Church Windows Reviews

There is a wide range of area that Church Windows covers in regards to managing membership information. It has been especially helpful in tracking attendance trends and member giving. It makes preparing giving statements for members quick and easy.

The visuals of the user interface are very dated in fact it appears that the user interface has not changed in close to a decade.

The User Interface is intuitive, powerful, and well designed. The Accounting module in particular is quite sophisticated, containing many standard and specialized reports. Our accountant loves it. It's modules are well integrated, and when it is working, it works beautifully. The local version, (as opposed to the Web version) is reasonably priced.

It is very touchy, installation wise. Wireless networking is not supported; neither are APUs, you MUST have CPUs in all Church Windows PCs for it to function reliably. It periodically loses connectivity, and sometimes requires reinstalls in order to correct problems. I am the administrator of the system, and frankly, if the users didn't like it so much (particularly the treasurer), I'd suggest a change. I am underwhelmed by their tech support; they tend to disclaim responsibility for problems, claiming networking issues, Windows issues, etc., are the cause even though no other software we use seems to have the problem.

Accounting works well
Reports are semi friendly and fairly simple

Member and visitor module does not interact sufficiently enough with Accounting and donations
Too few double checks or control points within Church Windows
The system is limited in cohesiveness which makes user checks and double checks imperative

It appears to be user friendly. I think there are more things within this program that will benefit our church.

taking a bit of time to familiarize myself with it but I'll eventually get the hang of it.

Church Windows does a lot of things nicely. I love the way the Donations module dumps our members donations into income accounts in Accounting with the press of a button. Payroll, which is tailored for churches (handles ministers with no problems) also integrates with Accounting automatically. The Accounting module allows me to book typical church transactions quickly and easily, but provides the ability to do complex accounting transactions as well. While lots of church management programs claim to handle fund accounting, Church Windows does true fund accounting which allows our church great flexibility in tracking designated donations and spending. While not perfect, the program is an excellent value.

Church Windows has a web based version that uses browsers to view Windows type screens and I find this clunky to use. I'd much rather have an app on my phone that I can use to pull up membership data when I need someone's phone number and an Accounting app that would let me enter transactions remotely when I'm away from the office. The Accounting module also lacks an easy way to handle credit card transactions - I'd like to see something like Quicken that let's you check off the charges when you reconcile the monthly credit card statement. It handles credit cards fine, just not as easily as Quicken or Quickbooks.

The Customer support is one of the best selling points of this program - professional, helpful, patient, and prompt in their replies. In regards to the program it is great how the system for Members, Donations, and Accounting are woven together, there is the ability in detail to establish security settings, and the system creates a trail for every action. For Accounting the system is robust for Fund accounting and provides a number of reports with the click of a button. We are glad to see the most recent overhaul to the software that has made significant improvements to the program.

The online mobile version is cost prohibitive for a small and medium sized congregations limiting its value for less centralized congregations and use in the mission field. Though the report creation tool is powerful, it is complicated to the point of needing to relearn how to create new reports each time one is needed (a definite time sink limiting the ability to readily create new reports). At times search results are baffling in that they do not appear to generate the full data one had requested. The interface between the Donations Module and Membership Module has the ability to create duplicates of people in which an individual's information is spread over two profiles. Lastly we have never found a meaningful use for the Scheduler Module as it is a self-contained module that can't be utilized to automatically populate online calendars or sync with other devices.

Ease of extracting information from the data to create reports.
The number of boxes where details may be entered is excellent - every possible situation has been considered, including winter or out-of-town school addresses plus different last names for individuals within the family unit plus multi-level phone numbers and emails.

I love to have the support of the software by speaking with a real person.
My patience challenges me at times to wait for the phone call back!
Sometimes there are difficulties in choosing the right report ie. directory vs. basic because the format of the directory report is good but there are decisions embedded there which override any selections I might make for the report ie. individual vs. family identities

I have been using Church Windows for over a dozen years and I won't use any other software for my church.I have been overall very pleased throughout the years as our church has grown and added a preschool. It is user-friendly and provides the reports I need for my church council as well as my preschool families. In 2019 I upgraded my old "server-based system" to a "cloud-based" system and I no longer have to worry about storage or updates. Church Windows has seen me through many changes over the years.

I think the thing I like least about Church Windows is that there are a lot of "grey" areas in the church and CW is more black/white. It's hard to determine "Members," "Potential," "Visitors," etc. when setting up a family. I also wish that different modules were better able to "talk" to each other within Church Windows (i.e. Membership/Donations/Accounting).

The software is fairly easy to navigate and work with. I've been using it for over 20 years and I appreciate that the updates are typically subtle and don't take me by surprise. I do all of the accounting for a church, so I use most aspects of the software, including Payroll. I am SO grateful for the amazing techs that all call me back in a timely manner and have always been able to guide me through any issue I'm having. I would rate the Customer Service as the biggest Pro!

Some aspects can be hard to navigate. "Normal" people have a difficult time reading the financial reports and we have to convert some into Excel for them to follow. Im not crazy about the Contributions module, It can be difficult to pair family members and the statement generating feature is a bit slow and can be difficult to interpret. I wish I could change some membership aspects directly in the Contributions module.

Church Windows is useful for me as a church administrator because it is flexible, easy to use and has many helpful report options we use regularly. What I like most is that it is user friendly!

There is one report that is we use for each congregation meeting and it can't be created accurately. I have to create 2 separate reports and then merge them. It took a long time to figure out why this is the case, but after some tech calls and tests, we understand why it happens. I just wish it could be created in one report because it is a longer process to make it this way. It is only twice a year that we have to do this, so it is a small complaint in the scope of of all the wonderful reports we get from CW. Generally the reports are awesome, easy to create and useful.

Integration of all modules is great when it works.

When calling support in January 2023 one cannot leave a message due to "high call volume "and epic fail of update in December 2022. Have left 5 trouble tickets on their website in 16 days AND emailed the [sensitive content hidden] and I have yet to hear from anyone in Support at the phone number that I inserted in the messsage. Note- website says someone will call back in ONE day. I am frantic to get my accounting questions answered before next weeks Board meeting and I have no way to reach anyone. Maybe this will help!!!

This software has all the pieces of other software but they do not have the superb response of Church Windows. Any problem I have ever had has been answered within 20 minutes with clarity and patience. I especially like the 20-minute on-line workshops. They are interactive, concise and extremely helpful.

I suppose the thing I like least is that the software does not enter the information automatically when the data is placed on my desk.

To be honest, the customer support. From the moment someone answers the phone until someone calls you back, the professionalism and friendliness is unmatched. I always feel like I am calling a friend who is knowledgeable about the software. At first I struggled to comprehend some of the aspects of the software because I do not come from an accounting background. It did take me some time to feel comfortable with what I was doing but once I was I no longer had fear that I would "screw" something up.

I wish some of the techs would tone down the accounting terminology when trying to explain things to me. Like I said I didn't come from an accounting background so the lingo was somewhat foreign and I felt lost when they would explain things to me. The software seems to be continuously updated which if I had the time to explore some of the new upgrades I believe I would be able to utilize them. Not sure if you have this or not, but a video explaining some of the new features that accompany an update would be nice.

I've been using Church Windows since 1999. I currently use the Membership, Contribution and Accounting modules. They've come a long in the last 19 years and they are constantly upgrading their software as the market demands. Over the years they continue to solicit, and implement, suggestions from their customers. It's one thing to sell a product, but its another thing entirely to keep folks satisfied with your product for almost 20 years!

Probably the reports features, but that is mostly due to my reluctance to try creating custom-made reports. Its one of those things that you get out of it what you put into it - so no fault to Church Windows, just me.

I like that the modules work seamlessly together. We are able to take the membership information entered by one staff member and use it to create a donations record in a different module which is managed by another employee. This information is then transferred to our accounting module. The same is true with the payroll and accounting modules, allowing for less manual entries.

We have had some difficulty with deleting inactive duplicate files and we frequently have updates to run, which can be time consuming since it needs to be run on the server and then each individual computer.

Very logical division of features. We have 4 different volunteers using the software: Jan does Payroll, Cathy handles Donations, Dawn does our church membership and I do the Accounting as the Treasurer.

In Accounting, putting in the Recurring Transactions is a great help. Over time, I've added most of our monthly bills; this helps keep things consistent and I don't need to think about what account to use.

Occasionally, I need to change a transaction. One screen lets me review the transactions but I have to go to a different screen to change it although it is right in front of me. Selecting it on the first screen would be better.

Church Windows is a decent Software program if you take the time to Master the program itself.

Sometimes its not very forgiving and thus its easy to make mistakes. The Steps to take for reports can be somewhat lengthy

It has everything we need in one place. We have researched other software packages in the past and there is usually something missing that we need. Church Windows has everything and has great customer service in the event you cannot find something or something is not working right.

This software is not as user friendly as others and creating reports can be confusing at times. Creating a report - the more you use it the easier it is to understand but definitely not user friendly.
The pros do outweigh the cons so overall still the best option for us.