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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...
Donna T.
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I have used ACS for 16 years from DOS to Windows to Online based. Online was an awesome expansion! There was never down time (except for middle of the night maintenance) and it was always fast. Backups were never a worry. Customer Service was friendly, extremely helpful and patient. On site training was available at extra cost.
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.
Brian M.
Religious Institutions,
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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...
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.
Andrew H.
Nonprofit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Used weekly for 2+ years
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We have been ACS users for probably close to 10 years and it works, it does work. However, we are in the process of switching to The Rock and, although it's much more powerful, The Rock also requires a greater size management team with technical programming proficiencies. When choosing your management software, you'll pay for it one way or another. In my opinion, ACS is a great solution for small to medium size churches...say up to 2000 people.
ACS is a fairly reliable and robust church management software useful for, among other things, managing your general ledger, giving, kids check-in, and people database. If you're a musician, I could tell you that it's like a Shure SM58 vocal microphone...you can drop it 100 times and it still works great...but other mics sound better...and may cost more.
It is very much out of date according to today's standards. It seems to prefer a large amount of bandwidth for our kids checkin machines running ACS for checkin...it technically isn't a ton of data, but ACS really seems to prefer having a big pipe for it, network wise. ACS is fairly limited in who can and should have access to different parts of it. My biggest complain, though, would be that ACS just hasn't kept up with the development side of their platform to match the technology that everyone is used to using in 2019.
Sally P.
Religious Institutions, 11-50 employees
Used daily for 2+ years
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Back with the awesomely designed old ACS On Demand I was a huge fan of everything about this company - great support - robust trouble-free (rarely had a file corruption issue) modules with tremendous flexibility. The new Realm products - For the price they are charging - we would be as well served with Quickbooks. Don't get me wrong - I'm all about paying for quality but this Realm product falls short on too many important features.
ACS had fantastic software until they created Realm Giving and Realm Accounting and decided to care more about form than function, and "dumbed" down the flexibility of the accounting module. Their outstanding reputation is based on the old versions I believe. I am currently looking to overhaul our entire system at tremendous expense because the new accounting interface does not work the way I need it - we are locked out of any contra-accounting interface due to the product management team's decision to "appeal to non-accounting people" - If you are serious about your job then that should say it all.
There are absolutely no drill-downs in the new system - no calculation features and it is over-engineered so that nearly every entry field has a drop down box - really, really, really slows you down if you have a large JE to process - and if you just fill in the box and don't go through all the steps, half the time it loses that entry. I also can no longer run event and other income smoothly and directly to a contra-expense. The product management people have decided that they understand accounting better than professional users.
Jai R.
Religious Institutions,
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ACS has a lot of features, and customizable fields, etc. Great customer service for problems (for additional fee per month).
Updates come out very slowly, and the product feels at least 5-10 years out of date. Reports are not very customizable unless you purchase additional module. Not very responsive to requested features. Not Mac-compatible (unless you use cloud version which is more expensive). Have trouble getting staff to use the software - they tend to just want to access it on their phone app. Online Giving is not easy for first-time users. Lots of small group leaders have had trouble using the online attendance tracking.
Amanda G.
Religious Institutions, 11-50 employees
Used daily for 2+ years
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I was new to my position at a church and ACS was the program we had in use when I started. It was a great program and was easy to learn with very minimal training.
Organizes a lot of information for you church members and also can keep track of the contribution side of your ministry.
The look and some functions are a bit outdated. They are constantly doing updates and the cost is a bit expensive.
Verified reviewer
Nonprofit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Used weekly for 2+ years
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Overall, the service performs what you need it to do at a lower budget cost, but it could offer more in terms of functionality and appearance.
It is very easy to set up multiple users and customize what they can access at any given time. I also liked how you can have multiple windows open at a time even if they were from different access "suites."
The service as a whole is difficult to use. I have found the process to find multiple reports very time-consuming even when you know what you are looking for. The service is not as straight forward to use as I had hoped. You also are not able to customize how the reports look which I would have appreciated when sending reports to clients.
Drew C.
Religious Institutions, 11-50 employees
Used weekly for 2+ years
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We have used some form of ACS since 2005. It handles finances, child check-in, event scheduling, volunteer scheduling, attendance, groups, contact information, and much more. It even has an online arm.
ACS has just about everything you could ask for, and then some. Their pricing is more competitive than other major companies.
Although there is an online arm of this product, all the information must be kept locally (although some would think this a pro). The controls are non-intuitive and clunky. Even the online version of this has the look and feel of something just above MS Dos.
Verified reviewer
Religious Institutions, 51-200 employees
Used other for 2+ years
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ACS is a software that just has worked for us. I have been here for 7 years now and the finance department has loved it the entire time I've been here.
We just switched from on-prem to on-demand and while we love the ability to use windows or Mac machines, we had to downgrade the number of people who could access it to stay within budget. The 5 usernames is a nice starting point but it was not deemed cost effective to add more users.
Edda P.
Nonprofit Organization Management, 11-50 employees
Used daily for 6-12 months
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New to using the software. Minimal training as the previous person had already left the job. Too expensive for the church to send new hires to ACS Training.
Can make up a Form Letters, Labels etc to send to entire congregation. Can copy someone's address to your clipboard for ease of sending letter/envelope to one person.
Hard to do a search for a group of people. Very complicated to get exact list of criteria to get the search results you want.
Verified reviewer
Religious Institutions, 1-10 employees
Used weekly for 2+ years
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We wanted a way to integrate membership management and giving records. This afforded us that possibility.
The ease of use was great. First-time users were able to learn it quickly. Also, there are good instruction videos as well as customer call center. Able to meet our needs without stress
For a small church, the price could be a little cheaper per month or offer a multi-month discount
RP E.
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I've been using ACS OnDemand products for a year now, and wasn't all that happy with what I've seen. Going to the conference helped, and learning more about the programs directly made some improvements. I don't like the user interface, and how separate all the components seem to be. It often feels like the various parts aren't 'talking' to each other and the user has to be a guru to make it all work....
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William L.
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ACS used to be the leader in this industry, but that was in the 1990s. Unfortunately, their software is still stuck in the 90s. It's incredibly difficult to figure out; not at all intuitive. The UX is terrible: it's like working on a Windows 95 machine in your old high school's computer lab. Big issue for me: The software is ONLY for Windows. Do not be fooled by their deceptive product "OnDemand"...
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Hi William, Thank you for caring so much about what¿s best for the church. We do too. We sincerely appreciate your efforts to help people make the best decisions for their church and ministry. That¿s very honorable of you. We¿ll take your feedback and use it to help us get even better. Thanks again for your encouragement.
Dan M.
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As a Children's minister at a small church I need check-in solutions that don't break the bank and are easy-to-use. That's not ACS. Reports are challenging to receive. The secretaries at my last employer in Mesquite hated it for being confusing. My current employer uses ACS but I don't see the benefit of it. If I had a vote, I'd tell them to switch.
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Vincent N.
Religious Institutions, 1-10 employees
Used other for 6-12 months
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Serves as a decent database for keeping track of members.
The learning curve was massive and the user interface was not as easy as it could have been. We saved over $4,000.00 a year by switching to Breeze ChMS