Although the sanctuary has been quiet, the administrative staff at Tenth has been working hard to implement new software systems that will help us stay better connected as a congregation and achieve greater efficiencies in our administrative processes. Most members are familiar with the Church Life App, also known as Access Tenth, which provides a church directory and is used to process giving. Access Tenth lacks many capabilities we need to stay connected, provide pastoral care, and efficiently process donations. To remediate this, Access Tenth will be replaced in August by more capable software called TouchPoint.
TouchPoint will enhance our membership database and provides a robust and user-friendly registration system for conferences, retreats, and other ministry events. This should improve pastoral care and member engagement. TouchPoint will also greatly increase the efficiency of our donations processing and tracking. More giving options will be available for online givers, and a revised policy will help clarify Tenth’s giving priorities. Donors who are registered for recurring online giving will need to register their bank credentials when our new software goes live in August. Tenth staff will be in touch to help walk them through that process.
In addition to replacing Access Tenth, Tenth is also replacing QuickBooks accounting software with an online system called Sage Intaact. Intaact will vastly improve financial reporting, and enable our ministry leaders to track revenue and expense in real time. Tenth will also be implementing automated bill payment software and staff credit card processing, which together will minimize many time-consuming manual processes.
As is usually the case with significant software changes, it may take a while before these systems produce the benefits we are expecting. However, our current software platforms are outdated or not suited to our ministry, and these new systems should serve us well for years to come. Although there is some up-front cost to implementing the new systems, they are not expected to be more expensive than our current processes after the initial investment to set them up. The benefits, however, will be long lasting and should strengthen the church.