ACS Software
ACS Technologies’ church management software applications enable church staff to manage member records, contributions, events, small groups, volunteering, check-ins and more.
Members and leaders can facilitate relationships with one another using calendaring, scheduling, registration and attendance tools within the small groups and event management modules. The built-in communication tools allow church staff to send bulk emails to members. It also offers accounting tools to manage the flow of finances and keep a record of payments made.
At the same time, ACS’ contributions module tracks and organizes giving and tithing data, supporting one-time and recurring gifts, online and offline donations and automated contribution statements for tax records. With integration with the church accounting module, staff can maintain accurate spending and budgeting by fund, department, committee or project.
And with iOs and Android apps for mobile devices, church members and staff can quickly find contact information while in the field.
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OnDemand dashboard -
OnDemand dashboard on iPad -
Report generator -
"Workbench" to enter data and run reports -
Mobile app
Supported Operating System(s):
Mac OS, Web browser (OS agnostic), Windows 8
68 Reviews of ACS
Bob from Freelancer
Specialty: Christian, Protestant
Employees number: 11-50 employees
January 2018
January 2018
Great Church Software Management
Pros
I like the way this software allows you to access other church members along with photographs to recognize individuals within the church. I currently am assigned the process of checking roll in our Sunday School class which I do on this software and submit without the need for paperwork.
Cons
I really haven't discovered anything negative with this software yet. However, having only used it for a about a year, I am still learning it.
Jimmie from newhope church
Specialty: Non-Denominational
Employees number: 51-200 employees
December 2017
December 2017
ACS Finance
Great software for a single site application!!!
Pros
ACS is very user friendly and easy to set up. I set up the general ledger and contributions modules and found this a very intuitive process. ACS is flexible and has adaptive reporting that makes it easy to gain access to your data.
Cons
ACS needs to "grow" it's ChMS application so that it can compete with the older players in this market. We would like to see more functionality that would make it more viable for a multi-site application.
Richard from The Epicurean Group
Specialty: Other
Employees number: 201-500 employees
November 2017
November 2017
Effective for our operations
Overall, nice evolution of the software
Pros
Ease of navigation, customizable reporting, effective help menu system. Adjustable to individual user in the settings and screen layouts.
Cons
Occasional crashes, if it locks up, you have to re-log in, and via the log in, exit the program that just crashed, then reinitialize.
Zenobia from House of Hope - Operation Breadbasket
Specialty: Other
Employees number: 11-50 employees
October 2017
October 2017
Grateful!
A very good product. I would recommend them to anyone looking for a flexible system.
Pros
As a small non-profit, we were looking for software to help streamline our data collection and reporting; one which focuses on client management and tracking. When we were introduced to ACS, they were a God-send. It was a flexible system that provided numerous options. We were able to manage our client intake much more easily than in the past. Overall, we found them to be a great fit for our organization.
Cons
Once you understand the main parts, the system works well, however, more integration is needed. Usually, the help-desk representative was very prompt with their answers to questions. There were so many features that we didn't get to learn them all.
Amanda from Grove City Vineyard
Specialty: Non-Denominational
Employees number: 11-50 employees
July 2017
July 2017
Perfect for a church new to church management software
I was new to my position at a church and ACS was the program we had in use when I started. It was a great program and was easy to learn with very minimal training.
Pros
Organizes a lot of information for you church members and also can keep track of the contribution side of your ministry.
Cons
The look and some functions are a bit outdated. They are constantly doing updates and the cost is a bit expensive.
David from Poplar Creek Church
Specialty: Christian, Protestant
Employees number: 11-50 employees
May 2017
May 2017
difficult
Pros
It does interface with our financial system and they have good accounting people to solve accounting problems
Cons
Set-up for reports is too complicated and graphs are difficult to arrange and filters are confusing.
Mark from Calvary Baptist Church
Specialty: Christian, Protestant
Employees number: 11-50 employees
April 2017
April 2017
A proven product but a lot of training is required.
Pros
ACS does everything and more than what we need. Customer support is excellent. Cloud based for remote access is very helpful to work from home or office.
Cons
ACS is not intuitive at all. It has been around for decades and often feels like it is old software with a lot of patches to make it work with new ideas. Customer support is great, but you shouldn't need it frequently. We spent a full week training our staff on ACS and the modules we have added. It seems like we frequently get "kicked off" and have to log back in to keep using the software.
Matthew from Christ United Methodist Church
Specialty: Christian, Protestant
Employees number: 11-50 employees
October 2016
October 2016
ACS
ACS is kind of the standard for many churches in our denomination. However, it has taken years to find the time to utilize it to a large extent. At times it is challenging to learn in an timely manner. However, ACS is a good, functional product.
Pros
Database and Financial records easily connected.
Cons
Challenging to learn fully
Advice to Others
Get as much training as possible and make sure a large amount customer service help available.
Dan from Gateway Fellowship
Specialty: Christian, Protestant
July 2016
July 2016
Excellent financial management with considerable flexibility
Likes Best
Responsive, professional, high quality, the integration of the various modules
Likes Least
Has a cloud-based product but still transitioning to the cloud environment
Recommendations
know what you want & need, evaluate your own accounting expertise & how it fits with the software tools
Brian from Wears Valley Ranch, Inc.
Specialty: Christian, Protestant
March 2016
March 2016
ACS - great value for churches and small nonprofits
Likes Best
As a small nonprofit, we have used ACS General Ledger, People, and Contributions for over 15 years. What I like best is that it is an affordable, integrated, double-entry accounting system designed specifically for churches and small non-profit organizations. The People and Contributions modules allow us to easily monitor pledges, acknowledge donations, summarize gifts by fund, and report on subsets of our donor base using criteria we choose. The General Ledger offers the custom budget-actual reports and statement of financial position (non-profit balance sheet), as well as the summary of restricted accounts that is not found in typical for-profit packages. ACS also allows your administrator to set specific user permissions customization, so you can limit each user to only the functions that he or she needs.
Vendor support is key, and we have found the vendor support behind ACS to be very solid. The software does not do everything, but what it does it does well. When we have had problems or questions, ACS technical support has pro-actively worked them out. In most support sessions, the ACS rep is temporarily granted remote control of our local computers and works directly with our data and reports. Support reps are readily available when we call, and they are very knowledgeable of the product.
Likes Least
Overall, we like ACS. I don't have a lot of criticism. The addition of a functional expense statement would be very helpful, since this is the format used by the IRS on Form 990 (required of most 403(b) organizations but not for most churches). Direct delivery of GL reports by email would also be helpful, but printing to pdf and emailing is not terribly difficult. As our number of donor records and years of data have grown, I have found the software to slow down somewhat, particularly when running custom extracts of donor data.
Recommendations
Consider the reporting requirements for each set of constituents - board of directors, deacons, management teams, donors. Be sure that the software will produce these reports easily and without errors. Test drive it. Find a software that is specifically designed for your organization type. ACS is designed for churches; we have been able to make it work well for us as a small non-profit, but many of the donor analysis features were specifically designed to track church giving and are not necessarily applicable to us. Still, we have found ACS much better adapted to our needs than a for-profit software and much more affordable than the leading non-profit packages.
Jai from Pickering Pentecostal Church
Specialty: Christian, Protestant
September 2015
September 2015
Solid, but not exciting
Likes Best
ACS has a lot of features, and customizable fields, etc. Great customer service for problems (for additional fee per month).
Likes Least
Updates come out very slowly, and the product feels at least 5-10 years out of date. Reports are not very customizable unless you purchase additional module. Not very responsive to requested features. Not Mac-compatible (unless you use cloud version which is more expensive). Have trouble getting staff to use the software - they tend to just want to access it on their phone app. Online Giving is not easy for first-time users. Lots of small group leaders have had trouble using the online attendance tracking.
Recommendations
Really consider what your needs are. Look at programs like Church Community Builder, ChurchTeams, FellowshipOne, ServantKeeper, etc as well. If you are looking for highly intuitive software, this is probably not the software for you. If you want back-door access via ODBC and are a programmer this might be the best option for you.
Ronnie from City Hope Church
April 2018
April 2018
Endless Possibilities with this, no matter your size.
Ease-of-use
Usability
Functionality
Functionality
Product Quality
Quality
Value for Money
Value
Support
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.
Italo from Citibank
April 2018
April 2018
Very good tool to manage churches even small
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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
Jason from Forefront
March 2018
March 2018
We used this at a friends church to see how it would work before buying and decided against it.
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Product Quality
Quality
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.
Omar from Universidad Rómulo Gallegos
March 2018
March 2018
It is really an option to maintain a conection between members of different churchs
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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
February 2018
February 2018
Not the best software compared to others that are comparable.
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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.
Brandon from Woodlake Church
January 2018
January 2018
ACS was a huge learning curve for me, but its robust database made it worth it.
Ease-of-use
Usability
Functionality
Functionality
Product Quality
Quality
Value for Money
Value
Support
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.
January 2018
January 2018
Bulletproof, contains all the core functionality, but dated
Ease-of-use
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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...
jennifer from Moorings Presbyterian Church
October 2017
October 2017
It is like working on Windows 15 years ago.
Ease-of-use
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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.
Kristin from The Church at Canyon Creek
September 2017
September 2017
ACS is an okay program I feel it is very outdated and needs some major updated to be compatible.
Ease-of-use
Usability
Functionality
Functionality
Product Quality
Quality
Value for Money
Value
Support
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.
Ashley from First Baptist Church Killen
Employees number: 11-50 employees
September 2017
September 2017
ACS is a must have software for churches.
Ease-of-use
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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.
Wendy from Gospel Baptist Church & School
Employees number: 2-10 employees
August 2017
August 2017
ACS Technologies that we use for the Church is super easy
Ease-of-use
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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.
Ashley from Expositors
Employees number: 2-10 employees
August 2017
August 2017
Easy for those who are not keen with numbers
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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.
Wendy from Gospel Baptist Church & School
Employees number: 2-10 employees
July 2017
July 2017
Easy to use and has the functions are church needs in a membership database
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Pros
System is very user friendly, able to house all information regarding visitors and members. The software also keeps tract of donations from our church members.
Cons
Wish the additional fields would be all on the first profile screen. For example it wants you to list the family member status, which is similar to profile screen.
Pamela from Gospel Baptist Christian School
Employees number: 11-50 employees
July 2017
July 2017
ACS provides a simple yet very functional service system for updating our records. Love it!
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Record keeping, updating addresses, phone numbers, etc. sending email newsletters, running statistics.
Pros
Very easy to use. Already has the buttons set up for the least time consuming entries. Can easily add family members.
Cons
Only that it does take some searching to find out how to correct a mistake or undo wrongly entered information.
Andrea from Gospel Baptist Church
Employees number: 11-50 employees
July 2017
July 2017
Reporting is not that easy, especially setting up for year end statements.
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Support
Membership interface capabilities. Good product and better than what we had, but I didn't get much training. When we have used customer service/support it has always been good. I am part time, so do not have lots of time to waste trying to figure things out and dealing with customer service.
Pros
Lots of fields available, good access for members. Info seems to be reliable if entered properly. Easy to fix mistakes.
Cons
Setting up reports is not very intuitive and is hard to customize. Not enough directions within the product to guide you.
Aimee from Gospel Baptist Church
Employees number: 11-50 employees
July 2017
July 2017
ACS is okay...
Ease-of-use
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We can keep track of our members and visitors and keep good records for visitation.
Pros
The transition from Servant Keeper to ACS was smooth. The onboarding team and the customer service reps are easy to work with and try to be as helpful as possible. The Church Life app is great, and has been a blessing to our church members.
Cons
Working through a separate "portal" is a total pain. The software seems like it's not advancing with the times, and I would much prefer a true "cloud" based system. We are often "kicked off" the portal and have to log in again. We also have difficulty with AccessACS, because it can only be accessed by a Windows based browser (and we all use Mac computers). It's a bit of a hassle to access AccessACS through a separate browser to do the needed uploading tasks and helping our folks with their passwords and such. Finally, they really haven't updated much in the software. It's stagnant, and I see some areas where we may want to explore more modern technology.
A. from TES
Employees number: 2-10 employees
February 2017
February 2017
ACS for Education
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I use ACS to track tuition and donations for our institution. For what we need it is perfect! I love that it will remember what you have been tying in, which is helpful for when entering in per class tuitions.
Pros
Ease of use for entering in.
Cons
When something is "partially paid" it's hard to make changes to the invoice.
Advice to Others
n/a
Christopher from Faith Baptist Church
February 2017
February 2017
Grown with software
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Church has been with ACS for over 16 years, have grown with the changes. Currently running on our own server, with workstation versions on desktops, and kiosk on check in stations. Software performs most task needed for basic church management. Ability to use Dymo label writers and touch screen computers for check-in was a huge improvement. No real work flows or process flows with automated steps.
Dan from Garden Ridge Church of Christ
February 2017
February 2017
expensive and hard to use
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As a Children's minister at a small church I need check-in solutions that don't break the bank and are easy-to-use. That's not ACS. Reports are challenging to receive. The secretaries at my last employer in Mesquite hated it for being confusing. My current employer uses ACS but I don't see the benefit of it. If I had a vote, I'd tell them to switch.
Donna from Episcopal Church
January 2017
January 2017
Rating of ACS program for Episcopal Churches
Ease-of-use
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I have used ACS for 16 years from DOS to Windows to Online based. Online was an awesome expansion! There was never down time (except for middle of the night maintenance) and it was always fast. Backups were never a worry. Customer Service was friendly, extremely helpful and patient. On site training was available at extra cost.
Pros
Customization. Online based. Does yearly Parochial Report and sends it to National Church. Parochial Report can be printed daily, weekly, monthly....as many times as you wish for internal reporting to Vestry or Rector. Access to training.
Cons
It can be pricey for smaller parishes/churches. Realm (for smaller parihes) is still young and needs tweaking. When you are used to the fuller ACS version, Realm can be a bit frustrating. Realm only recently had General Ledger talking to the Financial module.
Advice to Others
Ask your parish administrator or church secretary if she has any previous church software experience and listen to her. She will be the person using the software more than volunteers or other non-office personnel.
