THE EXPORT TEST AND THE SIX NUMBERS A one-page script to take into a church management software demo. Church Posting, churchposting.com. Prices and documentation checked 29 July 2026. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART ONE: GATHER SIX NUMBERS BEFORE THE FIRST DEMO ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Every one of the three systems on the shortlist prices on a different unit, so a quote is meaningless until these six are written down. Count them off your current records, not off memory. 1. Names on the roll, counting every individual you track: adults, children, members, regular attenders, and anyone who has ever given. ChurchTrac bills on this number. Archived names do not count. Ours: ______ 2. People who need to sign in to the software. Staff, elders, the worship leader, the nursery coordinator, every volunteer who looks at a rota. Planning Center Services bills on this number, and the free plan stops at five. Ours: ______ 3. Children who check in on your busiest Sunday, not your average one. Planning Center Check-Ins bills on this number, and the free plan stops at ten a day. Ours: ______ 4. Separate donations received in a month. Not dollars. The count of transactions, including every recurring gift. Planning Center Giving bills on this number, and the free plan stops at ten a month. Ours: ______ 5. People in an active group, counting leaders. A person counts once however many groups they are in. Planning Center Groups bills on this number, and the free plan stops at fifteen. Ours: ______ 6. Rooms you actually want to stop double-booking. Planning Center Calendar bills on this number, and one room is free. Ours: ______ Write down a seventh figure too: what these numbers were three years ago. A system that fits today and prices badly at double or half your size is the wrong system, because churches move in both directions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART TWO: THE EXPORT TEST, ASKED OUT LOUD, BEFORE PRICING ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ask for the button on screen, not a promise. A vendor who exports cleanly expects to keep you by being good. Q1. "Show me, right now, how I export every person with every field, including custom fields, as one file, without opening a support ticket." What the documentation said on 29 July 2026: - Planning Center: People, Actions, Import and Export CSV, Start Export. The whole database arrives as an emailed link. - Breeze: Account Settings, Manage Account, View More, Export. Pick People, Tags, Events, Contributions or Notes. Exports as Excel. - ChurchTrac: build a Custom Report and add each field you want one at a time, then Export to CSV. No single export-everything button was documented. Q2. "Show me how giving history exports, all years at once." - Planning Center: report by report. Donation lists, donor reports, statements and payout reports each export separately. - Breeze: Contributions is one option in the same dropdown. Breeze's own article warns a large giving export times out and says to pull one year at a time. - ChurchTrac: Giving Reports, Category Detail by Date, all categories, with a start and end date. Q3. "Who is allowed to run that export? Name the permission." - Planning Center: organization administrators and managers, or anyone with "Can export CSVs and reports" ticked. Private custom fields export only for people who already have access to them. - Breeze: any user who can reach Account Settings. - ChurchTrac: no published answer found. Get it in writing. Q4. "If we cancel, how long do you keep our data, and who can cancel?" - Planning Center: data is held one year in case you reactivate, then permanently deleted. Church Center has to be deactivated first. - Breeze: queued for permanent deletion immediately on cancellation, and also on suspension for an unpaid subscription. Only the Account Owner can cancel. - ChurchTrac: no published statement found. Q5. "Does the ledger live in here, or somewhere else?" - Planning Center: no accounting product exists in the product list. - Breeze: its own help documentation says to use QuickBooks or Aplos for fund accounting and the general ledger, and calls its QuickBooks extension a reconciliation nightmare. - ChurchTrac: accounting is a $15 a month add-on that tracks fund balances, budgets, deposits and expenses. Q6. "What does a text message cost, and what does a card gift cost?" - Planning Center: $0.02 per text; $5 a month for a toll-free number for text giving. Card 2.15% + $0.30, ACH 0% + $0.30 in the US. - Breeze: 250 texts a month included, then $10 per 500. Card 2.9% + $0.30, ACH 1% + $0.30, AMEX 3.5% + $0.30. - ChurchTrac: messaging add-on $7 a month including 250 credits, then $7 per 250. No giving processing rate is published; the page says to contact them. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PART THREE: THE TWO RULES THAT SURVIVE ANY DEMO ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Pay monthly through the first full giving cycle and the first check-in season. The annual discount is worth about one month. Being able to leave in month four is worth more. Run the export once a quarter and keep the file in a folder the church owns, not a staff member's personal account. Two of these three vendors delete your data on a schedule you do not control, and one of them starts the moment a payment fails. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Sources, all read 29 July 2026: https://www.planningcenter.com/pricing https://www.breezechms.com/pricing https://www.breezechms.com/giving https://www.churchtrac.com/pricing https://help.planningcenter.com/en/138570-export-data.html https://help.planningcenter.com/en/138361-importing-and-exporting-giving-information.html https://help.planningcenter.com/en/136795-cancel-your-planning-center-account.html https://support.breezechms.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001175873-Exporting-Your-Data https://support.breezechms.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002956494-Cancel-Account-Restore-Account https://support.breezechms.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002437053-Using-an-Accounting-System-General-Ledger-with-Breeze https://support.breezechms.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024510154-ChurchTrac-Export-Instructions ChurchTrac's own help center returned HTTP 403 to automated requests on 29 July 2026, so the ChurchTrac export path above is documented by a competitor's migration guide rather than by ChurchTrac. Verify every price against the vendor's page before you budget. These move without notice.