About Sacristo
Sacristo is a small piece of software for the person who runs the money at a church. The administrator, the business manager, the treasurer, the volunteer who has done the books for eleven years, or the pastor doing it on a Sunday evening. It is built for the church that has people on payroll, at least one of them clergy, a budget the board approves, and giving that arrives in three different ways and reconciles to none of them.
Why this site exists
This site exists because a church's money is treated by software as if it were an ordinary small business's, and it is not. A minister is an employee for income tax and self-employed for Social Security at the same time, so general payroll software gets the pastor wrong in a way somebody corrects by hand every quarter. Giving arrives in envelopes, in a plate and through a platform, and the three reconcile to nothing, so the annual contribution statements are rebuilt each January from scratch. And the budget is approved in the autumn against giving that has not happened yet, so a church can find out in September that it has been short since May. None of that is a doctrinal question and no church management system fixes it, because it is a bookkeeping problem wearing a collar.
Who it is for
A small or mid-size US church with paid staff: the pastor and a handful of others, mostly part-time, a budget that gets approved each autumn and asked about all year, and no finance department.
Not a church with no paid staff, where a spreadsheet is genuinely enough; not the buyer of church management, membership or facility software; not a general business shopping for payroll; and not a member of the congregation.
What it does not do
- No tax advice and no filing: where clergy tax treatment is described here, the IRS publication is named and your church's own accountant decides
- No doctrine and no denominational policy: what a church pays its pastor is the board's decision and this site publishes arithmetic, not a position
- No paid placement: nobody pays to be named on this site, and every competitor figure names the pricing page it was read from and the date
- No lead selling: an enquiry sent here is answered here, and never passed to a vendor, a broker or a lead buyer
What is on this site
1 free tools, each working its figure on the page with no account, and Sacristo Pro that keeps the record. All tools · Pricing.
What Sacristo Pro keeps
You keep the sheets. Pro holds the payroll runs, the budget against what was really given, and the giving by household, and it produces the annual contribution statements from that record rather than from a spreadsheet somebody rebuilds each year.
Who answers for it
Joe Ellul-Turner, Director, Ellul Solutions Ltd, who answers support and every enquiry from this site.
Reach us
Contact for a question about the product, ask whether Sacristo Pro does a particular thing, Support when something is broken or money is wrong, or hello@sacristo.com. The legal terms are on Terms and Privacy.