Frequently Asked Questions
MinistryPlatform
MinistryPlatform provides the most powerful and flexible church management system (ChMS) for membership, group involvement, check-scanning, contributions, event management, check-in, and public website integration – including online giving and online event registration. Our rapidly growing ecosystem allows flexible integration with the top applications in the church market through our robust API.
- Fully customizable
- Open data model
- Robust APIs
- Wide ecosystem of integrated solutions including HVAC, Wi-Fi presence, fully-integrated mobile apps, and more
MinistryPlatform is ChMS only. This means only your People data will move to MinistryPlatform. You would still continue using ACS Financials.
Currently MinistryPlatform is NOT integrated with ACST giving solutions, but we are already in planning on when and how those integrations could happen.
Currently you would have to choose a new background check vendor, but we are already in the process of getting Verified First integrated into our Background Check Flow.
As long as you have an internet connection and internet browser, you can easily access MinistryPlatform.
All of our implementations come with almost a year of coaching that will lead and guide your church beyond simple training to a place of real usage and even customization of the software to match your needs and style of ministry.
Moving to MinistryPlatform involves a full migration process including training and coaching. You should definitely think of a move to MinistryPlatform as a relaunch for your staff and leadership. All core ChMS functions will change and your teams will need preparation and training.
If you have previously launched Access ACS to your church, it would involve a relaunch for your congregation. However, we believe the tools in MinistryPlatform will create excitement and anticipation within your church.
MinistryPlatform will continue to build ever-expanding scopes of software to serve the church and will continue to broaden the core platform offering. We are striving to make the software both more powerful and more simple.
Conversion
Yes, all data will be converted to MinistryPlatform as part of the onboarding process.
Data conversion is part of our onboarding process which lasts approximately nine weeks. We will migrate your data at least twice, with customer interaction and verification in between stages to ensure the final data conversion provides the most accurate and seamless transition possible.
Always a great question and one we hear regularly. Starting with clean data is always best, but MinistryPlatform has some pretty powerful tools that can be used to clean up data even after a migration. Generally we don’t advise customers to worry about cleaning the data up until they are migrated. We want you to learn good data cleaning habits in your new ChMS, not your old one.
Yes, we have successfully converted pretty much every system on the market…even custom built systems.
Yes, we can handle multiple datasets being merged into MinistryPlatform. This generally means more data clean up and additional fees as this adds considerable time to the data conversion process.
Our coaching team will give you a full outline on all the steps to get implemented, converted, and launched.
Mythbusters
No. If you like using ACS People, ACS Financials, Access ACS, and ACS ChurchLife and they meet your needs, you can keep using them. Although we are continuing to add features to ACS, they will be smaller and less frequent than updates in the past.
There are no plans to sunset any of the ACS suite of products. However, MinistryPlatform is the most extensively customizable church management platform available today, serving some of the largest and most well-known churches in America. Since 2007, through custom development, integrations, APIs, and an expanding ecosystem of interconnected solutions, MinistryPlatform has taken its place as a top choice for large churches’ ChMS needs.