The things churches actually ask

No, and small churches often feel the benefit soonest. A large church usually has an administrator; a small one has a pastor doing it after hours. The obligations are the same either way — SARS does not have a lighter set of rules for sixty people. Use the parts you need and leave the rest; there is no minimum size and no per-member charge.

No. It is built for the person who actually counts the offering, not for a bookkeeper. You capture what came in and what went out, and the statements assemble themselves. If you do have an accountant or auditor, they get proper books rather than a spreadsheet — which is usually the first thing they ask for.

A spreadsheet is fine until you need to prove something. It cannot show who counted the cash, cannot produce a certificate a donor can submit, and quietly diverges from the bank. If your spreadsheet is answering every question you get asked, keep it — you will know when it stops.

Yes. Members, visitors, giving history, attendance, pastoral contacts and bank transactions can all be imported from a spreadsheet, so you start with your history rather than a blank system.

One Sunday. Import your list, and run the next service's collection through it. The trial is forty-five days so you have real room to test it against several real Sundays rather than a demonstration.

R150 a month for churches with 90 members or fewer, and R350 a month once you grow past 90 — either way, the base subscription includes most modules: accounting, membership, giving, children's ministry, pastoral tools, QR self-registration. Your price adjusts automatically as your membership grows. Some modules are priced separately and are listed with their prices on the Modules page. Prices are in rands and billed in rands. No card is needed to start the trial.

Fairly, and not always in our favour — so here it is straight. The well-known American church platforms mostly sit around 72 US dollars a month, with bundled versions near 119. One of them does start under 10 dollars, which is cheaper than us — but that entry plan caps how many members you may have and does not include accounting.

The real difference is not the number. It is that they bill you in dollars, so your price moves every time the rand does, and that not one of them can issue a Section 18A certificate your donor can submit to SARS — because they were never built to. You would still be doing that part yourself.

Five things, and they are the reason churches stay rather than the reason they sign up.

One QR code covering congregation, staff and children. Visitors register themselves correctly, members check in, staff clock in for payroll, and every child is accounted for against a guardian — from one system, included in the base subscription rather than sold as a higher tier.

Pastoral follow-up that does not wait for you. It runs on its own and emails your leaders their list — who has stopped coming, who visited once and never returned — whether or not anybody logged in that week. Most systems will show you that if you go looking. This one goes looking for you, including while you are away.

A real set of books, not a giving tracker. Cash reconciliation, a balance sheet, an annual budget against actuals, and an audit trail on every cash count. Most church software records what came in; it cannot produce statements your auditor will accept. That difference alone is worth the subscription.

Section 18A built for SARS, not adapted for it. Certificates generated from giving already recorded, with donor details, eligibility per income category, and donations in goods tracked in and out. Software written for another country's tax system cannot do this — it was never asked to.

Official letters that still exist in two years. Membership confirmations, references and invitations issued on your letterhead with your signature — and archived against the member, with the date and who issued it. Not a Word document on somebody's laptop that nobody can find when it is needed.

No. Each church's records are separated at database level — the separation is enforced by the database itself rather than only by our software, so it holds even if a mistake is ever made in the code. Nothing is pooled or compared across churches.

Whatever you decide. Access is set by role — you might let a ministry leader see their own group's attendance and nothing else, while giving figures stay with the treasurer and the pastor. Changes are recorded in an audit trail.

It remains yours. Your records can be exported, and cancelling does not delete them — cancelling stops the renewal, and you keep access until the period you have paid for ends. We would rather answer this question before you sign up than have you wonder about it afterwards.

No. It is month to month and you can cancel from inside the system, without asking anyone's permission or waiting for a reply to an email.

Open the module and use the Deactivate box at the bottom of its own page. It stops being charged from your next billing date, and nothing it holds is deleted — switch it back on later and your records are all still there.