ChMeetings’ Accounting module lets you manage various aspects of your finances; however, it does not provide a payroll feature. While this is a capability that all churches require, in our experience, not many manage it via their church management software. Churches choose dedicated payroll solutions. We support this approach for three main reasons:
- Payroll is complex, and combining it with a ChMS would create highly complex environments that churches may struggle with.
- Relevant legislation is also highly complex, specialized, and country-specific.
- As such, payroll requires highly skilled teams, who know how to work with church management systems and church environments but also with the complexities of staffing in different countries or legal contexts.
At ChMeetings, we want to make work easier for our churches; hence why we decided not to include a Payroll feature for the foreseeable future. Doing so would increase our platform’s complexity and take away from its user-friendliness.
Besides this, we are not payroll specialists, and would likely be unable to keep up with the effort required for maintaining such a feature. Instead, we would rather work toward other practical aspects of church life and community, which there are few or no solutions for. Since other providers are doing this better than we ever could, we prefer to recommend them to you, rather than trying to stretch our efforts to potentially little avail.
So, our recommendation is Patriot Software Payroll. Their full payroll service can be highly valuable because they handle tax filing and deposits in the USA. This includes federal, state, and local taxes, as well as year-end tax filings. Patriot Software also guarantees tax filing accuracy, so their service can take a lot of work off a church admin’s shoulders. Not to mention that you have specialists doing it all for you, so you are sure that your taxes are filed and paid correctly and on time, with no time or effort spent on your side. If you don’t want them to manage your payroll taxes, then you can just get their software, for a lower cost. (We are not affiliated with the company in any way; nor do we earn any income if you choose to use their service. We simply know that they offer quality and value, and are highly recommended by other providers in the ChMS market.)
Thank you for your understanding. Your thoughts are welcome, as always.