Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2018 23:15:40 -0000
Hi,
We are about to transition from doing management via spreadsheets for
membership and Quickbooks for financials to using Breeze which, in theory,
does it all. I?m very confident that Breeze will simplify our member
management and takes will beyond the limited capabilities of a simple
spreadsheet database, but my level of confidence is shaky is in the
integration of the financial data, pledges, donations, et cetera, into
Breeze.
If your bookkeeper has been doing everything in Quickbooks, does that
software easily integrate with Breeze. And if not, how easy (or difficult)
is it to get the data out of Quickbooks and into Breeze? And is there a
serious learning curve when moving from Quickbooks to Breeze?
Thanks,
Rob Tanner
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of McMinnville, Oregon
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Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2018 23:37:15 -0000
Hi Rob,
Breeze is a fantastic database for managing membership and donations
records. I can't recommend it highly enough! However, it does not have an
accounting section (for accounts payable, general ledger, balance sheet,
etc.) It is designed to work side by side with a bookkeeping program like
Quickbooks. That's what we do and it works beautifully.
There is very little learning curve with Breeze. It's simple, intuitive,
and simply fun.
Lea Smith
Congregational Administrator
Unitarian Universalist Church of Concord (NH)
270 members
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Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2018 01:00:48 -0000
If you have left IconCMO to use Breeze, could you say why the switch; how
long ago; has it been valuable/worthwhile change for your volunteers/staff?
Thanks for the input. I don't think we'll be changing but I'm getting
requests for info and it seems like Breeze is the popular kid on the block
right now.
Linda Warren
Aiken UU Church, SC
est. 85 members
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Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2018 02:31:59 -0000
We?re in the process of changing from ICON to Breeze. Breeze is extremely
easy to use and extremely flexible. Everyone who?s used it during the
conversion has been very impressed.
We only used Icon for membership, not for accounting or even contributions.
I tried several times, but wasn?t comfortable leaving QuickBooks for what
seemed a less flexible, less secure system. We should have changed to
another CMS once we figured out we?d never use the accounting section, but
change is hard and it didn?t seem worth the volunteer effort. Their new
Rubix program might have been a better fit than ICON, but by the time that
was available I was looking elsewhere.
Everything in Icon took so many steps to keep all the parts in sync,
household, member, dates, other items. In Breeze it?s much simpler for
database users to see what needs to be done and not miss steps.
We tried several times to get members to use the ?parishioner? access in
ICON but only 1 or 2 households ever used it. And the few who tried stopped
after ICON stopped supporting the app a couple years ago. Their new app is
useless on a small screen, it?s the same view as in a browser. We haven?t
rolled out access to Breeze to our general membership yet, so I don?t know
if it will be widely used once they have access. The Breeze app has a
couple limitations for an admin, but most users will never notice a
difference from the browser version.
Also, while ICON has good tech support, Breeze has amazing support.
Peg Christenson
Finance Chair
150 members/$151K budget
www.BBUUC.org
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Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2018 04:05:20 -0000
support went from Good to Amazing with the change...makes me think I might
need to reconsider! We use Icon Membership and Contributions but not the
full on accounting because of it's difficulty. Any issues with
exporting/importing data?
Linda
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Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2018 21:20:03 -0000
Exporting from Icon was easy. Biggest issue was needing to un-archive
people to get the info. Importing data into Breeze was easy. Once you build
your profile fields, you download a template, rename the columns in the
export file to match the Breeze template and import. The only data I wasn't
able to simply export and import was the Talents section. I may have been
able to sort it out, but it seemed quicker to simply create Tags and
populate them myself.
If you ever need/want to have online payment, registration for classes or
ticket sales, the forms in Breeze are fantastic. I made this form
<https://bbuuc.breezechms.com/form/2c9b16> for an upcoming concert in 10-15
minutes.
Peg Christenson
Finance Chair
150 members/$151K budget
www.BBUUC.org <http://www.bbuuc.org/>
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Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2018 18:01:17 -0000
Hi all,
I'm the treasurer at Wy'east congregation in Portland, OR. We're a small
congregation with about 50 pledging units, a part-time minister and two
other very part-time paid positions. Currently we're using OnPay for
payroll and haven't had the best experience; we're using ChurchDB for
member/pledge management, and use a mixture of Quicken and Excel for our
accounting and bookkeeping. We're looking to move to a software that can
handle all of these functions at a comparable price. Generally, it seems
like payroll is the function that's hardest to find integrated, but it
looks like Icon CMO has it and so does ChurchTrac. Coming to this as a
volunteer (social worker by trade), I find evaluating some of these
functions, especially the payroll service, a bit daunting. My questions are:
-Have people found the payroll functionality of Icon CMO adequate? Can you
suggest other relatively affordable options?
-How about ChurchTrac? I tried to sign up for the free trial several days
ago and got an error message. So far, my outreach to tech support has
received no response. I know that doesn't bode well but I really want
ChurchTrac to work because it's so affordable, comprehensive, and
well-reviewed!
Any input on the above or other thoughts that come up for you are extremely
welcome!
in community,
Mathias Quackenbush, MSW
Portland, OR
(360) 213-3524
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Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2018 18:23:18 -0000
Mathias,
I am Treasurer of Evergreen UU Fellowship in Marysville, Washington, a
congregation of about 80 pledging units and 7 partime staff. Until this
year we tracked pledges and contributions via Church Windows and used
QuickBooks for our accounting. We switched to IconCMO late last year but
did not fully implement the change over until our fiscal year end at June
30, 2018. Although the transition was more difficult than we had
anticipated, we like everything about CMO except the payroll module. I am
copying this to our bookkeeper since she does the payroll and can give you
specifics of what she does not like about it.
As of January 1, 2019 we are switching payroll to PayChex. Although the
normal pricing was much to high for us PayChex substantioally discounted
the price for 18 months, giving us time to increase our budget to where we
can afford something at least closer to the posted pricing.
I hope this helps and wish you well in your search. Please feel free to
call me at 360-770-5944 if you have any questions.
Roger Johnson
skagitrailbird at gmail.com
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Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2018 01:25:45 -0000
HI,
We had a similar situation using Church DB and QuickBooks with our
accountant .We have since moved to PowerChurch that has it all as an
integrated software package. Membership is not as nice as Breeze or some of
the newer Browser based membership programs. This is an on-line database
program that works fairly well. Approx $365/yr with one sign on. We pay
for two so that we have a guaranteed sign on for most individuals using the
program. They have demo you can download and play with. A ton of video
tutorials, a great user forum and the best phone support I've seen for a
software program.
Doug Hober
Unitarian universalist Congregation of York
230/$400k
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Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2018 02:26:16 -0000
We?ve had PowerChurch for over 15 years and I love it.
Al Gundlach
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Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2018 02:42:18 -0000
Thank you. I am just starting to explore what is out there and this is very
helpful.
Teresa
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Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2018 02:43:40 -0000
Thanks you this is helpful
Teresa