Features
Everything Fold does, module by module
Written as what each part actually does, rather than as a list of adjectives. If something here is not clear, ask and a person will answer.
The register
Members, Bible classes, fellowships and groups. Member types are the words your denomination uses, not a fixed list somebody else wrote. Import from Excel or Google Sheets reading your own column headings, and export the whole thing whenever you like.
- Import and export as CSV, with phone numbers that keep their leading zero
- Classes and fellowships with their own leaders
- Full members, catechumens, covenant members, adherents, your terms
Attendance
A head count takes about ten seconds and is enough to start. Name who came when you want to, and a whole congregation saves in one go rather than one request per person, so it works standing at the back of a service on a weak signal.
- Head count per service, or named attendance, or both
- Averages calculated against services actually held, not Sundays on a calendar
- One save for the whole service
Tithes, offerings and funds
Cash is the default on every form, because that is how most people give. Funds keep a building project or a harvest counted separately, and their totals are recalculated from the contributions themselves rather than kept as a number somebody must remember to update.
- Cash, cheque, bank transfer and mobile money
- Any number of funds, each with an optional target
- Totals that correct themselves when a contribution moves or is deleted
The statistical return
Membership by class, attendance averages, baptisms and confirmations, income by type, for whatever period you choose. Nothing is entered twice, because every figure comes from a record your team already made during the quarter.
- Any period, printed or saved as PDF
- Membership split by sex and by class
- Vital records and income in the same document
Your denomination's structure
A Methodist society, a Presbyterian congregation and an independent assembly are not the same shape, and none of them is a small group model borrowed from somewhere else. Fold is built around the one you actually have.
- Society, circuit, congregation or assembly
- Bible classes and fellowships with class leaders
- Transfers in and out with the letter that goes with them
Who has stopped coming
Each member is compared against their own previous pattern rather than against a congregation average, so somebody who has always come twice a year is not flagged and somebody who came weekly and has not been seen for six weeks is.
- Measured against services actually held
- A phone call four months earlier than you would otherwise have made it
- Needs a few weeks of named attendance before it can say anything
Roles the database enforces
The pastor holds the church and delegates the rest: administrator, minister, elder, class leader, finance officer. Only the pastor can appoint another pastor. Every rule is a policy in Postgres, so going round the interface gets you nothing.
- Six roles, each with a line it cannot cross
- Only leadership and a finance officer can open giving
- Enforced by row level security, not by hiding a menu
Messaging
Text members from the register you already keep. Welcome a new member, thank somebody for a tithe, or reach the people an insight has flagged as drifting away.
- SMS through a Ghanaian provider, sent to Ghanaian numbers
- Sent from the register, so numbers are never retyped
- Nothing asks a member to install anything
Built for a phone
Install it from the browser with no app store and no large download over mobile data. It opens full screen like anything else on the handset, and the person recording a service is the person holding it.
- Add to home screen on Android or iPhone
- Designed for few round trips on a weak signal
- Works on an office computer too, but that is the afterthought
Transfers and visitors
A transfer is a member moving between churches with a letter. A visitor is somebody who came without joining. They are separate records because they count differently on a return, and a visitor becomes a member without retyping anything.
- Transfers in and out, restricted to leadership
- Visitors kept apart from membership figures
- Convert a visitor to a member in one step
Vital records
Baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals, recorded the week they happen rather than reconstructed in October, and flowing straight into the return for whatever period they fall in.
- The officiating minister recorded with each one
- Straight into the statistical return
- A minute each, instead of an evening in arrears
Your data stays yours
Export your whole register at any time in a file that opens in Excel or Google Sheets, and we delete everything within 30 days of an account closing. Software that makes leaving difficult is relying on something other than being good.
- Export on any day, including the day you leave
- Deleted within 30 days of closing
- Your church's records separated from every other church's in the database
See it with your own register in it
Thirty days free, no card, and nothing to cancel. Bring the list you already keep and we will help you move it across.