Grace Community Church in Davao City had been running the same way since 1998. The secretary kept membership records in a ledger. The treasurer managed finances in a red notebook. Event attendance was tracked on sign-in sheets that were photocopied and filed in folders nobody could find.
When their long-time secretary retired in September 2025, the new secretary — a 28-year-old named Maricel who had worked in HR before joining ministry — looked at the filing system and said: "We need to fix this."
The State of Things Before
Grace Community had approximately 400 active members, but nobody was sure of the exact count. The ledger had names crossed out, moved, or updated in pencil with multiple revisions. Families who had transferred to other churches were still listed. Members who had moved to Cebu were still being counted.
Financial reporting was done quarterly by hand. The treasurer would spend two weekends adding up receipts to produce a report that was already 3 months outdated by the time it reached the board.
Month One: The Migration
Maricel started with members. Using StewardTrack's member import feature, she prepared a spreadsheet of all known members with their basic details — name, contact number, household, and status. The import took 20 minutes. Then she spent the next two weeks cleaning up the data: updating addresses, marking inactive members, linking family households.
The finance migration took longer. They had to reconstruct a proper chart of accounts from the red notebook entries. Maricel and the treasurer worked together on two Saturday mornings to set up the accounts and enter the opening balances for the current fiscal year.
The First Sunday After Go-Live
Three weeks after starting, they processed their first online donation via the Xendit integration. A member who had moved to Manila sent her tithe digitally. It appeared automatically in the financial transaction log. The treasurer did not have to do anything except verify it.
"Nagulat ako," the treasurer said. "Hindi ko na kailangang mag-encode pa. Nandoon na."
Results After 30 Days
- Member database cleaned from ~400 fuzzy records to 387 verified active members
- 12 households linked properly for the first time
- Online giving set up and working — 8 members used it in the first month
- Financial report generated in 4 minutes instead of 2 weekends
- New members can now register via QR code at the welcome desk
"I used to dread the quarterly finance report. Now I just click a button and it's done. I wish we had done this years ago." — Church Treasurer, Grace Community Church
If your church is still running on notebooks, you are not alone — but you do not have to stay there. StewardTrack's Essential plan is free. You can start today.
