ACS Software

Pledgers who are not attending.

Pros

Reports, tracking a stewardship campaign over several years, customer service is tops.

Cons

Uses a software that doesn't convert excel spreadsheets into a functional spreadsheet. The columns do not keep the formulas. Therefore you have to make the formulas in a new column. Multiply steps for reports. Should have more reports that are already set up in the software.

ACS is a church software product with several different suites to choose from. I found the People Suite, then Realm, extremely helpful in keeping member records, and the Financial Suite gives the church the reports and information needed for making budget decisions.

Pros

ACS Realm is a simpler version of ACS People Suite, and much more intuitive. The implementation was smooth and the transition fully backed by their wonderful customer service. I also love getting a live, knowledgeable person on the phone within a few seconds of calling.
Payroll is also very easy in ACS Financial Suite.

Cons

The Financial Suite is not intuitive, but mistakes have gotten easier to fix due to upgrades. The church is still waiting to switch to ACS Realm Financials, as payroll cannot be done there, despite well over a year of promises that it is happening soon. It would be helpful for Realm input of donations to flow to the Financial Suite.
Also, ACS People Suite gave options for certain reports that cannot be run in ACS Realm.

Pros

I like how it stores a lot of information and that the customer service is always very prompt.

Cons

I do not like the ​interface, it is outdated and can be confusing.

We selected this product years ago, because we needed a church database software that could do a good job with Finance/General Ledger processes. The product we were using at the time did not perform well. We researched a variety of products, narrowed our search to 3, and visited areas churches that were using the 3 products to test them out. At that time, ACS was much more user friendly than the other products. We have now been talking to ACS about converting to Realm. Watching demos, Realm is much more modern looking and ease of use is high. We will be working on transitioning to this within the coming year. After talking to other churches who have made this transition, we will take a gradual approach - activating Realm with staff for a time period first before fully activating with the entire congregation.

Pros

Performs general ledger and accounts payable functions well. Headmaster is used for Preschool/Kindergarten classes.

Cons

Headmaster is a little cumbersome to use, but you get used to it. Heavy on data entry to set up students. We looked into using Event Scheduler, but determined it was too cumbersome for our use.

Being able to easily recall information about people in order to reach out to them.

Pros

It was easy to pull up information on how to contact someone or to find out personal details about their family. This is especially helpful in large churches where you might not know everyone who attends very well.

Cons

I don't have any cons that I can think of at the moment. I might have to say that the information may need to have stronger security settings, or I was given more access than some people (ie. volunteers) maybe should have.

I improve my way of organizing and analyzing my activities inside and outside of my social environment. Applications are necessary because they help us improve our relationships and have time for other activities

Pros

It is very useful- I liked the ease of use and the characteristics it offers for the management of the church and the school. In addition, the ACS customer service and development teams were incredible. I recommend it a lot. Excellent

Cons

It is necessary to make some updates in certain areas to streamline the customer service process. In addition, it does not have the latest in operating system updates and passwords.

Pros

I really liked the ease of use and the features that ACS offered for church and school management. Also, ACS's customer service and development teams were incredible.

Cons

At times, the wait time for customer service was rather lengthy, especially around peak seasons like in February and March near tax time.

Pros

The customer service with ACS is very helpful. Their website is user friendly and saves your previous orders to allow for easy reordering.

Cons

Our organization recently switched banks and it required a couple phone calls to design new checks with our new information on it. The customer service was very helpful but it was somewhat time consuming.

Pros

ACS is great if you need everything. They offer a lot, and have been around for a while, so they know the Church world. Their support is usually quick and knowledgable. You don't have to be an IT master to work with them as they walk you through everything you need.

Cons

They offer everything, sometimes it's better when a software focuses on just what You need not everything that raises costs and may end up bloating software.

Good application for the administrative management of churches

Pros

The customer service is very friendly and efficient. The application is quite robust for the administrative management of churches.

Cons

It is not a very intuitive application, which is compensated with the efficient support it has. Also the interface is a bit simple

Pros

The interface was really clean and simple, it seemed pretty easy to move around for the most part when working in it.

Cons

It was just too basic for our needs, not robust enough to really do what we wanted. I wish there was more to do everything we needed for our church.

As member of a catholical community I would have actual information about my churh

Pros

It is an important tool to communicate information , independent of the church size, with total access to information anytme and anywhere

Cons

This software only is supported in english, then it is exclusive to use only in english spoken countries

I was able to do snail mailings from this software but only if it was a mass communication and not a more narrow piece.

Pros

I like the fact that it is easy to use at first glance. It is easy to log on and view information and to use the database entry pieces

Cons

I do not like the fact that you cannot sort out your database to a great degree. For example, you can add fields, but it is not easy to do and to then sort according to your added fields is not easy.

Pros

ACS is powerful. It holds a whole lot of data and can do everything from help manage group and events to managing payroll. Once you learn how to navigate the software, you are able to dig into a lot of different search criteria and information to find just about any piece of info you would want on a church member. I personally do not work with the financial side, but I hear nothing but great things about how secure and robust the financial info is as well.

Cons

ACS has a huge learning curve and the user interface is antiquated and pretty hard to navigate. The ACS team knows this however and rather than rock the boat for those who know ACS inside and out, they developed REALM which we have since moved to.

Crucial information that aids in caring for our church family.

Pros

I love that this software has been refined and is extremely reliable and fast. Efficient data entry and keyboard functionality. Powerful reporting. Covers the basics of what a ChMS should offer with ease, speed and power.

Cons

This software is dated. It's "cloud" based, but lacks lots of modern communication tools such as text communication, easy email distribution and remote web-based functions like small group attendance, and volunteer management. In all honesty, ACS is so big and has so many add-on features, it can probably do all of these things, but it's hard to know all of the functionality because it's not easily explained anywhere (and I've been a user for 12 years).

Also, it's reporting process is not difficult for someone with some background in reports, but it's far too complex for an average pastor or lay-leader to use - which requires a database person to run reports.

Also, no customizable dashboards, etc.

So, it will probably do most everything you want, but you'll need a ChMS expert to figure it all out and run the reports...

Pros

It does do everything you need for church accounting. The support is very good. The training materials are extensive. The trainers and very good and usually very helpful.

Cons

It is cumbersome, very slow to use (with many extra steps for every task), not intuitive and and very outdated. Some of the training material goes back to 2003, and looks exactly the same. There are extensive training materials, but they are most often so basic they do not answer anything besides basic questions.

Pros

Navigation with this software is quite easy to use, I enjoy the ability to search for my contacts easily, but once again it is slow and outdated and could definitely use a face lift.

Cons

As stated before in my previous comments above, ACS needs to be updated to reflect more modern graphics, and accessibility. I think it would be wonderful to have an app that links to your phone.

Helps keep up with membership info and tracking.

Pros

The best part about this software is the search ability to locate information. While it takes some time to become familiar with how the searches work, you can pretty much find what you are looking for as long as the data has been imputed correctly. For example, you can locate a certain phone number. However, you still need to know how the phone number was classified when it was entered into the software.

Cons

The part I like least about this software is the difficulty of merging documents for mass mail out. There are many steps and takes some time to master this process. It would be great to simply this process.

Pros

We are able to keep a complete database of members, associates, visitors and children. We are also able to keep track of tithes and offerings

Cons

Wish there was the ability to print pictures of people and then there name, so that if you don't know the person's name.

Pros

simple to use, but a lot of capability. Easy to keep track of giving and make reports for unpaid tuitions.

Cons

difficult to use for a school when students drop or change classes after making payments. Wish there was a way to connect to another software to automatically load registrations.