ACS Features

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...

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#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.

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.

My title may be odd but it describes this software. This software is very powerful and its capabilities are far greater than any church I have ever worked at has taken advantage of. It is marvelous in it's simplicity but also the sky is the limit with regards to it's complexity in it's ability to create reports, schedule volunteers, and communicate with teams.

It is a very steep learning curve. Although the customer service is excellent, but it is important to remember that the learning curve is high if you have a transition in staff (give them time to learn and use the tutorials.)

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

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.

The attendance module has allowed us to automate a process that used to take many man hours. It has also improved our ability to keep in touch with our members.

The reporting feature of the software is highly customizable which is great for it's ability to enable you pull information exactly how you need it, but it makes it's user friendliness a bit lacking.

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As a small non-profit, we were looking for software to help streamline our data collection and reporting; one which focuses on client management and tracking. When we were introduced to ACS, they were a God-send. It was a flexible system that provided numerous options. We were able to manage our client intake much more easily than in the past. Overall, we found them to be a great fit for our organization.

Once you understand the main parts, the system works well, however, more integration is needed. Usually, the help-desk representative was very prompt with their answers to questions. There were so many features that we didn't get to learn them all.

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.

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

The ease of use. The versatility. They update and upgrade every week to stay relevant. Very helpful to make sure we are happy especially during Covid.

The ability to get a photo attached to your profile for an older person. That our church database is everyone - not just a database for members and one for donors/visitors.

ACS does everything we need in church management software! Aside from service planning it does EVERYTHING needed!

I would love to see ACS step into the service planning side of things too and truly become an "all in one" stop shop! Interaction with CCLI, ect... The software does take a bit to get used to, it could be more user friendly.

ACS offers excellent customer support. I have heard that the newer version is more advanced.

We use an older version of ACS Financials and need to upgrade. The older version is rigid and reporting can be burdenson.

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.

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.

The database was very useful and made my job much easier.

It was not easy to correct mistakes. Waiting for help was a lengthy process.

- Easy to use - Great customer service - Great customizability

Could look more modern, but certainly gets the job done

I am duly impressed with it's power - searches, record retrieval, Tax statements, etc. This was my primary software for over 7 years, I also attended several seminars to become more proficient within ACS.

It was occasionally non-intuitive, but their Customer Service reps are Fantastic at troubleshooting!!

simple to use, but a lot of capability. Easy to keep track of giving and make reports for unpaid tuitions.

difficult to use for a school when students drop or change classes after making payments. Wish there was a way to connect to another software to automatically load registrations.

Customization. Online based. Does yearly Parochial Report and sends it to National Church. Parochial Report can be printed daily, weekly, monthly....as many times as you wish for internal reporting to Vestry or Rector. Access to training.

It can be pricey for smaller parishes/churches. Realm (for smaller parihes) is still young and needs tweaking. When you are used to the fuller ACS version, Realm can be a bit frustrating. Realm only recently had General Ledger talking to the Financial module.

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.

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.

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...

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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.

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.

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...

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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.

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.

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.

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.

The transition from Servant Keeper to ACS was smooth. The onboarding team and the customer service reps are easy to work with and try to be as helpful as possible. The Church Life app is great, and has been a blessing to our church members.

Working through a separate "portal" is a total pain. The software seems like it's not advancing with the times, and I would much prefer a true "cloud" based system. We are often "kicked off" the portal and have to log in again. We also have difficulty with AccessACS, because it can only be accessed by a Windows based browser (and we all use Mac computers). It's a bit of a hassle to access AccessACS through a separate browser to do the needed uploading tasks and helping our folks with their passwords and such. Finally, they really haven't updated much in the software. It's stagnant, and I see some areas where we may want to explore more modern technology.