How To Find The Best Bookkeeping Software For Churches in 2024?

Finding the best bookkeeping software for churches can be a challenging mission. That’s because while there are a few options available out there, it’s hard to find the one that fits your exact needs. There’s a lot of research and analysis work to go through, and it’s time-consuming. That’s why we wrote this guide – to help you find the best church accounting solution for your needs – by simplifying the process and facilitating faster decision-making. After following this guide, you’ll know what you need, what solutions are available, and which ones may or may not fit those needs. You can then go ahead and try out the ones you think suit you best and make an informed decision. Let’s go!

What Is Church Bookkeeping And Why Do You Need This?

Bookkeeping is the process by which you record and organize your financial transactions, and it is part of a wider concept, called “Accounting”. According to Forbes, “Accounting is the process of recording, classifying and summarizing financial transactions. It provides a clear picture of the financial health of your organization and its performance, which can serve as a catalyst for resource management and strategic growth.”

Accounting is sometimes referred to as “Bookkeeping”, and many people know the process by this term. “Bookkeeping”; however, is considered less advanced than accounting. This is because bookkeeping usually just means recording and organizing your financial transactions; while accounting means the bookkeeping process plus things like budgeting, reconciliations, reporting; etc. 

Church accounting is still accounting, but since churches are nonprofits, it does not involve so many of the related processes that regular accounting does. In church accounting, you focus more on being accountable for the way resources are being used since most of the income is from your congregation, from grants, or in general, from people who want to support your work. 

You must have an accounting process in place for your church because of accountability alone. But besides this, in some cases, you may also pay tax or report to governmental authorities.

Why Church Bookkeeping and Accounting Software Is A Must-Have?

Let’s take the process from the bottom up! 

First, you start with the bookkeeping process – meaning the part where you record and organize your financial transactions such as income and expenses. You can keep your books on paper (although we wouldn’t recommend it); or use Excel or any other spreadsheet software. This can work fine up to a point. For example, when you need to perform more advanced tasks such as comparing your recorded transactions to your bank statements, you’ll notice that it can get extremely time-consuming. That’s why we have dedicated accounting software that automates much of this work. So, you need church bookkeeping software to simplify your processes and work less on keeping the books in check.

When moving to even more advanced tasks, such as fund accounting, budgeting, or reporting, we are already talking about “Accounting” and you need software that can handle more in-depth finance management requirements. When it comes to these broader, you need a tool that can access and analyze your transactions. Manual calculations, for example, or even the good-old pivot table, may unnecessarily complicate things and even cause inaccuracies; which are undesirable considering that your church’s accountability is at stake. That’s why you need a solution that can move beyond plain bookkeeping and perform more advanced accounting.

3 Steps To Choose The Best Bookkeeping Software For Churches

This is not easy to determine. What’s “the best” for one church may not be the same for another. So, you must first decide what your needs are to have a starting point in your search. Let’s talk about how you could find out those needs and what your chosen church bookkeeping solution should provide to help meet that need. We narrowed the process down to three steps:

• Assess your church’s financial activity: What kind of funding do you attract – tithes, giving (in-person or online), grants, event fees, etc.? What do you spend money on – utilities, servant salaries, event-related expenses, maintenance, etc.? Income and expenses must be recorded, so the bookkeeping software you choose for your church must be able to help you do that. You must have at least the option to add transactions for money received or spent. If you want more detailed records, then your software should let you add several income or expense streams and associate transactions with funds, to record the resources available for different aspects of your mission. 
• Know Your Legal Requirements: What does your government require you to do, as a church, in terms of financial activity? Do you have to pay taxes or report your income and expenses? Most churches are nonprofits, so they usually don’t pay taxes, but many countries require churches to report their financial activity. So, the software you choose must allow you to at least create reports from your recorded transactions. The most basic ones are the Balance Sheet, and the Income and Expense Statement. The more reports available, the better.
• Be Mindful About The Skills And Needs Of Your Servants: Does your church have a treasurer? If it does, how skilled is that person? What kind of software would suit them best? If they’ve been keeping your church books on paper or in Excel for decades, for example, they might be very skilled bookkeepers, but may not be familiar with the complex tools available today. The same goes for a beginner bookkeeper, who besides software training might also need bookkeeping instruction. In this sense, the church accounting software you select must be simple enough to be easy for anyone to learn, but powerful enough to cover all of your requirements in terms of financial record-keeping and more advanced accounting. Moreover, sometimes your servants might not need to come to church or, for that matter, use a computer to keep your books, in which case they may need mobile access.

If you find an accounting software for your church that can handle your financial activity, fulfill legal requirements, and fit the skills and needs of your bookkeeper, then you found your match.

What Church Accounting Solutions Are Available?

Again, let’s put paper and Excel to the side and focus on the newer and more powerful solutions that store your data in the cloud and provide easy, permanent access to your records. Let’s look at some of the popular church accounting software available today that might match your financial activity, legal needs, and treasurer skills.

1- Quickbooks

Quickbooks is the gold standard when it comes to accounting software. It offers a wide range of expert-level features, including the ability to record transactions, perform manual transaction imports, sync with your bank, create budgets, perform reconciliation, create budgets, run reports, and much more. It is not tailored to churches though; and can be rather complex, requiring advanced servant training. If you are looking for a Quickbooks alternative for church accounting, we suggest checking the other options we will be discussing below. 

2- ChurchTrac

ChurchTrac is a powerful church management software that also provides accounting features. The platform lets you record transactions, import manually, based on rules, or sync with your bank, create budgets, perform reconciliation, print and void checks, configure recurring transactions, search transactions, deposit giving, create budgets, and create reports. These features are accessible on the web only. ChurchTrac provides tools to record and manage your financial activity, offers reporting, is easy to learn, and is suitable for servants less familiar with accounting or specialized software.

3- PushPay

PushPay is a platform that mainly focuses on giving management, but that also provides some church management and accounting features. Among the latter, their website mentions: transaction imports,  administrator roles, reconciliation, giving deposits, and reporting. These features are accessible on the web only. PushPay provides tools to record and manage your financial activity, offers reporting features, and has a moderate learning curve because of complexities due to multiple integrated products. These may require someone more experienced with both accounting and specialized software.

4- Fellowship One

Fellowship One is a comprehensive church management solution that offers accounting features such as transaction recording and imports, bank sync, income and expense tracking, payroll, reconciliation, and budgets. These features are accessible on the web only. Fellowship One provides tools to record and manage your financial activity, offers reporting, and is easy to learn, but may require a slightly more experienced treasurer. 

5- ChMeetings

ChMeetings is an all-in-one church management solution that comes with an accounting module. This offers transaction recording with income and expense streams, the ability to record bank transfers, giving deposits, manual transaction imports, and bank sync with rules, budgeting, reconciliation, reporting, and user permissions. These features are accessible both on the web and using the ChMeetings mobile app. ChMeetings provides the features you need to record and manage financial transactions, offers reporting, and is easy to learn. It is also suitable for servants less familiar with accounting or specialized software.

Integrating Church Accounting And Church Management

Right now, you may be looking for the best church bookkeeping software, but have you thought about a platform that also helps you manage your congregation, collect donations, organize events and volunteers, book appointments, publish content, and give members access to your church activities? These additional features can make a difference when choosing a church accounting solution, because it can simplify many other processes, not just accounting. That’s why we recommend that you assess the tools we mentioned above from all angles and see how each could potentially help you run your church smoothly and do your accounting in one place. 

Why Choose ChMeetings?

ChMeetings prides itself on providing high value at an affordable price, positioning itself as one of the best bookkeeping software for churches. It lets churches manage various operations in one place and from anywhere. While our platform might lack some accounting features that other fellow app developers provide now, we are a fast-paced team that releases improvements every two weeks on average. We are continuously adding new features, and implementing feedback from our community of over 6000 churches and ministries worldwide. In terms of accounting, ChMeetings does not provide major features like payroll; for example, but it is among the few platforms that restrict access to the Accounting module to ensure data security. Moreover, from the three other accounting tools tailored to churches that we mentioned above, ChMeetings is the only one that provides administrative access using a native mobile app. This makes it easy for servants to manage accounting anytime, and anywhere. You can download our app on Google Play and the Apple App Store, sign up for a demo account available for free for 14 days, and see for yourself. 

If you’d like to read in-depth comparisons between ChMeetings and other platforms, we wrote some for you: with Quickbooks and Fellowship One.

If you have any questions on how we can help you manage your church operations, feel free to get in touch.