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When it comes to managing church software, church leaders often feel like they’re putting together a puzzle without all the pieces. You want to build disciples—not manage databases. The “missing piece” that makes everything work together is finding the best church management software (ChMS) for your ministry.
ChMS technology has grown more powerful and user-friendly than ever. But which is the best option for your church? A quick search online results in a seemingly endless list of church management software programs, each with their own features, advantages, and limitations. Whether your church is already using a ChMS or you’re looking to try something new, you’ll want to start by identifying what features are most important for helping accomplish the goals of your ministry.
Let’s take a look at the best ChMS features to give you a clear understanding of what’s available so you can make an informed decision for the greatest possible impact!
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Church administration can be a daunting task for churches of any size, and managing multiple church management software programs on multiple computers is even more frustrating. That’s why one of the most attractive features of a cloud-based church management solution is having a centralized source of data on the web. Your church leaders can access this software anytime and anywhere to manage operations, communications, finances, groups, and more.
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Probably the most popular feature offered by church management software solutions is people management. Your ChMS should contain church member profiles that include names, contact information, family relationships, attendance history, demographics, giving history, and so on.
The last thing church leaders want is for anyone from their community to slip through the cracks. With the right tools, your staff can enhance communication, management, and follow-up workflows! A good ChMS should also offer features that can match the best church directory software, like finding and merging duplicate records, as well as allowing your members to manage and update their own user profile information.
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Small groups are essential for building meaningful relationships and a healthy church. Your ChMS should make it easy for your people to get connected to the right groups. This is done through group searches based on criteria (e.g., by location, interests, age of children, etc.) that work best for your visitors and members.
Your ChMS should also include group leader communication, volunteer management, event management software, and scheduling tools to keep everyone updated through email, text, or group messaging.
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As a church leader, you have a lot on your plate, and it’s easy to become overwhelmed by tedious administrative tasks. The best church management software makes it simple for you to create workflows that automatically handle time-consuming processes! This allows you to literally set it and forget it.
For example, when someone gives online for the first time, your workflow can trigger an email to thank the new donor for their gift. No more worrying about forgetting to send new visitors a follow-up text message. Want to remind people about an upcoming event they signed up to attend? Let workflows handle that too!
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A good ChMS puts all of your email, texts, and group messaging in one place, making it much easier to keep in touch with everyone. You can also see all of your outgoing and incoming church communication history at a glance.
Don’t forget that custom workflows can send out reminders to volunteers, staff, and church members for you—automatically! You can also schedule tasks for important actions like following up with someone who’s not attended for a while or send a financial report before your next board meeting.
Check-ins are an important step for child safety, and also helpful for volunteer management. Your ChMS should make it simple for anyone to check in from their smartphone (or other devices) and receive SMS messages in case of an emergency.
The best church management software will also integrate with third-party background check software to ensure that all of your employees and volunteers are cleared to serve with your organization.
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Any ChMS programs worth considering should integrate with your mobile, online, and text giving platforms—like Subsplash Giving—making online giving safe, simple, and worry-free for your donors.
You can also send end-of-year charitable tax statements, view your donation summary, and use this information to forecast future incoming gifts.
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Managing your church’s musicians, speakers, and volunteers for upcoming meetings is no small task. You should expect your church management software solution to help with the heavy lifting by automating this process with tools like:
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Churches use forms for all kinds of important actions that keep people connected: event registrations, volunteer opportunities, small group signups, and so on.
Your church management system should make it easy to create these custom forms and registrations so you can quickly gather all the information you need in one place. Plus, custom workflows can use this information to make communication and coordination more simple than ever.
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Automated church attendance tracking gives church staff insights into who has been coming or missing out on church services and events.
Armed with this information, you can create workflows to schedule and send follow-up communication to check in so nobody falls through the cracks. These processes optimize the impact of your ministry outreach and provide insights by monitoring attendance trends.
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Church events take a lot of planning, coordination, and communication. Your ChMS should include event management software for churches with an event scheduler that will:
Event planning also requires good volunteer management tools, making it easy to stay connected with those who are signed up to help.
The best church management software monitors your finances to give insights into your online giving, cash contributions, donor information, expenditures, and the overall financial health of your organization.
Both providing your leadership team with key financial information and pulling reports for board meetings and audits are important safety measures that create transparency and accountability.
A ChMS collects vital data from attendance tracking, check-ins, emails, media hosting, and church giving that can provide a holistic view of your church’s health. The dashboard should quickly and clearly give your team a bird’s eye view of key metrics that answer important questions, such as:
Creating customized reports will provide vital information in an easy-to-understand format for each ministry team and department.
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The best ChMS will be part of a platform that integrates with your church’s website and custom mobile app. Your church’s website is its front door, so make sure that it creates a welcoming first impression for visitors. Choose a website meant for churches, like SnapPages™, which will give you church-focused templates, online giving integrations, easy drag-and-drop functionality, and much more.
Your church’s custom mobile app is the hub where your church members go to engage with your church’s content, such as sermon videos, Bible reading plans, podcasts, and live streams. Subsplash apps are the industry standard for powerful custom-branded church apps that are individually available on all the major app stores.
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ChMS databases contain a lot of private personal data, so it’s crucial that they also provide the highest levels of security. Keep that information safe by controlling user access to private information and church data. Each of your church members with access to your ChMS should also be able to keep their personal data private.
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Your church’s ChMS should be part of an all-in-one church media platform that hosts, manages, and delivers your live streams and on-demand content from a single dashboard.
Subsplash Live simultaneously streams high-quality broadcasts from your church to your website, mobile app, YouTube and Facebook Live. Your live stream is instantly converted to on-demand content that can be tailored to suit your needs with Subsplash’s live stream trimming tool.
Subsplash Media allows you to publish, stream, and share your church’s videos to your website, mobile app, and TV app. You can also convert your videos to audio for podcasts with one click of a button.
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The best church management software will come with built-in reports that provide in-depth insights to information your leadership needs, as well as bring insights to questions they may not have thought of yet.
These reports should be able to cross-reference your system, export the data, and be able to schedule pulling and sending reports automatically so that your data is always available at the right time.
Churches today can benefit from technology that reaches more people, improves communication, and simplifies their administrative tasks. With the right ChMS in place, church leaders can enjoy the peace of mind that comes from being able to make the best possible decision they can to achieve their goal of making more and better disciples.
Subsplash provides the best digital engagement tools for over 15,000 churches and organizations. Millions of people hear the gospel and grow in their discipleship journey through The Ultimate Engagemen/t Platform™ from Subsplash.
To find out how your church can increase their reach and better engage your community, [.blog-contact-cta]let’s chat![.blog-contact-cta]
