About Fold
Built in Ghana, around your denomination.
Real churches. Real records. Real Sundays. Fold keeps the register, the attendance, the giving and the return your circuit asks for in one place, in the words your denomination actually uses rather than a fixed list translated from somewhere else.
Why Fold exists
It began with an evening nobody should have to spend
A church secretary with the register in one book, the cash book in another, a column of Sunday head counts on a loose sheet, and a return due at the circuit on Monday morning. Everything needed was written down somewhere. Nothing added itself up.
The software meant to solve that was almost always built for a different country. It assumed card giving, a single independent congregation and a connection that never drops, so churches here bought it, used a tenth of it, and kept the book anyway. A parallel paper system is the sign that the software never fitted.
Fold starts from the other end. Take the records a church already keeps, record each fact once at the moment it happens, and let the totals, the averages and the return work themselves out. Nothing in it asks a member to install or sign in to anything.
Record each fact once, when it happens. Everything else is arithmetic, and arithmetic is what a computer is for.
The idea the whole product is built on. It is why the statistical return in Fold is a question you ask rather than a document you assemble.
What we believe
Our values
Five commitments you can hold us to, because each one is something you could check in the product and catch us out on.
Cash is not a fallback
Most giving in Ghana is cash, so cash is the default on every form in Fold and mobile money is the option beside it. Software that treats cash as the awkward case is software that was designed for somewhere else.
Your structure, not ours
A Methodist society, a Presbyterian congregation and an independent assembly are not the same shape, and none of them is a US style small group. Member types, classes and fellowships use your words.
The phone is the computer
The person recording a service is standing at the back of it holding a phone, often on a weak signal. That is the machine we design for, and the office computer is the afterthought rather than the reverse.
Your records are yours
You can export your whole register at any time, in a file you can open in Excel or Google Sheets. Software that makes leaving difficult is relying on something other than being good.
A person, not a ticket
A real person reads every message and replies within a day. If you would rather we sat with you and moved your register across ourselves, ask and we will.
How your records are protected
What actually stops the wrong person reading this
Separated in the database, not the menu
Every read and write passes through row level security in Postgres. Another church cannot reach your records even if it went round the interface entirely, because the database refuses the query rather than the page hiding the button.
The pastor holds the church
The main account belongs to the pastor or minister, who delegates the rest: administrator, elder, class leader, finance officer. Only the pastor can appoint another pastor, and only leadership and a finance officer can open the giving records.
A duty you also carry
Under the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) your church is a data controller and has to register with the Data Protection Commission, renewing every two years. Choosing software that separates your records properly is part of meeting that duty, not a replacement for registering.
Who builds Fold
A product of Manuel Technologies
Fold is designed, built and supported by Manuel Technologies, a Ghanaian software company. The same people who write the code answer your messages, which is why the answer to a question about your register is usually a fix rather than an apology.
Ready to see your own church in it?
Setting up takes about an evening, and you can be using it on Sunday. Thirty days free, no card, and nothing to cancel if it turns out not to suit your church.