Church payroll software
- Total annual income
- $340,400
- Pastor total cost, cash plus housing plus the SECA offset
- $80,737.50
- Other staff cost including employer payroll taxes
- $41,610
The worksheet works entirely from the giving and payroll figures you enter about your own church. Any vendor price named on this site is read from that vendor's own pricing page on a stated date and recorded with its source.
Church payroll software has one job general payroll software does not do, and it is the reason churches end up correcting their own payroll by hand. A minister is an employee for income tax and self-employed for Social Security and Medicare at the same time, so the church does not withhold FICA from clergy pay and does not match it either. On top of that, the housing allowance has to be designated by the board in advance, in writing, and it is excluded from income tax while still counting for self-employment tax. A payroll product with no field for either will produce a confident, wrong answer every run.
Open the Church budget software Free to use. No account, no card, no trial clock.
Get the clergy classification right before anything else
Decide, and write down, who on the payroll is clergy for tax purposes and who is not. It is not about the job title: it is about ministerial status as IRS Publication 517 sets it out. Everything downstream, what is withheld, what the church matches and what appears where on the W-2, follows from that one decision, and getting it wrong is the error that takes a quarter to surface.
Designate the housing allowance in advance, in the minutes
The allowance must be designated before the period it covers, by official action of the board, and recorded. It cannot be applied retroactively at year end when somebody realises. Sacristo holds the designated amount against the payroll record with the date the board set it, so the minute and the payroll agree.
Run clergy and lay staff on the same run with different rules
Lay staff have income tax, Social Security and Medicare withheld and the church matches the last two. Clergy have neither withheld and the church matches nothing, though many pastors ask the church to withhold extra income tax voluntarily to cover their self-employment tax. Both kinds of person are on one payroll and the rules do not mix.
Keep the run, because the questions come later
The board asks in November what the pastor costs. The accountant asks in February what was designated as housing. A new treasurer asks in three years how it was done. Each payroll run kept with its clergy treatment answers all three from the record instead of from whoever was doing it at the time.
What a church treasurer asks about the Church payroll software
Do churches withhold payroll taxes for a pastor? Not Social Security and Medicare: a minister is treated as self-employed for those and pays them as self-employment tax. Income tax is not automatically withheld either, though a pastor may ask the church to withhold extra voluntarily. Lay employees are ordinary in every respect. IRS Publication 517 sets out the treatment.
What is a housing allowance and how is it set? An amount the church designates in advance, by official board action, out of the pastor's compensation for housing costs. It is excluded from income tax within limits and still counts for self-employment tax. The designation has to be prospective and recorded, which is why it belongs in the minutes and on the payroll record.
Can we use ordinary payroll software for a church? You can, and many churches do, with a manual correction each run for the clergy member. That works until the person doing the correcting leaves. What ordinary software lacks is somewhere to hold the designation and the classification, not the arithmetic.
How much does church payroll software cost? Sacristo Pro is $72 a month for the whole church, flat, however many people are on the roll. Church management systems price differently: ChurchTrac is $29 a month at 75 people and $119 for unlimited, read from their pricing page on 2026-09-06, and they are a different product.
Something the Church payroll software leaves open about your church's money?
Tell us how many people you have on payroll, whether any of them are clergy, and how you record giving today, and a person here will tell you straight whether Sacristo helps.