User Support Forum

I am the treasurer for a new church start (6 years old). In the beginning, I selected Quick Books as the church bookkeeping system primarily because of cost. We have recently ordered the PowerChurch software demo primarily to look at membership record keeping. The church Financial Secretary maintains contributions in an Excel file. We have only 4 employees and I have grown dissatisfied with Quick Books increasing cost to maintain tax tables for payroll. I plan to take a look at the accounting module in PowerChurch as a possible replacement. I have the following questions:

1. How are the federal and state tax tables and forms kept up to date in PowerChurch and what, if any, annual fee is required?
2. Is there any easy way to transfer my chart of accounts, vendor list and employee info from Quick Books to PowerChurch?
3. Your web site says that info entered in membership is available in the contributions module. Many church members get reimbursed for church purchases and as such are also listed as vendors. Will PowerChurch allow me to pull up membership info to populate vendor fields?
4. I have a general operating fund and multiple segregated funds that I track income and expense in. Each segregated fund is set up as an Equity account allowing the board to easily see the balance in each account on the Balance Sheet and I track income and expenses into each Equity account by using the Class feature in Quick Books. How would I do this with PowerChurch?
5. All invoices and bills are paid out of a single checking account and at the end of each month I make Journal Entries to debit the various segregated equity accounts and credit the operating fund for segregated fund expenses. Can I function with just one checking account using consecutively numbered checks in PowerChurch?

Thanks, I’m sure I will have more questions when we receive the demo and explore it further.

1. How are the federal and state tax tables and forms kept up to date in PowerChurch and what, if any, annual fee is required?

Tax tables are user maintained in PowerChurch which means that as soon as you receive the information, you can change it. As such, there is no annual fee, and you don't have to wait around for an update. PowerChurch uses standard forms for printing which can be purchased at any office supply store.

2. Is there any easy way to transfer my chart of accounts, vendor list and employee info from Quick Books to PowerChurch?

Unfortunately, no. The formats are incompatible.

3. Your web site says that info entered in membership is available in the contributions module. Many church members get reimbursed for church purchases and as such are also listed as vendors. Will PowerChurch allow me to pull up membership info to populate vendor fields?

Not in Accounts Payable, but you can use membership information in Accounts Receivable. I can see how that might be a useful feature. That's the sort of thing they'd like to hear about at wishlist@powerchurch.com.

4. I have a general operating fund and multiple segregated funds that I track income and expense in. Each segregated fund is set up as an Equity account allowing the board to easily see the balance in each account on the Balance Sheet and I track income and expenses into each Equity account by using the Class feature in Quick Books. How would I do this with PowerChurch?

I'm not an accountant, but I do now that in PowerChurch you can only have one equity account (fund balance) per fund. From the preliminary rumblings we're hearing out of program development, this will change for version 9 (due out 2Q 2004), and you will be able to have multiple equity accounts per fund. I believe this will give you similar functionality.

5. All invoices and bills are paid out of a single checking account and at the end of each month I make Journal Entries to debit the various segregated equity accounts and credit the operating fund for segregated fund expenses. Can I function with just one checking account using consecutively numbered checks in PowerChurch?

I'm not sure I understand this question within the context of question #4. However, you can use just one checking account in PowerChurch, or you could use 998. You will find that PowerChurch will allow you to use one account across several funds, and be maintained in one check register. That may be the answer to your question.

If you have other questions of this nature, please feel free to call us at (800) 486-1800. We are not accountants, but we can probably get you the answers you need.