Church Windows Erfahrungen

Awesome Church Management Software!

Kommentare: Church Windows has helped our church operations in so many ways. The reporting and budgeting options in Accounting have been especially helpful in financial planning and oversight. The payroll module simplifies all things related to payroll (direct deposit, taxes, W-2s, etc). Giving statements are easy to produce, as well as giving reports. People tracking is always a challenge, and the Membership module does so much to help. The support is fantastic, they know the program, and many of them also serve in their local church. Overall, Church Windows is an outstanding product!

Vorteile:

Our church has used Church Windows for many years. It seamlessly tracks people, giving, accounting, and payroll. Each module can be used by itself, or integrated to all work together. The support people are fantastic--friendly, patient, and easy to understand. Training is readily available through online video tutorials, brief online training sessions, workbooks, and the program help feature. The user-friendly software is great for beginners, offers many features for seasoned users, and versatile enough for church volunteers and employees alike.

Nachteile:

Nothing. I love everything about Church Windows!

Church Windows is a pretty good Church Management software, plain and simple.

Kommentare: As a younger individual who is able to use all of the tech that this program offers, most churches are not up to speed. let a lone up to the gathering point of contributions needed for the cost.

Vorteile:

Church Windows can help you track your membership, donations, accounting, and schedules. Highly supported and the team is available to help with anything you need.

Nachteile:

Sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad. While all the features offered by Church Windows are magnificent, many churches will never need even half of the potential this offers. When you see the price tag that may become clear.

Navigating Church Windows for Ease of Use

Kommentare: Overall experience is very good. I would rate it very well. Adequate support makes all the difference in helping to apply a good experience in working with any kind of software uses.

Vorteile:

I like how all of the options and functions are easy to find and navigate through in finding the information and the end result of printing out a report, labels, or directory listing that I am looking for. All of the information is easy to read, find, and use when I am able to print out a listing and read it correctly.

Nachteile:

I did not like how the instructions are somewhat muddled and a little hard to interpret sometimes. The system itself is easy to use, but however the steps in order to understand in how to use the software is not necessarily the easiest to understand. Whenever I have contacted Church Windows phone support they have always been very helpful, but sometimes it gets confusing in order to know how to ask the certain questions to under to achieve the end results for what I am looking for. I am going to explore more so in newest coffee break webinars in order to access the features and function to help me understand the system and help me to navigate around it much better.

Amazing Customer Service

Kommentare: Overall, Church Windows is a great software and I could never say enough about the wonderful customer service. I can easily track day to day transactions and report to our Vestry board on a monthly basis. As we all know, churches run on budgets so it is important to be as accurate as possible every month to make sure we stay within the budget. Church Windows has been instrumental in showing us where we need to make cuts and where we can afford to grow.

Vorteile:

Customer Service is amazing. I never have to wait on hold and they call back fairly quickly with a knowledgeable rep. Everyone I have spoken to has been extremely helpful and kind.

Nachteile:

Having used software like Quickbooks my entire career, I am used to Intuit's ease of use. Pulling up the check register and being able to click right to the transaction. Church Windows is great and I can find everything I need and print any kind of report I would need but it's not quite as user friendly as I would like. I also don't like that payroll is in a separate icon and not built into the other modules.

Difficulty Converting to Church Windows

Kommentare: I would not recommend this system for someone who is not knowledgeable in terms of accounting systems. The biggest issue, in my mind, is the way the donation module has to tie into the accounting system. In other words the total donations for a week must be exactly what is deposited in the bank. This my be great from an audit perspective, but it makes for difficulty on a weekly basis. The support is excellent and the Church Windows staff patiently answer my questions.

Vorteile:

I like the features of Church Windows but the fact that the donations and accounting are integrated make it difficult to utilize on a weekly basis.

Nachteile:

We are currently using a spread sheet program to record donations and are using Money Counts for our accounting system. The membership and donations modules were fairly easy to implement but the accounting system is more difficult. We have spent two years implementing the accounting system and are not finished.

Time Consuming Set UP

Kommentare: I haven't been able to officially use it.

Vorteile:

I like how it is set up specifically for a church.

Nachteile:

I'm setting up the program on my own. It's difficult to put this together when there are other duties that need to be taken care of during the work day. I still haven't officially used it due to entering all the members in church windows. That part is time consuming. I'm still working on set up. I take 1 to 2 hours out of my day to do the entry. I didn't realize how time consuming this program was going to be. I have talked to some of the reps and they really don't help with set up.

Former User

Kommentare: 12 years' use by the parish to manage membership and donations. Key operators kept it going for first few years. Parish did not devote specific time at the outset to setting parameters of use. When the original users left organization, volunteers had to help newly-appointed users learn how to record data. After a two-year attempt to rectify, Parish Database team elected to search for and have settled on a Cloud-based replacement open for use by many more within the parish.

Vorteile:

High Level of adaptable detail in custom Donations reports exported into csv for conversion to xlsx and further analysis within parish.

Nachteile:

Not readily mastered except by a user willing to invest significant time in learning how to understand and apply documentation offered in training manuals. On-line help is mostly how-to guidance for performing specific tasks. Tech service is responsive when reached, but also mostly how-to. Very little help on understanding the "Why". Incompatibility between membership module's members and visitors section made it impossible to transfer groups from one to another area, other than one at a time.

Church Windows is awesome!

Kommentare: Church windows meets all the software needs of my church including membership tracking, donations, accounting, and payroll!

Vorteile:

Ease of use for both employees and volunteers, seamless integration of modules, knowledgeable and friendly support techs, training options

Nachteile:

I love everything about this software! There really are no cons in my opinion.

Too Much Trouble!

Vorteile:

Some integration is seamless, a lot is not, however.

Nachteile:

Custom reports are hard to design. Making changes is often cumbersome. Data does not import/export easily. Difficult for a new user to learn. Slow and cumbersome. Customer support bad.

Church Windows for a new Church Administrator

Kommentare: Pledging, budget, finances. Changes have been made confused our staff recently.

Vorteile:

Now that I am more comfortable with it, it does contain lots of helpful information.

Nachteile:

hard to learn. Sometimes hard to get in touch for assistance

A Valuable Tool for Church Administration

Kommentare: Overall, Church Windows has served us well, and we would be unlikely to consider switching to a new church software program. There is untapped functionality for us within the current suite of modules - for example, we have not historically used all the options for tracking attendance and communicating with members. We look forward to making even better use of it as time permits our secretary and volunteers to learn how to use those parts of the program.

Vorteile:

We use Church Windows for accounting, payroll, membership records, and donation tracking, so it is an integral part of our church administration. Because we are careful to enter data accurately and use the suite of software systematically, Church Windows is an excellent way for us to manage information and make timely reports to church leaders. We like having one software package to handle so many of our functions, and there is some efficiency to the learning curve because of similarities across the various modules. One of the best things about Church Windows is the quality of the tech support. Our annual fee allows us to contact the support staff whenever we have questions about how to do something or correct something, and since the software is used by several individuals (a staff person and church volunteers) with varying degrees of expertise, questions do arise. The tech support staff is knowledgeable, clear, and responsive to both email and phone inquiries. That helps keep our system running like a well-oiled machine!

Nachteile:

Some of the modules seem less user-friendly to us. For example, the Donations module where we record individuals' giving and generate reports for tax purposes is not intuitive to use, and we found it very difficult to set up quarterly and annual statements in the form and format that we desired, when we began using Donations when the software publisher updated an earlier Church Windows module, Contributions. We interacted extensively with tech support in the course of that transition, and, although they were as helpful as possible, we felt that the software was less flexible than we would like. So, the bottom line is that it can take some effort to learn how to use the software, and in an environment where there is turnover in the church office or among the volunteers handling church administration, that is a bit of an obstacle.

Great features but not always uiser friendly

Kommentare: Despite the above reasons, I am very happy with Church Windows. It gets the job done and the reports are clear and concise (when I can locate the ones I need!). The customer service is second to none. They have always gotten back to me the same day and they are wonderful about walking me through things that I do not understand.

Vorteile:

The features are really great. It has everything we need and even some things that we don't! The reports are clear and concise and there is a variety as far as what types/kinds of reports are available.

Nachteile:

The user-friendliness ability is lacking. There seem to be way too many steps to do one task. Also, it is not compatible with our label machine so we have to do our labels though the program provided by the label maker (Dymo) instead of through Church Windows, which is what we would prefer. One thing I really, really wish that Church Windows offered was the ability to separate families/people into groups that we choose as opposed to the default groups. There is also no way to do a mass delete of people/families, this is especially inconvenient for people who have only attended once or twice or for a function of one kind or another. Instead, I have to go through the entire list of people one by one and delete them. If I had a couple of days to devote just to that task, then maybe I could get it done but I don't so I can't! There should be a way for people to automatically drop off the rolls after "X" amount of time. It is a huge hassle to manually go through 1000+ people in order to see who needs to be dropped or moved to inactive.

Updates not the greatest

Kommentare: Customer Service has always been wonderful with quick response times. The problems I have recently had I just have not had the time to discuss with them as of yet. I am sure they would have something that might fix the data loss problem I am experiencing, but I am frustrated that I don't have the time to deal with this right now.

Vorteile:

Everything links together Easy to enter information Customer Service is very good

Nachteile:

The membership update takes 5 times longer to get the information I need while it "gathers" the information. The newest membership update created a problem with several families having one person whose information is lost and it is not allowing the information to be re-entered. It keeps coming up with an error message and I have no idea how many of the families this affected. It also will not allow me to delete the person affected to start them over from scratch. Reports are not easily gotten with some of the updates and often come up with errors and will not print - doesn't like the query requested. Cannot edit reports to only have certain columns for ALL report options. Many reports have to print microscopically to fit on one page horizontally - doesn't work well if printed on two or more pages for legibility. Many of these reports I do not need all of the columns, but have no option to omit the unnecessary columns. Cannot pull up a browse with multiple accounts at the same time for report purposes.

Use of Church Windows

Kommentare: Within my genealogy society, I am able to modify the membership features to show those that are of most importance to me (membership date, last paid date, etc.). It produces the reports I want - with some help from a telephone call. I always have telephone assistance to help me, and the people are always so patient and helpful and pleasant!

Vorteile:

As Parish Administrator at Grace Episcopal Church (Alexandria, VA), I used the membership, contributions and accounting modules of Church Windows for some eleven or twelve years. I selected the software from others and was pleased with it, and more pleased with its improvements. I attended two of their training programs (conducted locally). I was always well pleased with the telephone assistance, when needed. After I departed from Grace Church, I purchased the membership module for tracking members of a genealogy society (I am the treasurer). The membership module satisfies our dues payments and allows me to maintain membership information and produce a directory for our members (some 350 of them). I continue to be pleased with the telephone assistance. I am more than happy to recommend Church Windows.

Nachteile:

The contributions postings to accounting that was orginally offered. The contributions entries were totaled by day, confusing my bank reconcilations. This was changed during the time I used Church Windows; so it is no longer was a problem. I saw an example of email addresses entered in the household window, rather than in the individual window. Yes, there may be individual email addresses, but I would like to see an email address within the household window (even if it is a duplicate within an individual window).

Rather keep using what we have than to try to learn something "better."

Kommentare: I dont know if we have solved anything but it does seem to make us feel the finances are correct by using this program. I feel for the ones that use nothing like in small Churches.

Vorteile:

I like that we can call for support and almost all the time they are very helpful even for those of us that are very basic in knowledge. I like that membership, finances , receipts etc are all intertwined together. Not sure if there is anything better for a Church or not but Im not willing to relearn a system. It took our team awhile to get switched from Financial to Accounting and we struggled but like anything we adjusted - dont know how to compare as far as other systems but this seems to be fine. When someone suggested we try a spreadsheet we all said NO.

Nachteile:

I dont like that i have to manually enter my figures from payroll when i go to Pay Bills With Outstanding Balance - with Financials those figures were automatically brought over and there was no chance of making a typo each month. It worries me every month i will make a mistake. Some of the processes seem repetitious to get to the end result but we have gotten used to it now. It takes 4 steps to enter things compared to the Financial program you used to have. Its also hard to wait for help when we call.............several of us only work several hours a week so when we go in we are not there for the whole week to wait for a call. We may be there 2 hours and leave until we come again. We have upgraded to the premium which helps but it is still hard when we have nothing else to do when waiting on support.

Improvements needed for Reports

Kommentare: Church Windows software helps with our budget and our membership with associated income and expenses. We do not use the majority of the features offered with this software. Perhaps a compact version could be built for smaller churches with limited budget and less membership?

Vorteile:

We like the software for the tracking features in accounting and membership. We also like the improvements in searching for members and inputting to donations.

Nachteile:

After improvements a year or so ago, some of the features were no longer available, as in reports and labels, etc. Now, some times two fields, as in flagging deaths, are required to be "checked", other times only one field needs to be "checked", as in running custom labels, to get the results you want. The accounts balance sheet and treasurer's report are confusing for our congregation to grasp quickly, thus requiring officers to explain more and/or prepare a spreadsheet. The transfer of data to a spreadsheet is a great concept, however, the spreadsheet layout needs additional formatting making the transfer of data inefficient for our part-time positions.

Perfect for small to mid sized churches

Kommentare: Our team loves Church Windows. It's perfect for our church, and we haven't had any payday hiccups since we adopted the software. So that makes everyone happy!

Vorteile:

I love the option of one time payments. Although we do pay monthly for certain services, it's so nice to know if we needed to cut back on the monthly options, we would still have a working product for running the church financials. The customer support is amazingly helpful.

Nachteile:

No mac support. This is a little limiting since all of my design programs are running through my macbook.

Church Windows Software

Kommentare: I think I stated that all in the above paragraphs. I really could not think of the way I did it before (so much more time consuming) verses what I do today and I can get a lot more done when reporting is much better.

Vorteile:

The software has made it very easy to keep up with weekly donations, to do the deposits for the weekly donations and it makes end of the year easier for tithe statements. Also, reporting is really good. I don't have to look up for paperwork but instead I document when I pay bills what it is for and it tracks it. It comes out a certain budget line item and it is a great way of running a report when someone wants to know what we have spent out of that account. I really like when we do the budget. It gives you a grid to help you for the following years budget to what you have spent that year and what we took in. I have used Church Windows for 10 years and it has been a pleasure working with them for any questions that I have. I like the online classes that does teach me something new each time that I can use.

Nachteile:

I think 10 years ago when I started using it, it was the hardest to set up because I was not use to do anything like this on the computer but always by paper or in books. Once I learned the software, it was much easier than I thought it would be. I am grateful that we found this software. I did look at others and found that it was not as good as this one was in support, ease of use and reporting.

Church Windows Woe's

Kommentare: Church Windows is not user friendly. The customer service is not much better. You find yourself not wanting to call them, because they either will confuse you more or be of no help really at all. They speak to you as if you are a CPA and you should already know this. We have thought about changing software, just haven't done it yet. Probably, because I do not want to take the time to learn a new one. I do wish this software had a lot of the features that Quick books offers.

Vorteile:

To be honest, nothing. After working with the software for 4 years, it has gotten better, but I still find myself having to stop and think ware to go to get a report that I need or how to make something work etc..

Nachteile:

The reports are hard to read and understand. Not being able to type in an account number and it open up on the Treasures report, you have to scroll up and down looking for the account. Membership has been updated and it is worse than it was before. The entire setup of Donations, accounting and Payroll are very tedious and hard to understand, especially trying to explain reports to a non financial person.

"Improvements" Frustration

Kommentare: Honestly, it functioned much better for us in the past. Even the accounting piece has become more complicated. I feel as if the company has sabotaged its best features in its efforts to "improve" their product.

Vorteile:

"DID" is the operative word. I used to love how intuitive it was and how easy to use. I could devise reports in 1-3 minutes and make entries and changes to membership records quickly, with ease. The screens were easy to use and the tab choices clear. This has all changed and with each "update" the software has become more cumbersome to use. The one area that is easier is exporting lists.

Nachteile:

The screens for members/visitors are awkward to use - you cannot see the data on one screen. The reports require a level of computer programming knowledge that most church employees do not have and while you can figure it out it takes 30 minutes to put together a simple report instead of 2-3 minutes. There have been no "courses" on reports that I have found. The new labelling of tabs is confusing for folks who have been using the software for years.

Makes Church Accounting and Review Painless

Kommentare: I have nothing but great things to say about the customer service. They are always helpful and never make me feel dumb when I make a silly mistake or a HUGE one. The software itself is so easy to use! Very intuitive.

Vorteile:

I love the ease of reporting! Having all of my accounts, givers, and budgets in one place makes assisting the finance committee so easy. Catching coding mistakes and correcting them is painless. Thanks for making this program so user friendly. I am not a CPA!!

Nachteile:

I wish the cost of the cloud based subscription were a lot more affordable for this small church. Other than that, this program is great.

Absolutely fabulous

Kommentare: Trough the free training webinars, the huge previously recorded webinars library on their website, and of course with the help of the Church Windows Support Consultants it was easy for me to learn about the Church Windows software. I continue to listen in to the lunchtime training webinars as they are very helpful to learn about new features of the software. I highly recommend Church Windows software even for a small congregation.

Vorteile:

I have been working with Church Windows for 4+ years now and I cannot praise Church Windows software enough as I only received a couple of hours of training from the previous church employee. Coming in with an accounting background, it is easy to understand and learn, the free training webinars are easy to follow. I love the feature of reoccurring transactions, once it is set up correctly it is easier and faster to input transactions.

Nachteile:

Using the payroll system the IRS form 941 is only available during the beginning of April (first or second week usually), I like to receive them earlier.

Church Windows User

Kommentare: I have received calls from other software companies and turn them away. I absolutely love Church Windows Software and support and have been using it for the past 11+ years!

Vorteile:

I love that the software is very easy to use. If you have an issue, there support desk is very patient and can answer all your questions.

Nachteile:

I wish that when a member leaves the church, that their donations stay open for the present year. If you don't mark the box for inactive, their donations don't show up and will not match your General Giving in your account module for the month.

A time saver!!

Kommentare: We moved from a spreadsheet reporting method to Church Windows for recording church members into a data base that offers many uses. Later, we added the Donation module and this was the greatest asset for the software. First in importance was the accuracy of the entry and the availability of almost instant reports. It allows us to produce a very accurate statement of giving for tax purposes and allows us to produce these statements in a very short time.

Vorteile:

The software offers the user the ability to record data in an accurate way and therefore, produce an accurate report. Moving from an Excel spreadsheet method, this allows a more accurate product and allows for a multitude of reports in many formats.

Nachteile:

If I were to chose a negative, I suppose it would be the learning curve. While there are many resources offered by the support staff, it takes a good bit of time to really appreciate the many functions offered by the program.

Church Windows Revew

Kommentare: It allows a small congregation to maintain payroll and accounting records without the added expense of hiring an accountant.
I have always found the support team to be helpful and responsive. The free webinars are also very useful - particularly the ones designed for year-end procedures!

Vorteile:

It is user friendly for someone who is not a trained accountant or bookkeeper. Allows me to print professional appearing reports that are easily distributed to committees. The reports provide the information needed for various finance committees. Stored history in the various modules is helpful when I need to recall various transactions or help a committee remember a particular vendor or reason for an expense. Reports in the donations module are helpful during our stewardship campaign to track pledges and donations and compare them to previous years.

Nachteile:

I do not like the most recent version of Membership! I think the previous version was much easier to read and edit. The result is that I use membership much less frequently. I also used to use it sending email blasts to our congregation but now use Mail Chimp instead.