One of the many pain points of church office staff is an excess of administrative tasks—getting caught up in spreadsheets and repetitive daily duties. From pastors to office administrators, communications managers to accountants, every member of your church staff is likely looking to reduce their daily workload.
But how can you actually reduce church administrative tasks? There are many solutions to this problem; you might have tried changing your processes, hiring new employees, or eliminating certain tasks. But if nothing has worked yet, don’t fret.
Utilizing a church management software is one great way to reduce church workload burden across your staff, whether you’re a staff of two or twenty. We’re breaking down many of the ways in which a church-specific software can help your office run more smoothly and be more efficient, therefore reducing your workload.
Automating Repetitive or Duplicate Tasks
Perhaps the biggest way a church management software can reduce church administrative burden is by eliminating the need for repetitive or duplicate tasks. By automating these tasks or reducing the need to do them twice, you can save your office staff hours each week.
For example, Church360° Members integrates with Church360° Ledger so that you don’t have to add offering entries into both your financial software and your membership software. The information syncs effortlessly between the two softwares, saving you time!
Organizing Tasks
Many church management softwares allow you to organize tasks and assign them to specific people in your organization. So, rather than emailing your coworker to say, “This is ready for your review,” your software could do it for you once you complete your part of the task!
For example, let’s say a visitor fills out a connect card and your church office coordinator enters the information into your church management software. When he or she tags the person as a first-time visitor, the software could automatically assign a task to your pastor to call or email the visitor.
Reducing Communication Volume
The saying “This meeting could have been an email” is funny until your inbox is full of emails that could have been meetings. One of the biggest pain points any office worker has is unnecessary, redundant, or irrelevant email communications. Emails asking where a file is or if some information is up to date seem small, until you’re getting ten of those emails a day.
When you use a church management software, you are naturally reducing the communication volume regarding certain topics. You can rest assured that all information is synced and up to date, and that everyone on your staff is seeing the same things—no duplicate or conflicting information.
All members can also see when information was last updated, so it’s easy to determine if information is up to date. For example, your pastor can see that offering information was updated on Monday, so he can know that Sunday’s offerings were inputted.
Streamlining Tasks
Another benefit of church management software that reduces administrative burden is streamlining tasks that add up throughout the week. Coordinating volunteers, updating your membership database, entering offerings, and communicating with groups are some of the many tasks that happen throughout the week—but they often become time consuming.
By utilizing a church management software, you can streamline these tasks and reduce the amount of time you spend on them per week. Softwares such as Church360° allow you to create tailored filters, so you can easily communicate with specific groups of people—without manually entering in all of their email addresses.
Automatic Communications
If you are in church communications or church administration, much of your job is sending emails—to your pastor, to your volunteers, and to your members. While a church management software can’t reduce the impact of all of these communications, it can help ease the burden of some emails.
As mentioned previously, you can easily send emails to specific groups of people, such as a volunteer team, a small group Bible study, or your church council. However, you can also utilize the email and SMS messaging feature in your church management software to communicate with your entire church body.
Mass emails are great for communicating announcements, event reminders, and pastoral updates quickly and directly to your congregation. SMS messaging is best for communication that needs to be immediate, such as a canceled service due to inclement weather, an alert to a location change for an event, or an emergency prayer request.
Events
Event management is a complex process, and it often is a job in and of itself! Because these tasks are usually done by employees who have many other duties, reducing the administrative burden of these tasks is huge.
In most church management softwares, you will be able to create custom forms and link them to specific events in your church calendar. You can utilize these forms for volunteer signups and event registrations, allowing you to communicate with specific groups of people and track attendance.
In Summary
Church management software is the best and most cost effective way to reduce administrative burden in your office. By eliminating the need for redundant tasks, improving communication efforts, and expertly managing events, a software like Church360° Members is irreplaceable in your church office.
Take some pressure off your hardworking team by utilizing easy-to-use church management software from Concordia Technology Solutions.
