TouchPoint

Avantages

I love that it can do -everything-. It is where all folks manage their online giving, it is where we print new directories from, we can send our weekly newsletters from it, registration for summer programs, scheduling of acolytes etc., and so much more. It is "one stop shopping" for all things congregational management.

Inconvénients

It seems to have been developed by people who don't have a lot of LGBTQ+ folks in their faith community, and we do. So there's a number of things we've run into with that, some of which have been able to be fixed by customer support, and others not, so that is a frustration.

Avantages

TouchPoint's robust features include member data management, online giving, event registration, volunteer coordination, attendance tracking, and much more. Any ChMS if, hopefully, the central place for all things "people," and this is actually true with TouchPoint. The software does great out-of-the-box, but can be customized to do all sorts of other things. Also, the customer support is outstanding, and new development clearly reflects actual church needs. There's also a well-established user community where TouchPoint users at different churches can compare methods and learn from each other. The cost is quite reasonable, too.

Inconvénients

I think this is true of any system that needs to appease many churches: different churches need slightly different things. I think TouchPoint navigates those differences pretty well overall, but not always perfectly.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir TouchPoint 

Logiciel antérieur 

Pourquoi passer à TouchPoint

Avantages

Smartphone app (love this!) Membership (photos, info that individuals can update themselves, family relationship notes, pastoral notes) Contributions, web-based (can access anywhere) Attendance tracking / ability to enter attendance over smartphone app.

Inconvénients

Lacks full financial suite (gen ledger, accts payable, payroll, etc) Reports could be more customizable and outreach forms too. Difficulty of integrating with Microsoft Word for producing form letters. A few other things I can't recall right now.

Avantages

TouchPoint can do everything we need it to! It wraps so many different tools into one convenient package. It is robust and extremely capable as well as very versatile and adaptable.

Inconvénients

Registrations, messaages related to registration settings, screens related to registrations, and user ease for registration could be better.

Avantages

The ability to customize searches to find accurate opportunities for ministry.

Inconvénients

Whew! What a learning curve! It takes 2 years to feel like you know what you are doing -- this is also a pro because it shows the expansive nature that the system provides.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir TouchPoint 

Pourquoi passer à TouchPoint

Avantages

It is a tool the helps serve our staff by enabling effective outreach and ministry to our church family

Inconvénients

integration with texting platform (powered by text) has had a lot of bugs and issues

Avantages

I'm most grateful for the was TouchPoint has improved our ability to truly know and shepherd our congregation as well as the helpful church network TouchPoint has developed.

Inconvénients

My least favorite part of TouchPoint is the lack of real-time dashboards for registration forms requiring a report to be run to see registration results.

Avantages

Flexibility, online portal, app, ability to develop further, task/follow up system

Inconvénients

Check-in could be more customizable, app is very good, but just links a number of things back to the church website instead of having the information native to the app.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir TouchPoint 

Logiciel antérieur 

Avantages

Extremely and intuitive to use platform. Filled with robust and customizable features and metrics. Extremely attentive customer support team. Minimal learning curve.

Inconvénients

I can't think of any negative feedback or experiences that we have had while we have been using TouchPoint.

Avantages

System is capable of being configured and adapted to suit all sorts of ministry's needs and ideas. Fully integrated features mean all data points are accessible by any user with permissions.

Inconvénients

Frequency of bugs and timeline of resolutions. This is partly due to the size and depth of features.

Avantages

The software is extremely user friendly and acts as an interface for the entire office even when some staff members are out on visitation, vacation, hospital duty.... It is very helpful in keeping track of accurate demographics and statistics for our church not only on a member informational level, but also in a financial sense as well. The ability to also accept credit/debit card transactions easily through a simple link on our website has increased contributions, tithes, and offerings by quite a bit. TouchPoint also allows our pastors to know who has visited with whom and also for our senior pastor to assign tasks to associate pastors; effectively delegating tasks and visits across the entire pastoral staff. As the financial secretary, I utilize the Touch Point software for keeping up with contribution records as well as yearly capital pledge campaigns. The software has the ability to compile financial data and run easy reports. Over all, I love the "user friendliness" of the software. It seems to be designed along the lines of some popular social media forums and it is extremely easy to navigate. Over all, the software gets an A from Woodlawn Baptist Church.

Inconvénients

The mobile app that coincides with the software is not as user friendly for either internal staff or members. The app is easy to find and download on any app store; however, once the app is downloaded and log in occurs, it is very limited on the functionality. Our pastors utilize the mobile app to pull up address information for members when they are out on visitation; however, they are not able to input information regarding their visit on the app. It has been mentioned several times that it would make the software/system much more attractive if they were to access and update information within the mobile app instead of waiting until the end of their visit/day when they are sitting back at their desks, in front of a computer to input all of the necessary information that they would like to include about the visitation/events of the day and to pass on that information to the rest of the staff.

Avantages

This software allowed us as a church to take ministry into our own hands. There were several features with TouchPoint that we had never had access to with previous software companies. For example: the ability to assign tasks to certain people and put some responsibility in their hands helped our visiting ministry really take off. This is an excellent tool to help keep data and other information in a cohesive manner.

Inconvénients

When we moved to TouchPoint from our previous software, there were certain elements that were not able to transfer over. These were not "mission critical" items, but they did play a crucial part to our ministry here. We had to really work with their customer service department to get the best results from our conversion.

Avantages

TouchPoint is a comprehensive CMS. I have handled most all of the CMS functions for our church over the course of my time as a ministry assistant and there has not been one time where TouchPoint did not the capability to accomplish what we needed. From membership, attendance, and communications, to complicated online registrations, TouchPoint has checked all the boxes for our church. And if there has ever been a time when I needed help, their support staff is quick to respond and has a ready explanation/solution. I highly recommend TouchPoint!

Inconvénients

There are not any "cons." TouchPoint is comprehensive so someone new to church management software will need some time to get comfortable finding their way around. But again, the support staff is always close by and ready to help.

Avantages

It's very user-friendly.
It's useful on multiple platforms (app, mobile browser, laptop/desktop).
Customer Support

Inconvénients

They provide plenty of free training to get you started. They answer any and all questions. I would like to have a little more training at a more affordable cost. At least offer more in-depth and a broad range of videos for training.

Avantages

Since part of my job is to keep up with our members I like how easy it is with Touch Point. I love the way you can use the Decision Summary to keep up with changes made in the system. I also love the fact that when a change is made to a person's record you can see who made it and when it was made. Also this system keeps the info in the system so you can always go back and reverse it. This is a great time saver.

Inconvénients

I like reports the least because I have had a harder time figuring them out. Those younger than I picked it up right away. My brain doesn't think the same way as the reports work. With that said the Customer Support helps me anytime and is always very encouraging.

Avantages

I have used other congregational databases before, and this software is SO much easier to use. The simple labeling and ease of navigation around the software has been huge in helping me get the information I need quickly and efficiently so I can keep moving forward in my ministry.

Inconvénients

Adding a new person into the database isn’t as easy as I would like - They do have a round about way to add people, and the reason is to make sure everyone in the database has a “touch point”, a place of connection, so I get it, but it’s just a little cumbersome.

Avantages

Easy to keep congregation contact information and send out mass e-mails with announcement or prayer requests. I also know that

Inconvénients

The program can do a lot & it gets complicated, though I don't typically need to know those things for my needs of the program (like list all the confirmation students or VBS kids) and I don't always know how to make it do what I want (but we do have other folks on staff that can help with that).

Avantages

Ease to make groups within the organization (for classes) or for meetings. Love the ease of having people rsvp via email to a meeting and it automatically gets put into the organization that their attending or not. Great for keeping track of where people are in their membership process.

Inconvénients

It would be great to use the financial part with this to track tithing, but I have taken time each year to see if it's worth it to switch from manually entering from Vanco to Quickbooks online and it's still better to use Quickbooks, to me. Then, my reports are all in one spot.

Avantages

Easy to use interface, reporting, people pages, bundle management, organizations

Inconvénients

volunteer management calendar is a little clunky. I'd like to have a way to print out the calendar in a nicer format.

Avantages

It's user-friendliness

Inconvénients

Because it offers so much, it can be overwhelming. The nature of my job does not allow for the time needed to really explore all the ins and outs of TouchPoint. I feel that flying by the seat of my pants to meet deadlines hinders a much more effective use of the software.

Avantages

The ease of looking up member information and registration for various events and groups. Also the customer support is phenomenal! Response time and overall consideration of the IT support is one of the best I have ever experienced.

Inconvénients

We did not have training on the program, and have spent a lot of man hours "figuring it out." I know that training is available but the cost was such that our administration felt it was prohibitive.

Avantages

It's interface is pretty intuitive. I like that you an do a variety of things with it.

Inconvénients

1. it is not the best way to do registrations. Registrations need to be more like you see on websites. It is first a data base, and then a registration tool. It has created a lot of confusion for our church members registering things
2. I wish there was a way to set up automatic emails with a click of a button.

Avantages

Attendance

Inconvénients

Searches

Avantages

It definitely gets the job done. We've got all our church goers in one place, we can send mass emails and track people. Support staff is my favorite part.

Inconvénients

It's often frustrating or difficult to figure out. I think someone needs to go through and make some operations more intuitive.

Avantages

Ease of use, simplicity, ability to take online giving

Inconvénients

No biometric support for nursery check-ins, whether fingerprint, or even RFID card/chip