ACS

Vorteile

I really liked the ease of use and the features that ACS offered for church and school management. Also, ACS's customer service and development teams were incredible.

Nachteile

At times, the wait time for customer service was rather lengthy, especially around peak seasons like in February and March near tax time.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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 explained anywhere (and I've been a user for 12 years).

Also, it's reporting process is not difficult for someone with some background in reports, but it's far too complex for an average pastor or lay-leader to use - which requires a database person to run reports.

Also, no customizable dashboards, etc.

So, it will probably do most everything you want, but you'll need a ChMS expert to figure it all out and run the reports...

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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 (I have had to pull together updated reports that have members names and addresses to do mailings. I have had to call ACS to have them walk me through how to do such reports as doing so is in no way intuitive. Also, using the computer app program to login to ACS takes several minutes to log into, which can be frustrating if all you are trying to do is look up a phone number (they do have a webbased platform where you can log in, but its function is not as robust in what it can do as the computer-based app, which as I said is slow and cumbersome).

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

Reports, tracking a stewardship campaign over several years, customer service is tops.

Nachteile

Uses a software that doesn't convert excel spreadsheets into a functional spreadsheet. The columns do not keep the formulas. Therefore you have to make the formulas in a new column. Multiply steps for reports. Should have more reports that are already set up in the software.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

Robust, lots of functions, built with churches in mind

Nachteile

Clunky, slow, old interface, can't adapt to ongoing demands of changing churches

Vorteile

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."

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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 of our donor base using criteria we choose. The General Ledger offers the custom budget-actual reports and statement of financial position (non-profit balance sheet), as well as the summary of restricted accounts that is not found in typical for-profit packages. ACS also allows your administrator to set specific user permissions customization, so you can limit each user to only the functions that he or she needs.

Vendor support is key, and we have found the vendor support behind ACS to be very solid. The software does not do everything, but what it does it does well. When we have had problems or questions, ACS technical support has pro-actively worked them out. In most support sessions, the ACS rep is temporarily granted remote control of our local computers and works directly with our data and reports. Support reps are readily available when we call, and they are very knowledgeable of the product.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

#1 Pro is that ACS addresses the most important tasks a church is in need of.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

We have been ACS clients since the beginning!! Currently we are using Realm for membership tracking, but still use ACS Financials for our book-keeping needs. It does everything we need, and our books are not as simple as one might think.

Nachteile

The only con I can think of is that I wish ACS Financials could integrate with Realm. We have ACS Financials down pat, and I wish we could port it over!!

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

The volunteer management piece isn't as directly integrated as we would like.

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

Love the customer service! They are great about working with you on issues. It's rare that they cannot solve a problem.

Nachteile

Not as intuitive as I'd like, but still fairly easy to use once you get used to it.

Vorteile

Their accounting module is amazing. I have not found any CMS that is anywhere close to being as good as ACS ileith accounting.

Nachteile

It is hard to learn and it is very dated. Not mobile friendly. Ugly.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Vorteile

- Easy to use
- Great customer service
- Great customizability

Nachteile

Could look more modern, but certainly gets the job done

Vorteile

Organizes a lot of information for you church members and also can keep track of the contribution side of your ministry.

Nachteile

The look and some functions are a bit outdated. They are constantly doing updates and the cost is a bit expensive.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

The ability to sort individuals and groups within the larger congregation. We have set up numerous subgroups in our congregation and use ACS to generate our directories.

Nachteile

Some categories could not be customized as we would have liked. In the people arm, some fields were mandatory even if unnecessary for our purposes.

Vorteile

ACS has a lot of features, and customizable fields, etc. Great customer service for problems (for additional fee per month).

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

It does interface with our financial system and they have good accounting people to solve accounting problems

Nachteile

Set-up for reports is too complicated and graphs are difficult to arrange and filters are confusing.

Vorteile

Great accounting software package with robust reporting options.

Nachteile

Not able to easily import bills. Wish it could link better with our bank and online billing.

Vorteile

The financial management is the easiest and most important thing that I access. Within a business Human Resources and Payroll Specialists can easily track income for the Church as well as the Academy and all expenses.

Nachteile

Although I do not pay the premiums, The Church does I feel like the cost of monthly subscriptions is expensive. But I do realize all the different things that ACS technologies offers.

Vorteile

Wonderful and quick Support when needed.

Nachteile

Learning to use from scratch. Report creation sometimes complicated

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

Lots of functions from directory, group management, event registration, online payment for events. Every module I've used has been fairly user-friendly. Always upgrading and improving.

Nachteile

Some days we notice it's "sluggish" (may be an internet issue). We use it every day in our office, but people using it from home often have problems. Doesn't work as well on mobile devices as on computer.

Vorteile

The ability to use the membership management when entering data and the ease of creating databases as needed in the accounting system.

Nachteile

Currently there are no issues with this software

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Gründe für den Wechsel zu ACS

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

This software was the solution we needed. When ACS Realm is fully launched, we will find that our questions will be answered with the product provided.

Nachteile

Sometimes the software can be clunky and not able to fully customize the solution we need but then the question is asked, "What do I really need to do?"

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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

Vorteile

This software will do most anything you want with great support especially with Megachurch support. It is built for all kinds of churches and includes all the modules you would need. ACS is one of the only church management systems that include a financial module that will manage GL accounts as well as POs.

Nachteile

Software needs to be upgraded from the backend. Speed is an issue when running large reports and I think SQL would help this. This software is feature rich so it makes it not so user friendly sometimes and it kinda has a 90s look in several areas. NO API ACCESS.

Vorteile

I love that once you understand the logic behind the software it's very user friendly.

Nachteile

If you don't take a training class on the logic behind the software it's difficult to understand the more detailed inner workings of the software.

Vorteile

We used ACS for a number of years, not understanding that there were such better alternatives. It came with reccomendations that it was the choice of some larger churches we knew.

Nachteile

It is archaic. The user interface is hard to read and looks like something from the dark ages.

Vorteile

I like how it stores a lot of information and that the customer service is always very prompt.

Nachteile

I do not like the ​interface, it is outdated and can be confusing.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.)

Vorteile

I like the fact that it is easy to use at first glance. It is easy to log on and view information and to use the database entry pieces

Nachteile

I do not like the fact that you cannot sort out your database to a great degree. For example, you can add fields, but it is not easy to do and to then sort according to your added fields is not easy.

Vorteile

ACS is great if you need everything. They offer a lot, and have been around for a while, so they know the Church world. Their support is usually quick and knowledgable. You don't have to be an IT master to work with them as they walk you through everything you need.

Nachteile

They offer everything, sometimes it's better when a software focuses on just what You need not everything that raises costs and may end up bloating software.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

Ease of use; frequent upgrades; makes my job more efficient

Nachteile

I really do like everything about it but if I had to name one thing, it would be the reports part of the program. The reports can be a little difficult to search & display the results you want.

Vorteile

I worked at a church that had used this software for a long time. It was very old and clunky compared to newer competitors. ACS was working on a more modern version, but it wasn't available for churches of our size at the time.

Nachteile

It was archaic. Was cumbersome, ugly and not intuitive. The church paid a surprisingly high amount for the software.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

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

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

ACS Technologies accounting software for churches has many capabilities that are necessary in the accurate accounting of all the funds coming into and going out from the church. We are able to print detailed reports for our Finance Team to review each month, follow a clear auditing trail, and have up-to-date information on the funds remaining for each ministry team.

Nachteile

ACS is not at all user-friendly and requires a great deal of specialized training in order to be up and running within a reasonable amount of time. It is not intuitive and while the customer service phone line is very helpful and readily available, it is extremely difficult for someone to come in as a new employee and take over the reigns in regards to accounting. There are training sessions available, but they are typically only offered in South Carolina where the ACS corporate offices are located. That makes it difficult for a smaller church to afford to send one or two employees for training in a timely manner. There are manuals available for print, but again, weeding through the many pages of the manual is not an easy task for a person who is unfamiliar with the software. The tools needed for church accounting are there, however, they are difficult to master in practice.

Vorteile

ACS does everything I need a ChMS to do--keeps track of members, church finances, volunteers, communications, etc. ACTS is a trusted name in this space, and their products are solid and reliable.

Nachteile

ACS may do everything I want a ChMS to do...but not without a lot of frustration. Sorting out workflow and finding the relevant settings takes far too long and is not at all intuitive. While all the modules technically work together, in practice their integration is flimsy and difficult to understand.