ChurchTrac Online Review

One of the distinguishable feature of ChurchTrac is its church membership administration. This feature however is not limited to the active members of a church since it has the capability to record and organize data accomodating even prospects and visitors.

Under the church membership administration capability of ChurchTrac, there is a feature that allows users to group members and non-members. This feature is called Smart Lists. Users are provided with the option to create their own set of Smart Lists or they can use the pre-set  Smart Lists of the software. When users select a specific group or list in the Smart Lists, the software would only show the names of people included on such list. They can add a new list and configure the Smart Lists settings to define which people would be included on the list.

To do this, they have to set the criteria for a given Smart List. For instance, if they want to create a list of people who are not involved in a ministry, they can select the “is involved in a ministry” as an entry in the user-defined field for names list. Then, they would select “No” in  the user-defined field for the Match ANY of the following. As a result, the software would only show the names list of people “who are not involved in a ministry” when users selected  that particular Smart List. This feature is very important as it would help users to easily send text messages to their members and visitors. Furthermore, they would easily track members using this feature.

Another feature of ChurchTrac is its financial management capability. This feature is used to create, manage, and track church accounts, budget, and payroll. Through this feature, transaction details can be imported as well as the printing of W2 reports.

To segment the financial resources of their church, users have to create an account  and select the type of account and input the starting balance, for instance, they can choose checking account. When they are done creating an account, the next step is the creation of categories or subcategories so that users would be able to track the disbursement of funds and determine which categories/subcategories the funds are released to.

To illustrate this, users can set up Utilities as the category and its subcategories are electricity, water, and sewage. After the account and its categories/subcategories are set up, they can now create transactions by adding new transactions. Users would be able to select and  fill out information such as the name of the payee, the amount of fund, and the category. In this feature, recurrent transactions are can also be saved as memorized transactions hence when a transaction is recorded that way, users can instantly select the transaction as they create a new transaction without the need of inputting, filling out , and selecting the same data they previously used. With this financial management capability, churches and ministries would be more transparent to their members in their financial transactions and sustain their programs  for better ministry.

ChurchTrac also has the capability to track attendance for church events such as Sunday School and worship. Important dates are also recorded and users can automatically remind their members for their attendance and participation for the events associated with those dates. Furthermore, the software allows users to generate and print attendance reports. This feature is significant since it would help church administrators and pastors check attendance trends.