Getting Started With ChurchTrac

Welcome to ChurchTrac! Our software is a powerful tool that is designed to equip you and your leaders to do effective ministry. Despite all the features we've packed into our software, it's designed to be intuitive and user-friendly.

Getting Started

Your ministry role (or the role of your users) will determine which screens and features are used regularly. To help you and your users started, we've created a series of user guides that you can view or distribute to users based on their primary ministry role.

Navigating the Application

ChurchTrac is organized into different sections called "screens". The main application screens include:

Home / Dashboard
People / Families
Events / Attendance (including Family Check-In)
Worship / Scheduling
Giving / Pledges
Accounting /Budgets
Settings

You can navigate to one of these screens by clicking the corresponding button on the application's main toolbar.

Our free plan only includes access to the Home, People and Settings screens. The Worship/Scheduling & Accounting/Budgets Screens are only available on the Plus Plan.

There's a couple different options for how the main toolbar is displayed in ChurchTrac. On larger displays you can choose whether the main toolbar appears as buttons down the left side of your display or in tabs across the top of your display. You can choose your main toolbar style in:

Settings Preferences General Preferences.

Menu Options

Main Toolbar on Top

Menu Options

Main Toolbar on Left

Menu Options

If you're on a smaller screen (like a phone or some tablets) the navigation menu will automatically collapse and only be displayed by clicking the menu button on the top left corner of your screen.

Hamburger Menu

Once you navigate to one of the main screens of the application, you'll notice that there are several "sub-screens" or pages that offer additional functionality. For example, the People screen has several pages, including Tags, Smart Lists, Reports and Messaging. On larger screens, these page options will be shown across the top of your display, and on smaller screens you'll see them in the left slide-out menu.

Top Sub Menu

Left Sub Menu

So each main screen contains features and pages that pertain to that screen. Attendance features, for example, can be found by first navigating to the Events screen, then clicking "Attendance and Check-In" on the Event's screen toolbar.

Attendance and Check-In

Each application (and each screen) is organized in a logical, common sense way. The People screen is where you'll enter names, send messages, and assign tags. The Events screen is used for anything that pertains to an event, like event registration or check-in. The Giving screen is where you'll enter donations and manage pledges, and the Accounting screen is for managing finances, including budgets.

Getting Help

Help is always just a click or two away. Simply click the green "Help" button on the top right side of your display. Each screen (and each page on each screen) has help content to get you started, and most pages have links to more detailed help articles.

Getting Help

If you find yourself needing help that goes beyond our User Guide, we've got your back! We have real-life humans on our Support Team who are ChurchTrac Gurus. Simply create a support ticket and we will respond to your question in a jiffy! We can even give you a call if your issue needs it.

Let's Get Started!!!

You'll typically want to start on the People Screen, entering names and assigning tags. (Tags are a nifty way to organize and group your people. Be sure to see our help topics on using Tags.) If you have a lot of names, you might want to have us import them for you (first import on us, of course). We can import names from a spreadsheet, just reach out to us for assistance.

As you're entering your names (or as soon as you have them all entered), you'll want to begin assigning people to Tags. Tags are a great way to label or organize names into groups. Tags are an important step that can make a huge difference in managing and organizing your ministry. Tags are also needed in order to use the attendance and check-in features.

At some point you'll also want to create additional user accounts. We recommend that you have a user account for every person who needs to log in to the application. You can also set permissions for each user, which limits which screens and features can be accessed by that user. To get started with user accounts, navigate to Settings User Accounts.

Only Administrators have the ability to create user accounts and manage user permissions.

We're in this together!

Just like you, all of us at ChurchTrac are actively involved in our local ministries. Some of us are Pastors, Worship Leaders, Counselors, and Teachers. When we say "I know what you mean," it's because we really do! We're excited to be working side-by-side with you. Welcome to the ChurchTrac family! Please let us know if there's anything we can do to help.