“When other churches ask what
software we use I always point them to Shelby. We have the best
relationship due to their special care for their users. They continue to
strive to improve and enhance their software every day. They are quick
to hear the needs of the church and provide a solution. Their support
line is extremely easy and fast, too. Not only is Shelby a good software
product, but I find it is flexible to meet the needs of small and large
churches regardless of the denomination. If you want progressive church
software Shelby is the best.”
– Janie San Antonio, TX
“I’ve worked with many PR programs and I think Shelby is
one of the best. We are small but I still love how easy it is to use. I
say go for it. It will pay for itself in just a few months.”
– Sue Nichols Parish Manager St. Margaret of Scotland Catholic Church
“Shelby Payroll is a great program. We used ADP for
several years, but pulled it in-house in 1995 and are SO glad we did.
Periodically, my boss will ask if we should consider outsourcing – but
so far, I see no reason why we should. Doing it ourselves may cost us a
bit more time for the reporting side of things, but we save way more
money in ADP fees than we spend on the salary for our employees to do it
for us. I would also recommend the third party product, TimeClock Plus.
It interfaces with Shelby and eliminates manual entry of hours. Shelby
Systems actually uses this for their payroll processing.”
– Cindy Rose Finance/Accounting Manager Christian Life Center
“We have about 55 employees and do payroll every other
week. Piece of cake, including the tax forms, & Shelby’s Support is
amazingly up-to-date on this stuff! The ministers “quirks” are handled
very easily & the data input is about as simple as it gets. We are
blessed not to have the nasty stuff- garnishments, out-of-state people,
etc., but Shelby has a place for those things, too. It’s all in how it’s
set up. Once the setup is done, the thing just about runs itself! I
don’t think I could ever be convinced to outsource.”
– Lori Manning Zoar Baptist Church
“In order to figure out how to create the profile
security level in GlobaFile, I went to the Knowledge Base on The Shelby
Community (excellent resource)! I know I’m not the only Shelby fan, but I
might just be the biggest!”
– Lori Manning Zoar Baptist Church
“I use Shelby in as many ways as possible. The relational
database is an enormous time-saver. I don’t have to worry about
remembering to make address changes, I just make a change in a record
one place and it’s available for any purpose, from calling a donor to
mailing a check to a vendor. And with the profiling, I can target my
mailings for the purpose needed to special donors, general donors, board
members. It helps me work more efficiently.”
– Leslie Hamilton, OH
“I have told so many people that Shelby is the finest
product they will use. It’s not the cheapest, and it is not the most
expensive. What you will get is a solid program, with solid support
backing these programs. Shelby keeps up their end of the relationship by
making our programs run faster so we can get more work done. You’ll get
more than your money’s worth, you will get your life back!”
– Lois Springfield, MO
“I would not attempt to work in the finance office
without Shelby. Reports for committees and the auditors can be made as
simple or complex as needed. And the software works with some great
time-savers. It no longer takes all day to run payroll; TimeClock gets
the job done in 5 minutes. Contributions are entered quickly and
accurately with CrossCheck. And if I want to talk to a technician, it’s a
free call away. Further, the Shelby programmers are topnotch in
listening to my ideas. I have tried other church software in the last 15
years and nothing beats Shelby!”
– Lee Ann Houston, TX
“The implementation of Shelby Systems has dramatically
increased our efficiency as an organization. We can now do a greater
volume of work in a decreased amount of time. We highly recommend it.”
– Christy Yorba Linda, CA
“I am convinced that Shelby is the best church management system out there. It has always been able to meet our needs.”
– Eva Anderson Human Resources Director Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church
“For first time guests, I post a “Date of first visit” in
Shelby in the Prospect module. This really helps to pull up 1) the
first time guests for that particular week and 2) a cumulative list of
first time guests for any time frame you choose (for example: monthly,
quarterly, or yearly).”
– Betsy Young Membership/Database Cypress United Methodist Church
“Most (all?) of our struggles have been taken care of
with the rapid pace of feature enhancements since 2007. For those
features that Arena will not implement, we are free to handle on our own
thanks to their Developer API. That’s probably the best thing about
Arena – we can add functionality within the same interface and our
end-users won’t know the difference between Arena’s standard features
and our custom features.”
– Jeremy Hoff Director of Information Systems Shepherd of the Hills
“I find it easier to navigate than most other financial
software. The biggest savings from Shelby’s Financials has been
TimeClock Plus and the Shelby Teller scanner, as well as showing the
other ministries how to use the Purchase Order module. It has saved my
assistant a lot of entry.”
– Sylvia Manley
“There are only 3 of us that even look at finances in my
church. Our controller will enter payroll journal entries, we have a
part time bookkeeper who works mostly with tuitions for our schools and
camps, etc., and then there is me, the Financial Secretary. I can always
find what I am looking for and find the system very easy to use. I have
been in the financial arena for over 40 years and have worked for
different businesses with different financial programs and Shelby is one
of the best, in my opinion. We have all of our tuitions, events,
programs, etc. invoiced into the system and we can track payments of
various kinds, whether they are donations, stock gifts, and tuitions,
payments for products, our bookstore or coffee shop. I have four
companies that I deal with and various funds and departments in each
one. I think one of the best features is that I can look back since I
started working here in 1997 and see every entry made and every
contribution made… at the click of my mouse!”
– Elena Derbique
“We use Shelby ACH for both payments and contributions.
It does work well. In addition to saving postage, it is a much safer way
to pay vendors as it lowers risk of check fraud with fewer physical
checks being sent out. We currently pay certain vendors this way and
hope to add more as well as our missionaries. For contributions, it is
also very simple and a great auto-giving tool.”
– Laurel Fortin – Controller First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue, Bellevue, WA
“It is so easy to find a journal or a deposit and Bank
Reconciliation works like a charm. Usually whatever a minister or board
needs.I can produce relatively quickly.”
– Elena Derbique
“When we are in a pledge campaign, it is very easy to get
statistics as far back as when we started with Shelby, about 1997. It
is also important when we follow a family from their first gift as a
prospect to see how they progress money-wise, etc. so that we can tell
when they are getting close to joining. The financial piece is a great
indicator for this.”
– Elena Derbique
“On a monthly basis, I have to generate budget reports
for each manager. The special Report feature allows me to set up the
report detail and print the financial report and detail General Ledger
activity without having to manually generate the reports one at a time.”
– Dana Shankle
“Generally, I work on the financials in some way, whether
preparing journal entries, working on spreadsheets, or reconciling the
bank accounts. Among the many useful features in the General Ledger
module, I really use ShelbyQuery a lot. It is really nice to be able to
download data directly into Excel and then work with it. Also, the
ability to save reports as PDFs is very helpful… I can’t imagine trying
to do this job without Shelby Financials. I really appreciate that it
was designed for churches and not-for-profits. Since I work in the
Accounting Department of a large church, I would have no ministry
without Shelby Financials. Shelby enables us to provide necessary
financial information to all other departments, the pastors, the
deacons, and the whole congregation at times. We can help departments
track their spending vs. budget and help the congregation understand the
financial results of the past year.”
– Kelley Brown
“One of the biggest time savers in Arena is that it is
integrated with the website. We are really starting to see the power in
letting people sign up for an event online where everything is available
to us and can be followed up on.ments track their spending vs. budget
and help the congregation understand the financial results of the past
year.”
– Ed Stone
“We chose Arena because of the ability to customize it, as well as the ability to do our reporting the way we want to do it.”
– Ed Stone
“We love our Canon CR-55 and love Shelby Teller! Our bank
wasn’t able to accept the files directly, so we go through Profit
Stars, who then sends the deposits to the bank. It’s seamless and works
wonderfully!”
– Michelle Community of Grace Lutheran, Peoria, AZ