Church teams include more than just employees—they’re a mix of pastors, ministry leaders, volunteers, and support staff. Our payroll software helps you keep detailed, centralized profiles for everyone on your team, from banking details and housing allowances to salary breakdowns and clergy-specific tax notes. It’s all in one secure, organized system built for church administration. Outsourcing church accounting can be a very wise, practical decision. Not only does the church save money and your employees save time, but you also gain access to years of valuable church-specific accounting expertise. As your provider of church accounting services, we are able to record transactions, process payables, reconcile bank accounts, produce financial statements, and so much more.

Looking for Church Accounting?

Clergy members are often considered self-employed for Social Security purposes but employees for income tax withholding, a dual status that demands careful payroll management. Another vital reason for churches to use specialized payroll software is the need for transparent financial reporting. Churches must provide their boards, donors, and congregants with clear accounting of funds, including payroll expenses.

Free direct deposit & automatic payroll scheduling

If you’re looking for a company that will cater to your church’s size, Rippling promises to easily scale with you from 2 to 2,000 employees. Payroll Partners offers a free quote so you accounting can get customized pricing for your church’s specific needs. The next step is to determine how much and how often you will be paying your employees. The most common options are biweekly (every other week) or semi-monthly (twice a month).

Bookkeeping & Accounting

These plans have advanced church-specific features, such as calendar/fiscal year budgeting, free same-day online payments, free check generation to any United States address, customizable reporting and advanced tax reports. The platform supports multiple pay types, including clergy housing allowances, and offers unlimited payroll runs with direct deposits generally processed within one business day. Higher-tier plans provide benefits like same-day payroll payments and local tax filings, adding convenience for churches with more complex payroll needs. This provider ranked the lowest in our list of best church payroll services because its third-party integration, benefits, and reporting options are limited. Financial Resources for Clergy also is more expensive than the five other payroll providers in this guide because you have to pay extra for expert support and employee benefits in addition to its church payroll services. Patriot Payroll is a payroll company based in the United is a good option for small churches as it offers flexible and affordably priced payroll plans.

Even if a client has a knowledgeable staff member in these areas, aligning this knowledge with software that can handle ministerial compensation well is important. The greatest challenge for the church in selecting a payroll company is finding someone who is truly qualified in clergy tax law and church payroll. Knowledge and experience is critical and ministry leaders must understand these challenges and recognize the need for industry specialists. You are probably not alone if the day you process payroll is your most stressful time of the week. Whether you are the church bookkeeper, treasurer, or human resources professional, managing the church payroll process can be challenging. The risk of missing a deadline, miscalculating a clergy compensation, or forgetting to take a regulatory or tax change into account can throw everything off.

What Makes Church Payroll Different?

Sign up below for our monthly newsletter with free Church Finance resources and important reminders. Our team will help you outline a plan to be successful behind the scenes so you can focus on serving others. We invest our revenue back into our product to keep our platform on the cutting edge and drive better business outcomes for you. We partner with you from day one, bringing deep industry expertise and award-winning support. Positive reviews on Paycom state that the best qualities include simplicity, seamless process, ease of use, and saving time on the backend. In addition, you’ll want to know their church title or position, start date, and whether they are full-time or part-time.

Essential Checklist: What Your Church Payroll Service MUST Have

Overall, the intuitive dashboard and interface, ease of use, and efficient payroll tools make this a reliable church payroll service. We can handle all of your church accounting, from data entry all the way up to creating your financial reports. We understand church fund accounting and our church accountants set your books up to provide custom reports specifically for you and your unique needs. The platform stays updated with the latest tax laws and rates, automatically applying them to each employee’s profile, whether they’re ordained clergy or administrative staff. You can securely manage all tax data in one place, making audits, filings, and year-end reporting a best payroll service for churches breeze.

Try the best payroll for nonprofit organizations

For your convenience, we put together an overview comparing our services to How to Run Payroll for Restaurants secular payroll companies. Rippling is among the best church payroll services for churches that want to automate their payroll, IT, and HR tasks. Rippling allows users to automate core IT tasks like computer inventory monitoring, business software management, laptop assignment to personnel, and much more.

How To Choose a Church Accounting Software

• Client Access allows our clients to work in the payroll software, giving them control over all aspects of their payroll.
• It lets you process There are no limits to how much money you can make.
• Most salaried staff, hourly workers, and ministry stipends are taxable wages.
• You shouldn’t have to spend valuable ministry time deciphering spreadsheets to make wise decisions and cast a strong vision.
• Money movement services are brought to you by Intuit Payments Inc., licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services, subject to eligibility criteria, credit and application approval.

ChurchTrac is a great online church management software for churches of all sizes. The software allows church administrators to reconcile bank statements and stay in sync with their banks by matching actual transactions with the bank statements. This feature helps them prevent accounting errors, keep track of the church’s finances, understand mismanaged funds, and generate accurate reports to ensure financial transparency. Blackbaud’s cloud fund accounting software Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT provides transparency across teams, security, and compliance, and reduces the need for manual processes.

• Your assigned specialist will then diligently enter and reconcile this information, clarifying any ambiguities with you.
• Their expense management software is highly recommended and used widely by hundreds of churches.
• We also looked at companies that provide small enterprises with various pricing alternatives.
• Higher-tier plans provide benefits like same-day payroll payments and local tax filings, adding convenience for churches with more complex payroll needs.
• Paystubs are available to employees via an online portal, that allows employees access to their payroll information, from anywhere, anytime.
• And we know first-hand what it takes to create an effective digital marketing strategy for churches.

Non-exempt employees, on the other hand, are entitled to overtime pay, and minimum wage laws do apply to them. You typically pay them on an hourly basis and their wages can fluctuate based on the number of hours they work each week. Instead, they are considered “salaried” employees and are typically paid a set amount each week, regardless of the number of hours they work. Exempt employees generally are in management roles or positions that require a high level of skill and training. In addition, we want to answer your questions about what makes church payroll unique and what to look for when choosing a service. Some churches use accrual accounting, which is recording income and expenses when they are earned.