invoices will simplify the payment collection process, which is why software like Quickbooks is often enlisted among the top billing & invoicing software that provide your followers a convenient way to make payment for the organization. Automatically categorize bank transactions with improved matching for payees, accounts, and classes, limit data entry with batch editing, and quickly review and resolve discrepancies. 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. Create a church budget for each fund to manage revenues and expenses, write checks, make deposits, reconcile checkbook activity.

Best for Free Accounting Tools for Startup Churches

Also, read customer reviews to learn if users are satisfied over the long term. Decide whether your church can thrive despite any weaknesses reviewers mention. Wave Accounting is best for very small churches with zero budget to cover accounting software. Bitrix24 provides social tools for engaging your congregation, like social network, user groups, polling, media gallery, shared calendars, video conferencing and more. It can also help you manage your church board by organizing your structure, and keeping a church directory.