ShelbyNext Membership Reviews

It's entirely web-based, so it can be used anywhere. It comes with mobile apps for major mobile device platforms, so getting to data when not at a computer is easy.

Creating individuals and adding them to families is simple and the UI is fairly pleasant to use.

The integration with Shelby's giving/donation service works well and the software allows members to see their giving in simple, easy to view reports.

Every action by staff and admins is logged for accountability purposes.

Access to various parts of the system can be controlled granularly, so administrators and staff can see only what they need. For example, giving records can be limited so that only business office members can view them.

The system also supports groups: public and private alike, so members can self-join public groups, but in other cases can't even see certain groups. This is helpful for organizing membership in various ways.

Reporting is also fairly straightforward so staff can grab quick stats on various aspects of the membership. Reports can also be locked down according to what each staff member should be able to see.

There's no support for custom domains (e.g. "members.mychurch.com")

Reporting is too simple in many cases and there's not enough customizability for the data that the system can hold (e.g. being able to generate a report on which members are missing photos).

Volunteer management is still very limited / non-existent. Churches that need to see a high level view of which members are doing what should probably look elsewhere. Scheduling conflicts between various areas of ministry is not yet trackable.

The calendar functionality leaves much to be desired. There's some good stuff in place around being able to request availability of rooms, equipment, etc, but it's all silo'ed into the proprietary calendaring system. There needs to be support for managing events through Google Calendar or similar external systems that might already be integrated into the ministry.

There are rough spots to the UI, especially around searching, viewing member photos, and generating reports.

The giving integration aspects are nice, but I wish they were more tightly integrated. I wonder how many ministries actually use a different giving solution? Overall, it would make more sense for members to be able to give from one portal rather than having a separate offering.

Like the Check-In, but it's frustrating not to be able to customize font sizes or to choose to print only first names. There is much white space on the name tags but it's not possible to make the name larger. I also like being able to search for a name by putting in only part of the name, either first or last, or both. I, personally, have had pretty positive experiences with support, but others in my organization have had rude responses.

Several things: It's not possible to add an entire family at one time. Instead, each person must be added & then linked as a family which is more time-consuming. When running reports, inactive people show up even if "active" is selected. Also, when running reports, the only choices are labels or a list with no addresses, no phone numbers, etc., unless it's exported as a CSV file. When one does that, every field in the record is exported & then needs to be weeded out if not needed in the report data. When searching for an individual, one can enter just a part of the name, but what comes up doesn't always match what's been entered. Even when a match does show, it's not always the top choice.

It is user friendly and allows our congregation to access needed information.

Would like to have more flexibility with tracking interactions. Wish you could reassign interactions or assign them to more than one person.

Easy to navigate. Pastors can easily find information and can access the app from the their phone. Life Groups can take attendance on their phones which eliminates the need to manually input the information.

We have 3 separate Shelby softwares to perform the duties that Shelby v5 did. We use Shelby Giving, ShelbyNext Membership and ShelbyNext Financials. The systems are integrated but you have to use each of the three softwares to process offerings or add giving funds. It all works really well, just wish we didn't have to log in to 3 separate systems with 3 separate userids and passwords.

Ease of use for the end user. Wanted something more simple than what we had before.

What’s “in the box” is what you can do. We didn’t want anything as complicated as we’d had in the past, but there are a few things we wished we could tweak.

I love the ease of making workflows to send automatic emails. I also like the layout and user interface.

Child Checkin has been a nightmare getting the software to work with the printer. Also, mobile checkin for attendees is so cumbersome to use, no one will use it, especially our older folks. It takes 7 steps per person to checkin. That is a lot to remember. I wish it was more like taking attendance for groups.

I love the ease of navigating through information.

It can be overwhelming at first. Sometimes managing groups isn't the easiest to navigate.

I find the app very easy to use and appreciate it's interface with other map programs. [It is interesting that I could not submit this survey because the comments in the "Pros" section is too short. I guess that's one way to hear what you want. I don't know what else you want me to say about your program: You use a nice font? It hasn't crashed yet?

What I like least about the Shelby products we have is the lack of training my staff received (and told they would get) plus the long wait my staff has to endure whenever they have issues with the Shelby Membership Program and the Shelby Financial Program and call for technical help. The time spent on hold is interminable. I suspect that there are just one or two people answering the phones. Last week a staff member was on the phone with Shelby when another called and was told she was next in line. After more than thirty minutes, she finally hung up. (Interestingly, my other staff member was still on the phone talking to the Shelby Rep. I wonder if her colleague would have talked to the same rep had she remained on hold because there was only one person answering calls on a weekday? )

The ease of use. If I don't know how to do something, there is a tutorial for whatever issue I'm facing. If I can't find something, I can always put in a help request. I do not feel alone and stuck when I am faced with a challenge.

I struggle with the separation of financial data vs. membership data. I have to check membership once yearly and have to monitor attendance and giving status. I've not yet created a report that shows attendance and giving within one year for church members. Still a work in progress.

I feel Shelby Membership is user friendly, not difficult to navigate. Most features are self-explanatory.

Support. We have been trying to resolve an issue since August of 2018. I have emailed with 4 different people. The name I was given never responded to me after emailing on 10.4.18 and 11.18.18.
Customer service lacks when trying to resolve 'large issues' over long periods of time. I'm disappointed not one person has bothered to take ownership of our issue and work with us to resolve it.

Need more tutorials for those beyond basics.

It is quick and easy on most things. Calendar entry is fast. Looking up names is fast. However, you should not have to look at ALL NAMES, even the people who have moved on.

The Calendar - it is easy to add new things, but could use some more sorting, editing options. It would be nice to select optional dates for events. At the present time, if you put an event to happen every week, but would like to skip a week or two, you cannot do that in the initial entry. We have contacted about this many times. They seem to ignore calendar fixes! Also, we need to be able to print a calendar list that includes dates, times and room numbers. Again, we have asked several times to no avail.

Of the choices out there this was the best option for us because the financial piece was attached.

Had to create too many basic church membership criteria. Attendance input has some glitches and there’s is not a check out system for check in’s.(important for Children’s Ministry). Calendar has had glitches resulting in”disappearing rooms”

If you are a Shelby user, currently using V5, you will love this newer version. The cloud based product is incomparable in ease of use. Our congregation loves having the church directory in an app.

The reporting is completely different from V5 and takes a while to get used to.

When there are no glitches I love the forms and the calendar side of shelby next .

The poor customer service. I rarely ever receive any feedback after I have either made a phone call or emailed. It also appears that they are still working out a lot of glitches and it’s very frustrating when you depend on a software and it doesn’t work properly at least 99% of the time.

I love the check in system! it is simple and easy to use

I hate the fact I was promised that we could use Android on the check in and you can't. You can only use Iphones and I pads.

What I like most about this software is the consistency and ease of use. The searching for a member is easy and the advanced search comes in handy when you don't have enough information to locate exactly who you are looking for.

The least thing about the software I do not like is linking family members. I will admit is it easier than what I was used to in V5 but I think there should be an easier way to link family members.

This is an easy to use software for tracking membership, attendance and giving for the church. It is used almost daily. It can be shared with members of the congregation if so desired.

I would prefer an ease of doing reports/directories that can be manually edited. The current form is PDF which is not the easiest to edit without purchasing additional software.

We have had ShelbyNext since November, 2018 and I am just now feeling comfortable using it. Since I am not a computer person, I was not involved in choosing the software or setting it up for our church. I work with what I have.

I do like viewing a family unit. Making changes to each record is easy to do. Overall it is fine for my responsibilities.

Promoting children was a much longer process than in Shelby v5. In the old Shelby version, each service could be submitted for promotion versus ShelbyNext where each group has to be promoted for each of our 4 services. Our groups per service ranged from 16 - 23 so it was a challenge and very time consuming to "move" each group to their new group.