| Author |
Message |
    
Nigel Wearne
New member
Username: Nigelw
Post Number: 8
Registered: 9-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, October 7, 2006 - 12:00 am: |       |
We are always being asked to recommend packages and have no depth of experience in actually using what is on offer, because we don't use it in Church House.
Can you recommend a package and perhaps even 'mentor' a new treasurer with a bit of telephone support? |
Steve Wells
New member
Username: Swells
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, October 7, 2006 - 5:41 am: | |
I use Sage. It is the market leader for small businesses and can be linked to payroll if necessary (but I don't). It is moderately priced but I got a reduced copy for £30 by attending a night class on computer accounting which used Sage when I became treasurer.
It probably shares many features with other accounting packages. The features I like are:
1. All donations by Standing Orders, their associated Gift Aid and regular S.O./Direct Debit payments can be set up for automatic entry.
2. I can immediately get a Profit and Loss Account for each cost centre (e.g. PCC General, Church Hall, Restoration Fund etc)
3. Budgets can be set based on the previous year's expenditure plus an inflation %, and they are profiled over the year so it is easy to see how well you are doing, month by month, taking into account seasonal factors like weddings.
4. Data can be easily exported into Excel for further analaysis and presenting the full accounts in the required format.
5. The Year End features and feed through to the following year are very good.
6. It meets the requirements for accruals accounting.
7. Its easy to search for things. |
Anthony del Tufo
New member
Username: Adel_tufo
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, October 7, 2006 - 4:55 pm: | |
I have used GIFT for Gift Aid records and find it excellent and a great timesaver. It copes well with standing orders, regular envelopes and occasional donors. The cost is onlyt £99. I have also tried CASHCALL for accounting, also from Data Developments, but found it too complicated and have gone back to Excel. |
Breyan Knowles
New member
Username: Bknowles
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, October 8, 2006 - 5:11 pm: | |
I have used Data Development Gift Aid and Cashcall for the past 4 years. Gift Aid is excellent. CashCall is very good once set up. Would anyone be interested in establishing a User Group? |
Michael Ling
New member
Username: Mling
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, October 8, 2006 - 5:34 pm: | |
I have used Cashcall for the same amount of time as Breyan and would be interested in joining a user group - so please keep in touch, Breyan.
I am particularly impressed by the fact that it clearly handles charity and fund accounting, having been developed by people who started by putting together a program for their own church accounting. The helpdesk is very good. The Gift Aid package from Data Developments has been used in the parish for longer and the two Giving Secretaries who have used it have been very pleased. |
Viv Dorian
New member
Username: Vdorian
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, October 9, 2006 - 5:21 am: | |
Software package recommendations are always difficult because churches vary so much in their needs. For anyone uncertain what to do, I would suggest asking yourself a few questions before looking at any software. These questions might be 'How much can we afford?' 'How complex is my parish's financial situation?' (accruals or receipts and payments, auditor or examiner, more than one church, church hall lettings, bookshop,keeping track of suppliers, depreciating assets etc.)And perhaps the most important question of all is 'What is my personal level of skill in both IT and accounting / book-keeping (or that of my book keeper)?'
Then try to find a match with what's out there. You should ask other users of particular software about their experiences and you should try out the software before buying if you possibly can.
For my parish and my level of skill, Quick Books Regular was the best fit. I chose it because:
1. Although it is based on double entry, it doesn't expect the user to understand this (I am not an accountant). This was a critical need for me. (compare Sage and Cashcall which both demand an understanding of double entry)
2. It has a very easy to use interface, compatible with the Windows standard. (Cashcall doesn't seem to be standard and is not so easy to use)
3. It satisfies all my needs for a complex church environment (even fund accounting) and is the market leader among non-accountants. (The version of Cashcall I tried for a year couldn't satisfy some of my needs e.g. keeping track of my suppliers)
4. It cost £135. (Cashcall is comparable but Sage can be vastly more expensive)
My statutory accounts at Year End are produced in literally minutes. My management accounts take a little longer because they have to be exported to Excel to format in the way my PCC want.
However, I have a high level of IT skills and had to customise the package - something the inexperiened IT user would have difficulty with.
In other circumstances, Cashcall, Sage, Excel or even a simple cash book might have been the best fit!
If anyone needs any informal assistance on what to choose to meet their own needs, I would be happy to help. |
Ian Henderson
New member
Username: Ihenderson
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 11, 2006 - 9:32 pm: | |
Excel is really as much as any small parish treasurer needs. There is no need to pay for another specialist package. I am also not an accountant, but our excel workbook was developed by someone who understood both IT and accountancy. It is very easy to use, and I have developed other accounts systems from it. Happy to discuss with others on the subject. |
Mr J Buckley
New member
Username: Jbuckley
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, October 13, 2006 - 9:01 am: | |
Like Ian, I use Excel. I am not an accountant but I am fairly IT literate and use "advanced" fetaures of Excel. My fear over approaching the packages is the unknown amount of time I might have to invest to (a) learn the package, (b) set it up for my church situtaion. Anyone care to quantify that from their own experience? |
Hugh Fisher
New member
Username: Hfisher
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, October 13, 2006 - 11:37 pm: | |
I inherited a bespoke system in 2003, written by my predeccesor who is an IT professional with a bank. It is written in a form of Basic, front-ended with Microsoft Access 98, but also uses Excel for some routines (eg: input of weekly collections). It handles multiple accounts/funds and enables a reconciliation to the bank statements to be carried out each month quite quickly. Also it produces all the statutory SOFA and Balance Sheet statements at year-end. This is fine so long as no changes are required since I have few programming skills! If the new SORP means significant changes in presentation, we may be looking at an off-the-shelf package, so I am interested to hear of other people's experiences. |
Mr B E Plummer
New member
Username: Bplummer
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, October 15, 2006 - 5:58 pm: | |
I have been Treasurer for Tingewick PCC for 11 years. I used Excel at first and although it was adequate I found it rather labour intensive, so 4 years ago I developed a database using Microsoft Access, specifically designed for managing PCC accounts. I have done many updates over the years and it is now bug free and does everything I need for managing the PCC accounts with minimum effort. If you want to find out more about this application and consider using it for your PCC accounts, visit the following web site -
http://www.parishes.oxford.anglican.org/tingewick/ accounts/pccaccountsdatabase.html |
Mr Tim Franklin
New member
Username: Tfranklin
Post Number: 2
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, October 16, 2006 - 12:56 pm: | |
Just to add my 2 cents - in that I also use Cashcall and Gift from Data Developments. In use for 5 years now and find that they do everything that I need them to do.
I'm no accountant, just computer literate.
In terms of setup - Gift has a fair amount, because donor names and addresses need to be entered but, of course, this is a one-off. Cashcall I found fairly straight forward in terms of setting up. |
Nigel Wearne
Moderator
Username: Nwearne
Post Number: 4
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, October 16, 2006 - 6:10 pm: | |
Might be useful for treasurers weighing up alternatives if indicators of size of parish were given - total income, number of gift aid items a year, number of cash transactions a month, approx. regular attendance average, even average hours accounting per month!
As J Buckley asks about alternaitves - What is the time spent a)setting up b)learning/adapting package to your own church needs? |
Gordon Vicary
New member
Username: Gvicary
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, October 16, 2006 - 10:50 pm: | |
I would like to put our accounts over to Sage as it is familiar to me. With reference to Steve Wells' posting, is there a standard chart of accounts available to start me off and would Sage Instant be sufficiant or would I need Line 50? |
Viv Dorian
New member
Username: Vdorian
Post Number: 4
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - 5:53 am: | |
In response to Gordon Vicary's question, I used the main headings of the SORP 2005 with the green book recommendations at a lower level, so that the lowest level required in the notes to the accounts would be covered. This might need modification over time but is a useful start.
You don't say if you are receipts and payments or accruals. My comments refer to a fairly complex set of accounts on an accruals basis |
Viv Dorian
New member
Username: Vdorian
Post Number: 5
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - 2:40 pm: | |
At Nigel Wearne's request (taken from an e-mail to him):
Quick Books CAN operate fund accounting. And I suspect so can Sage Instant (although I don't know that product well). It doesn't operate in the same way as Cashcall. Instead it uses a field call 'class' . You set up a list of classes (funds) and can input starting balances. After that, the system automatically updates the correct class (fund) with the income or expenditure transaction. Reports can be produced by class (fund). The only thing it doesn't seem to be able to do (unless I'm missing something) is produce a separate balance sheet for each fund. This is because it doesn't allow any bank accounts to be allocated to funds (I think because they are the contra entry against income / expenditure accounts in transactions). Quick Books needs a little (but not much) manipulation at YE to present the SOFA by fund.
Cashcall operates differently and it is possible to see how much of any fund is in any bank account. Within days of my using it, I was astonished to see that each bank account had become a complete mishmash of different funds! But the final year accounts are readily produced without any effort. |
Steve Smith
New member
Username: Ssmith
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, October 22, 2006 - 8:23 pm: | |
We use Cashcall. It is pretty good and handles most things well. It has a few annoying features though, many of which I have overcome by using Excel's macro features. For instance this satisfies the need expressed above for a cross-tabulation of Funds against bank accounts. I'd be interested in a user group. |
Alan McCullough
New member
Username: Amccullough
Post Number: 2
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - 8:24 pm: | |
We use a mix of packages at St Matthews & St Luke's - Quicken, Gift and Sage Payroll, and were considering a move to Quickbooks this year (or possibly Cashcall) because Quicken is now unsupported in the UK. However funds are tight so I have deferred making a decision about what which package to move to as all packages seem to have weaknesses that demand a lot of hard work.
I develop Access databases in my day job, and could easily develop one for church but am relunctant to leave them with a package that is unsupported when I resign/move on/retire etc.
If anyone has experience of importing accounts from Quicken 2004 into another package I would be interested in hearing about this |
Mike Connolly
New member
Username: Mconnolly
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, November 2, 2006 - 3:11 pm: | |
Our Income is over 150k.I chose Excel and have found it excellent and at no cost to the parish. A key to my choice was looking to the day when I hand the baton to a new treasurer! I have therefore ensured the printouts look very much like a manually set of records so that I do not exclude a volunteer with no computer skills wishing to handwrite the books and accounts. |
Nigel Wearne
Moderator
Username: Nwearne
Post Number: 5
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, December 2, 2006 - 10:20 pm: | |
Would it be a good move to have a workshop on this topic (at Diocesan Church House as a start) in the near future? It has had by far the most posts of any topic. If I get 10 positive reponses and at least 3 people who would talk about their solutions/software I would happily host a Saturday half day session to see if we can help those who are wanting to change the way they do their accounts. Don't email me, post your thoughts here. I realises that Jan Feb with year ends is not an ideal time to consider change, but when is for treasurers and accountants! |
Gordon Vicary
New member
Username: Gvicary
Post Number: 2
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 - 2:20 pm: | |
Please count me in if the workshop goes ahead. I will be transferring our accounts from Quicken to Sage over the next few weeks so this could be most timely. |
Mr J Whitaker
New member
Username: Jwhitaker
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 9:21 am: | |
At Iffley we used to use Excel, but fund management had to be through separate accounts. The spreadsheet approach is OK, but inevitably individuals have their own design quirks when they set them up - I took over second hand spreadsheets and found that if there is one thing worse than using someone else's spreadsheets it is using someone else's spreadsheets that have been amended (undocumented) by a third party! Cashcall has been a good solution and makes managing funds easy without separate accounts. We also use Gift but do not integrate the two - although Treasurer and Giving Officer are the same person for now, if they are not (and are working at different locations) integration seems to provide more logistical problems than it gives benefits. However, if you are lucky enough to have all admin done through one person the capacity for integration of the two provides some economies in data entry. |
Viv Dorian
New member
Username: Vdorian
Post Number: 7
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 10:47 am: | |
Response to Alan McCullough: My QuickBooks User Guide 2005 has a chapter on converting from Quicken but I haven't used it myself (I set up in Quick Books from scratch.) It doesn't mention Quicken 2004 but it does mention Quicken XG. Sorry I can't be of more help. |
Viv Dorian
New member
Username: Vdorian
Post Number: 8
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 10:54 am: | |
I would be happy to attend a workshop on software. It is possible that I might be able to speak, given time to prepare. |
Clive Corbould
New member
Username: Ccorbould
Post Number: 1
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 - 12:47 pm: | |
I use cashcall and would be interested in a chat with others who have some experience with it. I have only started using it this year and have made some mistakes which seem difficult to rectify. Also I have no accounts experience |
Steve Smith
New member
Username: Ssmith
Post Number: 4
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, December 17, 2006 - 8:49 pm: | |
I might well be interested in a swap-shop on experiences, but a lot depends on when it is scheduled. |
diarmuid macdougall
New member
Username: Diarmuid
Post Number: 1
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 - 8:51 am: | |
As a new treasurer of >£100k (new) parish I have inherited Excel spreadsheet and am interested to improve the accounting and reporting.
I would like to attend a workshop if the content was focused on attendees being able to see some of the packages in action. This should minimse preparation time - presenters could simply bring their accounts (can you anonymise donors etc easily?) |
David Nicholls
New member
Username: Dnicholls
Post Number: 3
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, January 1, 2007 - 6:58 pm: | |
I would like to attend a discussion on the subject some time after 1 March. All the comments are interesting but, to me, quite confusing. |
Alan McCullough
New member
Username: Amccullough
Post Number: 4
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 2, 2007 - 8:50 pm: | |
I'd be happy to attend a workshop on the subject - if we can find a suitable date... |
Caroline Bucklow
New member
Username: Caroline_bucklow
Post Number: 1
Registered: 2-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, February 17, 2007 - 11:21 am: | |
It's taken me rather a long time to get myself on to this message board - silly me, it could have saved me so much trouble!
I'd love to attend a workshop on accounts software. I started using CASHCALL this year and had a lot of hassle setting it up initially (and then correcting the things I'd set up incorrectly...)
If there are enough of us using it, do you think we could get Data Developments to run a training course down here sometime - we could always open it up to neighbouring Diocese? I just can't spare the time to treck off to London/Wolverhampton/York during the working week for one of their scheduled courses.
I'd also like a workshop on Funds - we seem to have rather a lot of these, with associated bank accounts/CBF deposit accounts and I'm not sure whether we still need them all. But as a non-accountant I'm not sure of my footing and wouldn't know how to go about simplifying things.
Sorry this is a bit lengthy, the excitement of joining up went to my head a bit. :-) |
Stanley M Beck
New member
Username: Mikeb
Post Number: 1
Registered: 3-2007
| | Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 - 4:46 pm: | |
I use both Cashcall and Gift from Data Developments (DD) an find them very good.
I recently tried their new Donations (Gift replacement) but gave up on it because of the inability to change user name or passwords - restricted to DD defaults. In my previous church (pre 2001) I used Sage software but Cashcall easier |
Colum Devine
New member
Username: Cdevine
Post Number: 1
Registered: 3-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 3:58 pm: | |
well, i have sage in place with excel for MI reporting and SORP now modified for 2005 changes. i am attracted to Cashcall, but i am not sure it has Sales Ledge capability. we are a busy church with a lot of clients that use our hall etc etc so good integrated invoicing (ala Sage) is key, but making year end is equally key! - any thoughts? |
Edward A Sampson
New member
Username: Edsampson
Post Number: 1
Registered: 8-2007
| | Posted on Monday, August 6, 2007 - 11:43 am: | |
St James' Finchampstead, Berkshire.
We are about to embark on adopting Donation Co-ordinator AND CashCall (later to become Finance Co-ordinator).
In CashCall, we are in the throws of considering how to set the Funds, Accounts, etc and the 'wizard' looks really easy, but there are clearly pros/cons about R&P versus P&A, choice of Account coding, etc.
It would be very useful to talk to someone 'locally' about any experiences they have in setting up and how they found the subsequent operation of the accounts.
Great idea about a User Group. Did it happen??? |
Richard Watts
New member
Username: Richard_watts
Post Number: 1
Registered: 2-2010
| | Posted on Sunday, February 7, 2010 - 2:06 pm: | |
We have just adopted Paxton Church software at All Saints' Leighton Buzzard.
Having just taken over as Treasurer I was faced with three different people using Excel for increasingly complex work and finally the Independent Examiner putting it all into their system once again to get to SORP accounts. Not ideal.
Paxton forces you to work to a system and integrates Gift Aid into the one package.
It comes with preset nominals suitable for church use which is then configurable.
So far so good but will report as we go along.
We didn't go the Financial Controller (Cash Call) route since it was not fully integrated with Gift Aid. We looked at other packages also including Omega but although this seemed excellent and included a pastoral section support from Northern Ireland did not seem idea. Also DPA would come in when using a pastoral database AFAICS. |
