Church Membership Software
Choosing the Best

by Terressa Pierce, of FreeChurchForms.com

When choosing church membership software there are key factors to consider. For instance, what are your specific church needs? After all, you are probably purchasing the software for one main reason – to be able to do your job correctly and effectively. Also, you want to organize your church office to where you can easily access forms, reports, letters, etc. to save your valuable time.

There are several key factors when choosing the most efficient church attendance software, such as:

Features

Before purchasing software, find out what specific reports your church administration are requesting. Choose the software that best meets these obligations. Your software needs to at least offer these features:

• Tracks membership information (name, address, phone, email, date of birth, anniversaries, etc.) and generates reports.
• Tracks membership types (active, inactive, etc.), and groups (member, president, secretary, board member, etc.) and generates reports.
• Tracks member's contributions by funds (general, missions, building fund, etc.) and generates contribution reports along with Annual Contribution letters at the end of each year along with labels.

Some software will also track attendance, accounting, and much more.

• Unlimited Memberships: Choose church attendance software with unlimited memberships. Unless your church is not planning on growing and adding more members then you need unlimited memberships. Some companies make their money by making churches pay more money to add more memberships to their limited software.
• Inter-connectivity: Larger churches with more than one or two people accessing the church software, might want to choose membership software with online access for multiple users to have all the data accurate, in sync and available to those who need it.
• Security: Always secure the church member's information. In some cases, the membership software may not have security to allow churches to modify the software to fit their needs, but make sure security (passwords…) can be added to it. Microsoft Access church membership software is very easy to encrypt a password at any time to restrict access to the software.
• Support: Purchase the software with support that is available 24/7 either by email or phone for when or if there is a question or crisis regarding the software.

Tip

Always have an external backup (external hard drive, jump drive, flash drive, etc.) of the membership software.

So consider these factors before choosing the church membership software, and make sure it's the best software for you and your church.

Terressa Pierce, FreeChurchForms.com (Affordable, User Friendly Church Membership Software)