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ACS is a church management software designed to help churches of all sizes handle finances, members, services, background checks, contributions, accounting processes, payroll, purchase orders, and more on a centralized platform. Ministries can maintain a record of incoming or outgoing contact, track members' attendance and participation levels, set up visitation programs, and enhance outreach opportunities.
Typical customers
Platforms supported
Support options
Training options
Starting from
279.95
Per month
Per Feature
Starting from
No pricing info
Value for money
3.6
/5
123
Starting from
279.95
Per month
Per Feature
Value for money contenders
Functionality
3.7
/5
123
Total features
41
3 categories
Functionality contenders
Overall Rating
3.9
/5
123
Positive reviews
47
37
27
7
5
Overall rating contenders
Josh E.
Director of Administration
Religious Institutions, 11-50 employees
Review source
Transcript
Josh: My name is Josh. I am the Director of Administration. And for ACS Technologies, I gave a rating...
David W.
Senior Pastor
Religious Institutions, 11-50 employees
Review source
Transcript
David W: Hi, I'm David, I'm a senior pastor, and I give ACS software a five. We are one of ACS' oldest...
Suzanne M.
Nonprofit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Used daily for 2+ years
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My experience with ACS has been very good. I started with them when we all had DOS computers and moved up to the windows platform. Now, we are able to have versions of the software on our phone. The system has the capability of being backed up to the cloud and does not need to be kept on your church's server. There is also an alternative for more contemporary churches called "Realm."
ACS gives you the total package in church software. It helps you efficiently mange both the "people" side of the job and the "accounting" and numbers side and will allow them to communicate with each other. There are several modules that will allow you to track different aspects of the member or prospect in the life of the church and this system does it very effectively. It has been around for a long time and they have perfected the software.
Because the software does so many functions and can be tailored to almost any church of any size or situation, it can be a little confusing. Therefore, training is vital. They excel in offering wonderful training through their company and through local trainers.
Cheikh B.
Accounting, self-employed
Used daily for 6-12 months
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We no longer have problems managing the donations received and the registration of our members in a database.
The first remark is the customer service which is very reactive and quickly solves your problem. ACS is a very useful church management software, because we won't have the problem to manage the database of our members or the registration of the children, and even all the donations received. I like the way it stores information. Of course, it is not quick to master ACS, but once you have mastered it you have everything you want to know about reports, campaign follow-ups, etc. In conclusion, ACS is a very good software to store any kind of information.
Despite the fast customer service, we notice that during the months of February and March the wait is rather long. The ACS software often bugs or slows down when donor files increase. The lack of functional expense reporting is lacking given the current state of the art technology. ACS is also limited on the choice of administrators on who should access this or that. The ACS software needs to be upgraded, as the speed is poor when running large reports. The look needs to be redesigned not too aesthetically pleasing, but also the API access which is almost non-existent.
David S.
Religious Institutions, 1-10 employees
Used daily for 2+ years
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The old ACS system is just much too dated and expensive for current usage. ACS does have a new product called Realm that is supposed to be much easier and more flexible to use. I have looked at some of the demos for Realm and it does look like a vast improvement. If a church were to consider using ACS, I would encourage them to either specifically look at ACS' Realm product or go with another vendor entirely.
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.
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...
Jo S.
Nonprofit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Used daily for 2+ years
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In general, many of the features of your software are frustrating and not intuitive. I was a programmer and it seems your programmers need to spend more time using the product in real world applications. It should be word like in functions like word. Copying and pasting, formatting those types of applications.
#1 Pro is that ACS addresses the most important tasks a church is in need of.
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.
Nadine M.
Nonprofit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Used daily for 2+ years
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We are a non-denom multi-site church in the DC suburbs (predominantly African-American) with apx 4000 in weekly attendance and 10,000 watching services online. We chose ACS software over the competition because it was robust enough to meet our needs. And like most churches...our needs are varied and nuanced.
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.
The volunteer management piece isn't as directly integrated as we would like.