ACS - Avis

Ease of use--the reporting is awesome.

Could look more pleasing to the eye like most of the programs today. But it gets the job done. I've seen the progression over the twenty years I have used ACS.

The first remark is the customer service which is very reactive and quickly solves your problem. ACS is a very useful church management software, because we won't have the problem to manage the database of our members or the registration of the children, and even all the donations received. I like the way it stores information. Of course, it is not quick to master ACS, but once you have mastered it you have everything you want to know about reports, campaign follow-ups, etc. In conclusion, ACS is a very good software to store any kind of information.

Despite the fast customer service, we notice that during the months of February and March the wait is rather long. The ACS software often bugs or slows down when donor files increase. The lack of functional expense reporting is lacking given the current state of the art technology. ACS is also limited on the choice of administrators on who should access this or that. The ACS software needs to be upgraded, as the speed is poor when running large reports. The look needs to be redesigned not too aesthetically pleasing, but also the API access which is almost non-existent.

If you spent a lot of time setting things up and were using it daily, ACS seems to have the capability to have good functionality. I've been in two different organizations where that wasn't the case, and heard similar things from other users, which meant ACS was something that I used only when I really couldn't get someone else to do the thing I needed, or I really needed to find a piece of information. It seems to be a great place to store all kinds of information.

The user interface was difficult, making learning it (and teaching it to church staff who are often technically slower) very difficult. Because people never learned it, it was used poorly and data was sometimes out of date, making the whole database only really functional for the financial side of things and we never managed to get the use out of it that we often hoped and tried for. Overall it was a frustrating piece of software when we had to engage with it and people would create their own systems and spreadsheets as work arounds.

#1 Pro is that ACS addresses the most important tasks a church is in need of.

I have found many thing that weren't intuitive. Uploading of photos ok although no way to standardize within the program (cropping sorely needed) and downloading photos isn't intuitive. The modules are limited, all the data in Access needs to transfer into the people suite for reporting purposes. Access pretty useless for reporting purposes. Using the volunteer management is not really practical to use as intended. Although you have made changes where you can transmit data to excel or word. OnDemand stings because you can't save locally in an easy manner. Many times our church has served more or less as your beta testing because we actually try to use all the features and give feedback but we get nothing in return for that. We only do that because it is lacking features or functionality.

1. The customer support!!!! If I can't figure out how to do something, there are so many ways to get help: Phone calls to a live person that walks me through things step-by-step, webinars, other ACS users in different online communities, etc.
2. The flexibility of the product and how it's grown...and continues to grow...to meet our needs.

The volunteer management piece isn't as directly integrated as we would like.

Robust, lots of functions, built with churches in mind

Clunky, slow, old interface, can't adapt to ongoing demands of changing churches

Performs general ledger and accounts payable functions well. Headmaster is used for Preschool/Kindergarten classes.

Headmaster is a little cumbersome to use, but you get used to it. Heavy on data entry to set up students. We looked into using Event Scheduler, but determined it was too cumbersome for our use.

Ease of use; frequent upgrades; makes my job more efficient

I really do like everything about it but if I had to name one thing, it would be the reports part of the program. The reports can be a little difficult to search & display the results you want.

This software was the solution we needed. When ACS Realm is fully launched, we will find that our questions will be answered with the product provided.

Sometimes the software can be clunky and not able to fully customize the solution we need but then the question is asked, "What do I really need to do?"

It is very easy to set up multiple users and customize what they can access at any given time. I also liked how you can have multiple windows open at a time even if they were from different access "suites."

The service as a whole is difficult to use. I have found the process to find multiple reports very time-consuming even when you know what you are looking for. The service is not as straight forward to use as I had hoped. You also are not able to customize how the reports look which I would have appreciated when sending reports to clients.

ACS Technologies accounting software for churches has many capabilities that are necessary in the accurate accounting of all the funds coming into and going out from the church. We are able to print detailed reports for our Finance Team to review each month, follow a clear auditing trail, and have up-to-date information on the funds remaining for each ministry team.

ACS is not at all user-friendly and requires a great deal of specialized training in order to be up and running within a reasonable amount of time. It is not intuitive and while the customer service phone line is very helpful and readily available, it is extremely difficult for someone to come in as a new employee and take over the reigns in regards to accounting. There are training sessions available, but they are typically only offered in South Carolina where the ACS corporate offices are located. That makes it difficult for a smaller church to afford to send one or two employees for training in a timely manner. There are manuals available for print, but again, weeding through the many pages of the manual is not an easy task for a person who is unfamiliar with the software. The tools needed for church accounting are there, however, they are difficult to master in practice.

The attendance module has allowed us to automate a process that used to take many man hours. It has also improved our ability to keep in touch with our members.

The reporting feature of the software is highly customizable which is great for it's ability to enable you pull information exactly how you need it, but it makes it's user friendliness a bit lacking.

ACS was powerful and stable. It's accounting software was also a huge perk.

The company started focusing on other products and this one got left in the dust. New features were non-existant. The user interface was clunky and reminiscent of Windos 95. Most of our staff were too intimidated to use it, so they made up their own solutions. This led to so many problems.

Organizes a lot of information for you church members and also can keep track of the contribution side of your ministry.

The look and some functions are a bit outdated. They are constantly doing updates and the cost is a bit expensive.

Their accounting module is amazing. I have not found any CMS that is anywhere close to being as good as ACS ileith accounting.

It is hard to learn and it is very dated. Not mobile friendly. Ugly.

Love the support team and their vast knowledge of the product. It is easy to use.

Needs more reporting/queerying options for accounting.

- Easy to use
- Great customer service
- Great customizability

Could look more modern, but certainly gets the job done

ACS has just about everything you could ask for, and then some. Their pricing is more competitive than other major companies.

Although there is an online arm of this product, all the information must be kept locally (although some would think this a pro). The controls are non-intuitive and clunky. Even the online version of this has the look and feel of something just above MS Dos.

I love how flexible/customizable it is, to fit nearly any faith community. It also can be integrated with other programs (giving, background checks, etc.).

TOTALLY not intuitive. Also, I was assured that the ACS Finance training I was going to was completely for non-finance people and I couldn't follow it at ALL due to the heavy, HEAVY reliance upon accounting jargon.

Lots of fields available, good access for members. Info seems to be reliable if entered properly. Easy to fix mistakes.

Setting up reports is not very intuitive and is hard to customize. Not enough directions within the product to guide you.

I worked at a church that had used this software for a long time. It was very old and clunky compared to newer competitors. ACS was working on a more modern version, but it wasn't available for churches of our size at the time.

It was archaic. Was cumbersome, ugly and not intuitive. The church paid a surprisingly high amount for the software.

ACS is a software that just has worked for us. I have been here for 7 years now and the finance department has loved it the entire time I've been here.

We just switched from on-prem to on-demand and while we love the ability to use windows or Mac machines, we had to downgrade the number of people who could access it to stay within budget. The 5 usernames is a nice starting point but it was not deemed cost effective to add more users.

ACS has a new version of their software that is called REALM. It is all online and extremely user friendly. They have online help for every aspect of the program.

The only con is the small learning curve to begin using.