What are you using??
Here in Las Vegas, NV we have little daily contact with other UU congregations as they are 100's of miles away. We have been using Church Windows for several years as it was the only solution we could find that combined membership, pledge tracking with accounting in one package. It is not the easiest system to use and requires several monthly general ledger entries just to keep it close to accurate. As we have no paid accounting staff, finding someone to handle this task is getting to be tough. Also, this is a simple networked operation on older equipment and can not be connected to Apple workstations. So we are searching for something else.
We have looked at standalone systems and not been impressed, so we are looking at cloud based solutions. The two products that seem to answer our needs are from ACS Technologies and APLOS. Each offer us a chance to try it out, but before I get a testing team together and tackle one of these, I thought I would ask you folks if anyone has experience with either of these two products, or chose another product that you feel is superior to either. It needs to include tracking, membership, donations, pledges, check book and other accounting issues dealing with cash basis accounting (but fund based style).
I look forward to hearing from a few of you.
Thanks for your time
Keith McMillen
Treasurer, UU Congregation of Las Vegas
Comments (3)
We're going with two solutions instead of one. We recently moved to Breeze after hearing a lot of positive feedback on it. They've been making mention of adding an accounting feature and they do have a plugin that can do some of it, but they recommend against it and I like their reasoning. Here's their link to the discussion page: https://support.breezechms.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002437053-Using-an-…
Spoiler: APLOS is a recommendation on their list. If you split off the accounting into a different app, then you have a thousand choices. Breeze is pretty good but there are similar products that people prefer. I also would recommend the cloud products, since it allows users to do work from home instead of driving to church to do work.
My biggest reason to recommend Breeze is the data import service, which is great. They'll take any kind of spreadsheet/database and import it for you. We're switching to Quickbooks someday, but still currently use powerchurch desktop for its accounting module. We have a bookkeeper but she revolted at the pace of change. My biggest recommendation is using the system your people can adopt.
We moved to Breeze recently and I'd have to recommend splitting off your accounting from your membership. There are a million great systems for accounting and lots of people know how to use them. You can track your expenditures separately from your pledges and just move the finance numbers between the two. Most systems seem to do it this way. Here's what Breeze has to say about it:
https://support.breezechms.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002437053-Using-an-…
We were using powerchurch desktop and I loathed it, but we've continued using the accounting module since the accounting features were familiar to our bookkeeper, but I've looked at it and I don't think anyone else will ever be able to figure it out once she leaves. Anyway, I'd just recommend against the golden hammer approach. There are a thousand church management systems out there. The cloud based systems are really nice since you don't have to drive to a building to access it.
We are using Realm for membership and pledge tracking, and QuickBooks (On-line) for accounting. It is easy to find people with expertise with QB, and Realm (and many other CMS) export to it well. At one point we were tracking pledges in QB, but that was cumbersome and nor very pretty. Ther dual system works better.
Martin Bauer
Oak Ridge UU Church
300 members/$450,000 budget