ACS

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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...

Avantages

The best aspect of ACS is that it can hold and track a massive amount of diverse data. You can track all of the things you would expect in a database like names, contact info, birthdates, etc. As a church, you can track the first time someone attended, when they got baptized, and other random bits of info you may want to keep.

Inconvénients

The traditional ACS system is incredibly difficult and cumbersome to use. Its computer app interface looks like it was made 20 years ago; it is not aesthetically pleasing. It requires hours and hours of training to learn how to use (they hold training sessions at different locations throughout the year and have various online helps). Running what you would think would be simple reports is not easy (I have had to pull together updated reports that have members names and addresses to do mailings. I have had to call ACS to have them walk me through how to do such reports as doing so is in no way intuitive. Also, using the computer app program to login to ACS takes several minutes to log into, which can be frustrating if all you are trying to do is look up a phone number (they do have a webbased platform where you can log in, but its function is not as robust in what it can do as the computer-based app, which as I said is slow and cumbersome).

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

If you spent a lot of time setting things up and were using it daily, ACS seems to have the capability to have good functionality. I've been in two different organizations where that wasn't the case, and heard similar things from other users, which meant ACS was something that I used only when I really couldn't get someone else to do the thing I needed, or I really needed to find a piece of information. It seems to be a great place to store all kinds of information.

Inconvénients

The user interface was difficult, making learning it (and teaching it to church staff who are often technically slower) very difficult. Because people never learned it, it was used poorly and data was sometimes out of date, making the whole database only really functional for the financial side of things and we never managed to get the use out of it that we often hoped and tried for. Overall it was a frustrating piece of software when we had to engage with it and people would create their own systems and spreadsheets as work arounds.

Avantages

ACS is a fairly reliable and robust church management software useful for, among other things, managing your general ledger, giving, kids check-in, and people database. If you're a musician, I could tell you that it's like a Shure SM58 vocal microphone...you can drop it 100 times and it still works great...but other mics sound better...and may cost more.

Inconvénients

It is very much out of date according to today's standards. It seems to prefer a large amount of bandwidth for our kids checkin machines running ACS for checkin...it technically isn't a ton of data, but ACS really seems to prefer having a big pipe for it, network wise. ACS is fairly limited in who can and should have access to different parts of it. My biggest complain, though, would be that ACS just hasn't kept up with the development side of their platform to match the technology that everyone is used to using in 2019.

Avantages

There are several desirable features with this software. A primary one is the high amount of customization. However, this customization is only available to administrators and people with understanding of coding.

Inconvénients

Immensely outdated and not functional. While using this software, I felt I put more work into using the software than actual results it gave. I would steer clear of this software if you're looking for a simple, user-friendly and intuitive experience.

Avantages

Robust, lots of functions, built with churches in mind

Inconvénients

Clunky, slow, old interface, can't adapt to ongoing demands of changing churches

Avantages

It is very easy to set up multiple users and customize what they can access at any given time. I also liked how you can have multiple windows open at a time even if they were from different access "suites."

Inconvénients

The service as a whole is difficult to use. I have found the process to find multiple reports very time-consuming even when you know what you are looking for. The service is not as straight forward to use as I had hoped. You also are not able to customize how the reports look which I would have appreciated when sending reports to clients.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

#1 Pro is that ACS addresses the most important tasks a church is in need of.

Inconvénients

I have found many thing that weren't intuitive. Uploading of photos ok although no way to standardize within the program (cropping sorely needed) and downloading photos isn't intuitive. The modules are limited, all the data in Access needs to transfer into the people suite for reporting purposes. Access pretty useless for reporting purposes. Using the volunteer management is not really practical to use as intended. Although you have made changes where you can transmit data to excel or word. OnDemand stings because you can't save locally in an easy manner. Many times our church has served more or less as your beta testing because we actually try to use all the features and give feedback but we get nothing in return for that. We only do that because it is lacking features or functionality.

Avantages

We have been ACS clients since the beginning!! Currently we are using Realm for membership tracking, but still use ACS Financials for our book-keeping needs. It does everything we need, and our books are not as simple as one might think.

Inconvénients

The only con I can think of is that I wish ACS Financials could integrate with Realm. We have ACS Financials down pat, and I wish we could port it over!!

Avantages

1. The customer support!!!! If I can't figure out how to do something, there are so many ways to get help: Phone calls to a live person that walks me through things step-by-step, webinars, other ACS users in different online communities, etc.
2. The flexibility of the product and how it's grown...and continues to grow...to meet our needs.

Inconvénients

The volunteer management piece isn't as directly integrated as we would like.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

Love the customer service! They are great about working with you on issues. It's rare that they cannot solve a problem.

Inconvénients

Not as intuitive as I'd like, but still fairly easy to use once you get used to it.

Avantages

Their accounting module is amazing. I have not found any CMS that is anywhere close to being as good as ACS ileith accounting.

Inconvénients

It is hard to learn and it is very dated. Not mobile friendly. Ugly.

Avantages

I worked as a pastoral assisant for 7 years at my church and we used this software. I found the system to be very outdated and difficult to use, the only thing I liked about it was the customer service when you had a question.

Inconvénients

Honeslty the software is stuck in the 90s, I am shocked how far behind the programing is, it was not user friendly at all/

Alternatives envisagées 

Avantages

- Easy to use
- Great customer service
- Great customizability

Inconvénients

Could look more modern, but certainly gets the job done

Avantages

Organizes a lot of information for you church members and also can keep track of the contribution side of your ministry.

Inconvénients

The look and some functions are a bit outdated. They are constantly doing updates and the cost is a bit expensive.

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

The ability to sort individuals and groups within the larger congregation. We have set up numerous subgroups in our congregation and use ACS to generate our directories.

Inconvénients

Some categories could not be customized as we would have liked. In the people arm, some fields were mandatory even if unnecessary for our purposes.

Avantages

ACS has a lot of features, and customizable fields, etc. Great customer service for problems (for additional fee per month).

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

It does interface with our financial system and they have good accounting people to solve accounting problems

Inconvénients

Set-up for reports is too complicated and graphs are difficult to arrange and filters are confusing.

Avantages

Great accounting software package with robust reporting options.

Inconvénients

Not able to easily import bills. Wish it could link better with our bank and online billing.