Accounting Software for Churches: What Differs, and Six Options Compared

Accounting software for churches is a smaller decision than vendors make it sound, because the two things that actually differ are designated funds and clergy payroll. For a congregation of a few hundred, ChurchTrac at $29 to $99 a month by database size is the cheapest option that includes accounting in every plan, and Aplos at $79 a month is the stronger fund ledger with a donor database behind it. PowerChurch Plus is the outlier worth knowing about: a one-time license at $445 that covers membership, contributions, accounting, payroll and accounts payable, which over five years costs less than any of the priced subscriptions here. Realm sits at the large end and is quote only, Breeze handles people and giving but not the books, and QuickBooks Online is cheap through TechSoup and has no fund accounting at any price.

The short version: ChurchTrac for a small church on a budget, Aplos when funds and donor records both matter, PowerChurch Plus if you prefer to own the software, Realm for a large multi-ministry church, and QuickBooks Online only if your designated funds are few.

What makes church accounting different

A church generally does not file Form 990. The IRS Instructions for Form 990 state that “a church, an interchurch organization of local units of a church, a convention or association of churches, or an integrated auxiliary of a church” is not required to file Form 990 or Form 990-EZ. The IRS page on who must file an annual exempt organization return extends that to integrated auxiliaries, church-affiliated organizations that manage retirement programs, church-affiliated schools below college level, church-affiliated foreign mission societies, and the exclusively religious activities of religious orders.

That single fact reshapes the purchase. The audience for a church’s financial reports is the congregation and the board, not the IRS. Software sold on the strength of its Form 990 preparation is selling a church something it does not need, and the reporting that does matter is the fund report read at a members’ meeting.

Clergy pay is taxed unlike anyone else’s. Publication 517 says an ordained minister “may be able to exclude from income tax the rental allowance or fair rental value of a parsonage,” and that “the amount you exclude can’t be more than the fair rental value of the home, including furnishings, plus the cost of utilities,” and cannot exceed reasonable pay for the services. IRS Tax Topic 417 adds that the allowance must be designated in advance by the employing organization for the exclusion to apply. Publication 517 also states that ministerial salary “isn’t subject to federal income tax withholding” where the person is “a duly ordained, commissioned, or licensed minister” and the pay is for ministerial services.

The trap is what happens next. Publication 517 says a minister’s “earnings for the services you perform in your capacity as a minister are subject to SE tax, even if you perform these services as an employee of that church,” and Tax Topic 417 states that the fair rental value of a parsonage or the housing allowance “is excludable only for income tax purposes.” So a church payroll run has to take the housing allowance out of taxable wages while keeping it in the minister’s self-employment tax base. A minister who is religiously or conscientiously opposed to public insurance may apply for exemption on Form 4361, by the due date of the return for the second tax year with net earnings from self-employment of at least $400, and once approved the exemption is irrevocable.

This is not treatment to assume any payroll product gets right. Whatever you buy, the question to put to the payroll provider is whether it can designate a housing allowance, exclude it from income tax wages, and still report it correctly for self-employment tax.

Contribution statements have specific contents. A written acknowledgment substantiating a gift of $250 or more must carry the organization’s name, the cash amount, a description but not a value of any non-cash contribution, a statement of whether goods or services were provided in return, and a description and good-faith estimate of their value. It must also include a statement about intangible religious benefits where applicable, which is the clause that lets a church say a donor received only intangible religious benefits in return for a gift. Where a contribution over $75 is partly a payment for goods or services, the organization must give a written disclosure telling the donor that the deductible amount is limited to the excess over the value received. The IRS collects these rules in Publication 1771.

Designated funds are the church version of donor restrictions. A building fund, a missions fund and a benevolence fund are gifts the church is not free to spend generally, and the test for software is the same one any nonprofit should apply: can it produce a balance sheet and an income statement for a single fund? Tagging transactions is not the same thing.

Church accounting software at a glance

US list prices as of September 2026.

ChurchTrac

ChurchTrac is the low-cost all-in-one option, and its pricing model is the distinguishing feature: you pay by the number of names in the database rather than by feature tier, and accounting is included in every plan with what the vendor describes as no surprise charges.

Archived inactive names do not count toward the limit, and a church can move up a tier as it grows. Paying yearly saves 10 percent. The free trial is 30 days with no credit card. ChurchTrac also sells an optional Accounting Setup service from $399 as a one-time fee, where its team configures the chart of accounts, the funds and the starting balances, which is a reasonable purchase for a church moving off spreadsheets with no treasurer who has done this before.

Fund accounting is part of the base package rather than an upgrade. What ChurchTrac does not spell out publicly is the depth of the ledger beneath it, so a church with meaningful accounts payable, multiple bank accounts or its own payroll should ask specific questions during the trial rather than assume. Skip it if you need a documented audit-grade ledger for a school or a large staff.

Aplos

Aplos is fund accounting with a donor database attached, and it names churches explicitly, describing tracking of funds designated for a missions fund, a building fund or grants. It is the books of record, not a layer over something else, and it publishes Balance Sheet by Fund and Income Statement by Fund as plan features. Payroll runs through an integration with Gusto rather than inside the product, which is the arrangement to test against the clergy housing allowance question above.

List prices, billed monthly, as of September 2026: Lite at $79 for two users, Core at $129 for two, Advanced at $229 for three, and a Custom tier that Aplos describes as starting at $229. Lite covers the fund reports, bank reconciliation, custom reports, a board portal and 1099 management. Core adds budgeting, accounts payable and receivable, recurring transactions and period close. Advanced adds budgeting by fund, grant, department or project. A promotion running in September 2026 takes 50 percent off for three months with the code FALL26, making Lite $39.50 and Core $64.50 during that period, after which the list price applies. The free trial is 15 days with no credit card.

The reason a church pays $948 a year for Lite rather than $708 for ChurchTrac at 250 names is the combination of stronger fund reporting and a donor database in the same system. Skip Aplos if your designated funds are two or three buckets and a volunteer treasurer keeps the books, and note that Aplos does not publish a limit on contacts, which is worth asking about if your membership list is large. The same product serves general charities, and our guide to the best accounting software for nonprofits covers how it compares outside the church market.

PowerChurch Plus

PowerChurch Plus is desktop church administration software, currently at version 15, and it is the only product here still sold as a one-time license. The vendor describes it as maintaining membership, contributions, accounting, event scheduling and general record keeping in one package, and the product also covers payroll and accounts payable.

The arithmetic is the argument. A church buying PowerChurch Plus and carrying a full year of support every year pays $445 plus $330 times five, or $2,095 over five years. PowerChurch Online at $499 a year is $2,495 over the same period. ChurchTrac at the 250-name tier is $59 a month, or $708 a year, reduced 10 percent to $637.20 on annual billing, which is $3,186 over five years. Aplos Lite at $79 a month is $948 a year, or $4,740.

Skip PowerChurch Plus if staff need access from home or from their phones without adding the separate Online product, or if nobody at the church wants to own a Windows installation and its backups. Support being a separate line item is a real cost, not a footnote.

Realm from ACS Technologies

Realm is church management software with a genuine accounting module underneath it, sold by ACS Technologies in three tiers named Inform, Connect and Multiply. The accounting side is described as designed for churches, with fund accounting to organize finances by fund, a chart of accounts arranged in assets, liabilities, net assets, revenues and expenses, income and expense tracking, bank and credit card reconciliation, transaction logs and customizable reporting. Vendor and invoice tracking cover the payables side, payroll is a distinct module linked beneath accounting, and deposits post automatically from the ACS giving platform.

Price is quote only. Nothing is published on the Realm pages, which route to sales or a demo, and no free trial is published either.

Choose Realm when the church is large enough that people, groups, giving, check-in and accounting in separate systems is costing staff time, and when the automatic posting from giving into the ledger is worth paying for. Skip it if you want to compare prices before speaking to a salesperson, or if a treasurer is the only person who will ever open the accounting side.

Breeze, and why it needs a ledger beside it

Breeze is now a Tithe.ly company, which older round-ups still miss. It costs a flat $72 a month with no setup fee, no contract and no termination fee, and a bundle with Breeze Worship Tools, Tithe.ly Church Apps and Tithe.ly Sites runs $119 a month. That covers unlimited admin users, people management, volunteer tracking, service planning, groups, email and text messaging, attendance and giving reporting, a mobile app, and online giving with no transaction fees. The free trial is 30 days with no credit card, alongside a demo account with sample data.

What Breeze does not claim on its own pricing or home pages is a general ledger or an accounting module. Giving records and contribution reporting are not the same as books: there is no chart of accounts, no reconciliation and no fund balance sheet in what the vendor describes. So a church choosing Breeze for its people and giving side is choosing a two-product setup, and the second product is the accounting system. Budget for both. At $72 a month plus a ledger, the combined cost lands close to Aplos or above it, which is the comparison to make before committing.

The general-purpose option

The argument for QuickBooks Online in a church is familiarity, and whether it applies depends on who keeps your books. The weakness is structural: QuickBooks Online has no fund accounting. Churches approximate designated funds with classes, which are capped at 40 below the Advanced plan and unlimited on Advanced. You can report profit and loss by class, so a building fund’s income and spending can be seen. Whether the balance sheet can be split the same way, so that the cash behind each designated balance is visible, is the report to test in the trial, because a class is a tag on transactions rather than a separate set of books.

The price makes that trade worth considering for a small church. TechSoup lists QuickBooks Online Plus with 5 users for a one-year subscription at an $80.00 administrative fee, and QuickBooks Online Advanced with 25 users for a year at $170.00, against list prices of $140 and $340 a month, which are $1,680 and $4,080 for the same year. TechSoup states the program is open to eligible nonprofits, charities and public libraries in the United States, and sets two limits that matter more than the headline: one Intuit product per fiscal year, running July 1 to June 30, and one subscription product within the lifetime of the organization. A church should check TechSoup’s own eligibility requirements against its situation, and should plan for the list price from the second year.

Two other things to settle before defaulting to QuickBooks. QuickBooks is a ledger rather than a giving system, so settle where contribution statements meeting the Publication 1771 contents, including the intangible religious benefits clause, are going to come from. And clergy payroll, with its housing allowance designation and the split treatment between income tax and self-employment tax, is a question for whichever payroll product you attach, not something to assume.

How to choose

• Designated funds are the whole requirement. ChurchTrac at $29 to $119 a month, or Aplos Lite at $79, both of which report by fund. QuickBooks classes are a workaround, not an answer.
• You need contribution statements out of the same system. Aplos, ChurchTrac, PowerChurch Plus or Realm, all of which hold giving records alongside the books. Check the statement output against the Publication 1771 contents, including the intangible religious benefits line.
• You pay clergy. Ask the payroll provider directly whether it can designate a housing allowance and keep it out of income tax wages while retaining it for self-employment tax, before you buy anything.
• Budget is the binding constraint. PowerChurch Plus at $445 one time is the lowest five-year cost here, and ChurchTrac the lowest monthly one.
• People, groups and check-in matter as much as the books. Realm for one integrated system, or Breeze paired with a separate ledger.
• You already run QuickBooks and have few designated funds. Stay, buy through TechSoup once if eligible, and revisit when the fund count grows.

Our accounting software guide covers the general-purpose products in more depth.

When to bring in an accountant

The two areas where a church should not rely on software alone are clergy compensation and anything that touches unrelated business income or employment tax filings. Housing allowances have to be designated in advance and documented in the board minutes, the exclusion has limits tied to fair rental value and reasonable pay, and a Form 4361 exemption is irrevocable once approved. Those are decisions to take with a professional who works with congregations, not settings to pick in a payroll screen. Our directory of CPA firms is the place to find one, and a church running a school, a preschool or multiple campuses, with staff and property to match, may be at the size where fractional CFO help is the better fit than another software subscription.

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