ChMS Features

I liked that each church member had their own record and could access it and update it on their own. I liked the group functionality.

I wish more of our church members used it so it would be more effective in our church.

Database Church directory Volunteer scheduling

Mobile-friendliness

Thank you for your review Leah. We are excited about the upcoming releases that will definitely make us more mobile friendly! Thank you for all you do to impact the Kingdom, Pam Flanery

Everything in this software is easy to use. I can create a new report in < 1 minute. Of course, there are many types of reports that are supplied so that I don't always need to create my own reports. Use is intuitive. Software updates are solid, well described prior to the launch, nothing broken afterwards. We employed a coach to get started, and that experience was highly effective. Video's are supplied on training, they are easy to understand, find, re-run and available to all. Process Queues are key to connecting with our guests, and help us keep track of all key activities. They are an important point in differentiating this product from others available. Our support tickets have been worked quickly, efficiently, and never rushed.

Metrics are tougher to get working as they made us think through our organization differently - and we then made some changes and it took us longer to roll out. Each metric has a graph, and therefore is visual - which makes a big difference in assimilation. We're rolling out more and more of them as time goes by.

What I like most about Church Community Builder is the level of detail provided as it pertains to database records. If used to its fullest, the user can store a tremendous amount of information about individuals which in turn helps the user support these individuals as members of their church community.

What do I like least about Church Community Builder? I cannot think of anything that stands out at this time.

CCB has a clean user interface. The product looks great. Overall it is able to generate and store the information we need, but ultimately we had to hire a full time Database Admin to get the full benefit of the product.

The first year and a half was really rocky. While we were promised all of the bells and whistles of a great software, it quickly became clear that a lot was still in development. It took dedicated staff members working with CCB developers to truly get to a point where we could utilize the system effectively. While the user interface is great, getting it to produce the reports we were accustomed to in other softwares was far more cumbersome.

CCB was the first ChMS we used as a new church start-up 13 years ago. It met our needs. Check-in was essential as well as online contributions.

Over time we became disappointed by the slow progress in rolling out product improvements. Service planning / scheduling in CCB was inadequate so we used Planning Center. There was no integrated mobile app so we used Subsplash. Process queues and reporting was very cumbersome to use. The merger with Push Pay was the catalyst for us to look at alternatives due to our negative experience with Push Pay when search for a mobile app solution.

Church Community Builder is certainly the best software for managing congregational information available! I love the app for iPhone, which allows me to take attendance for worship and Bible studies quickly as well as look up congregant phone numbers/emails/addresses quickly and on the run. I also like the ability of congregants to interact with one another through groups and email within the site & the security in place to maintain confidentiality as needed.

For reporting purposes, I need to know certain things about attendees and creating reports can sometimes be more difficult for those who are not very computer-savvy.

The groups function has been a lifesaver for us during the pandemic. It's allowed us to stay in contact with our congregation while we are meeting in smaller groups. The calendar feature allows our congregants to subscribe and see when they are serving and what events are happening easily.

At this time there is not congregant app. I know that with the merger with Pushpay that this is in the works.

CCB is web-based therefore it is easily accessed from office, home or anywhere. There is a small group app that is great for group leaders to make contacts, take attendance, etc. You can schedule weekly or monthly reports that are sent to your or someone else's email. The Metrics tool is fantastic. Default privacy settings can be set pretty tight, but individuals can chose what they want others...

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CCB is very complex and can overwhelm some people, especially when setting up queries to find the right people for a saved search. Forms have to match to records (understandable) but it can take a lot of time for something like VBS which may have hundreds of forms to match to records. Addresses do not CASS certify so there can be misspellings or incomplete addresses in your data. It can be hard to get your church on board to use the system, even leadership. Change can always be difficult. You can't sign up an entire family on a single form. Forms need to be filled out for each individual so it matches to their personal record.

I will start with the people. We have had a great experience with the CCB team - our coach who helped us with our rollout over many months, the database team who helped with the migration of data, and the customer support team have all been fantastic. The software itself is very robust with all the features we expected and needed. Our transition to CCB went very smoothly because of the easy-to-use...

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A few things that are already on their list to improve: - full mobile features - already rolling these out - Improved/Full giving capabilities (app, text-to-give, web, kiosk) so that we don't need a separate vendor/app for this. - Improved reporting - CCB offers lots of canned reports and the ability to build very good custom report but the custom reports are mostly focused around people interactions.

Customer service is quick to respond and follows up to make sure your issue has been resolved. They also take note of improvements suggested and act on them. The metrics to track attendance and giving are very easy to adapt to each church's needs. Giving statements are easy to run. The ability to use mail merge and link files is very helpful. Groups are easy to design and allow people to interact easily. New schedules are a huge improvement.

The team has worked very hard over the last couple of years to improve the software. Most issues I have had in the past have been resolved. The only issue we have now is that in order to use the serving portion of the software, individuals have to do a lot of date input to get it started. Because we didn't make it a focus of our original log ins, we don't have the date needed to get this portion working well. Wish we could find a work around to get this portion working well for us.

integrations with other online tools, customer service has been extremely helpful, updates seem to address areas of need, number of tools available

cost is high compared to some offerings, but value is high as well. Oftentimes we have to change our internal systems because of the limitations of the tools available (I would imagine this is common for every system that isn't custom though).

Hi Jake, Thank you for your post; we love partnering with you and are very excited about all the new updates we will be providing our wonderful church partners in 2017! Have a blessed week, Pam

I have been using CCB for around 10 years (I think...I've kind of lost count!). As a part of the Beta Team, I LOVE the fact that I have the ability to influence how the software works and what features are most important to us as a church. CCB does a STELLAR job with customer service and seeking to build a useful product for churches. They listen to what we use and how we need it to work, and then they work to make that happen. Their commitment to mobile use over the last year or so has been great. They are trying to make sure they do it RIGHT instead of just putting an app out that doesn't really help. It feels like I'm actually a part of the team, and that relationship is a big part of what is attractive about CCB.

The important part of using CCB is having a vision of how to setup the structure. Without taking the time to think that through, it can be harder to use and seem clunky. But once you understand how to make it work for you, it is an incredibly powerful tool!

The software is easy to use and comes with tool such as app features that allow events and attendance tracking for our servant leaders.

The software is limited on the customizable features. Running reports is cumbersome and it is hard to get the report you want. Customer service is limited only to the Master Admin and not available to all the users.

1. Everything ties together and back to a person, so it's easy to see how a person is engaged with just a few clicks. 2. We've been able to stop using other software programs to accomplish tasks (such as volunteer scheduling, event and room scheduling, sending mail merges, and building forms) because it is all now housed within CCB. 3. There is no program to load onto your computer. Everything is web-based making it easy to access from anywhere. 4. The software is finally becoming more mobile friendly. 5. CCB is user-friendly, and 100% of our staff use it! This is important because the data is only as good as the input from our people.

There are some limitations to the forms. We'd like to see form logic capabilities. Also, a form can only be matched to one profile so when doing a registration for multiple family members (i.e. camp or basketball leagues), the form must be completed separately for each person.

Overall, it is very easy to use. That said, we do NOT use much of its capabilities. We are a small church plant. As the pastor, I use it to communicate with the congregation and our small groups. That is a key to my liking CCB. It is very easy to create a new group, edit those in an existing group and more. We also tract all of our giving through it, making bookkeeping very easy and the end of the year tax reporting extremely easy. Each person can log on and get their own giving statement. They can also track where their giving is at any time.

For a church our size, this is an expensive package. And there is a lot to learn to truly get the most from the software. Best to have a person who would immerse themselves in it, which we have never had. For a larger church, the options would really be handy. Of course, you need lots of computers all over your facility to make the most of CCB.

Church Community Builder is packed with powerful features and tons of extras that help keep everyone involved within the church in the loop with information right at their fingertips. Their 'Lead' app is awesome, extremely user friendly and packed with valuable features. Their customer service is top notch. Anytime we have ever had a question or concern about something, they make it their mission to resolve it as fast as possible. We love CCB and will continue to partner with them to grow our church for as long as possible! Definitely recommend.

It can be a bit pricey, but you know what they say? You get what you pay for and that definitely rings true here. For what you pay, you get SO MUCH.

Managing people and their involvement in the church. If you have a good system set up to get people engaged with CCB it is a wonderful tool to connect with the church Body. Communication within groups is fantastic. You can create events, book facilities, communicate to the group, very effective tool.

I am often frustrated with the way CCB behaves when people or groups have been made inactive. If a group is in active it will still show up on a persons profile as a group they belong to. It's as if the Group retains all the information from the time that the group closed. The only way I've found around this is to remove all participants from groups before making them inactive. A lot of work.

Comprehensive platform with lots of features. They are beginning to do more with mobile and text integration. The end user experience is fairly intuitive. I use the people directory function on my phone several times a week which is even more useful if you encourage your body to upload pictures.

CCB is somewhat difficult to administer and has a fairly steep learning curve to realize the full benefits. It seems like a lot of functions are ala carte and we are always upgrading to get this feature or that feature. For instance, we can't use mobile devices (tablets) with children's check-in unless we get a more expensive package. We are constrained to using computers or more expensive MS surface products.

There are so many things to like that it's hard to narrow down! Here's just a few: - Ease of Child Check-in - API's - Online Registration/Forms (with payment) - Online Giving (integration with processors like PushPay!) - Group Management - Scheduling - Room/Event Management - Continuous Improving/Evolving

Hard to find a major fault, but would love to see a more robust Room/Event Management System and "If, Then" ability on forms.

CCB has helped us as a staff be better pastors for our people. We have used the system to clean up our data and this has helped us be better connected to our congregation and visitors.

CCB has been so amazing for us as a church. I would love to use the software for other organizations I'm in leadership with. For example, I oversee the county chaplains for our large county and our database is complex. However, we are using spread sheets and Access and it is a disaster. I would love to be able to use CCB for our database. It seems the only way to do this is to create another campus and that just doesn't seem to make sense. Would CCB consider another type of database for organizations that are not churches? That would be wonderful.

CCB ties everything we are trying to track, retain, and utilize into one very cohesive product. While there are multiple sections where data points can be collected, you only have to put them in once and they are available throughout the program. Although recording the data is easy, the CCB program helps tremendously to sort and use the data for an unlimited amount of projects and the presentation of the relevant data is very useful. Actually, the CCB Program inspires you with many ways you can use your data that you didn't even think was possible. Plus, it helps us to communicate with all of our attenders in multiple and meaningful ways.

In the past, the mobile side of the software was lacking in usability. However, CCB has really poured a lot of resources in the mobile side over the past 2 years and now it is very usable and graphic.

I love the ease of use with this product. I use the scheduling software on a daily basis and they have made it easy to schedule my teams and keep everyone informed about upcoming needs. I also like how easy it is to add new members to the software and the ability to share important information with those on staff. The program is easy to navigate and easy to learn.

There are a few things I wish it would let you do: 1) I would like to have groups be linked to the schedules section. For instance it would be great when a member leaves a group that it would also delete them from the schedule for that group and when a need is created it would be great if it could be shared with just one part of the scheduled group (for instance week 1 team or week 2 team instead...

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I cannot stress how much we LOVE Church Community Builder!!! It has brought the communication of our church together like nothing else ever could. Mostly, we love the ability for our church members to connect with one another through the groups in CCB and how this allows our leaders to effectively communicate throughout the week.

The only con I can think of right now is that we're not super excited about the new schedules feature. Taking schedules out of groups is very effective for some areas, but there are teams that we have that need schedules locked within their group and the new way of doing it makes this process more difficult.