Celebrating it’s 52nd year as a church, Eastridge Presbyterian Church in Lincoln, Nebraska has much to commemorate. With the first year of its three-year giving campaign under its belt, significant changes have already taken place. The church has met its millennium mission pledge to Homestead Presbytery, expanded its parking lot, replaced its old organ with a new organ, and replaced the leaking roof of its Christian Education wing. Now, the church stands poised to break ground on a new welcome center.

ACS Technologies has been assisting the church in keeping track and monitoring the campaign process thanks to the financial modules that the program features. David Heald is the director of business and support staff for the church and finds that many of the overall financial processes run smoothly with ACS.

The reporting elements within the module have been particularly useful. In fact, Heald explained, “The month end report group in the general ledger module is awesome. I have been able to set up multiple instances of balance sheets customized to the way that a specific committee wants them.” Since Heald processes about 22 of these reports a month, using ACS has saved him considerable amounts of time.

First Users in the State. While Heald uses ACS to manage the financial aspects of the church, Administrative Assistant, Lynn Briley utilizes the people modules to maintain pertinent information about the people of the church. Before the church had ACS, Briley and other administrative staff utilized a difficult system. Briley explained, “Our old system didn’t meet our needs and was frustrating to navigate all too frequently. We decided that we needed to look at other options and that was when I saw an advertisement for ACS Technologies in Secretaries Communique magazine. We requested a demo and decided that ACS was a product that was easy to learn so we bought it.” Briley continued, “In fact, we were the first church in Nebraska to get ACS and we are so glad that we did.”

Helping Area Churches. Briley has been instrumental in training new users with the program and enjoys teaching the program because it is so easy to teach and easy to learn. Briley notes, “We’ve had lots of churches in the area come to see the product and once they see what it can do, they are interested in getting it for their church.” As a result of seeing what ACS Technologies has done for Eastridge, approximately nine of the surrounding area churches have since come on board with ACS.

Having ACS saves time and helps the staff to be more adept at their jobs. Briley points out, “The product is very simplistic. If I want to add information about families, I can add several families at once or I can add just one at a time, I don’t have to accumulate a pile of papers to make it worth my while to enter into the system and update information, I can just move from module to module and update quickly. It just makes sense.”

System Upgrades. Briley especially likes the upgrades that consistently strive to make the product better and better. “I think that ACS Technologies really listens to what their users have to say. If you want to make a suggestion to make something better, you let them know and it seems like by the time the next upgrade is available, your change has been implemented.”

For example, Briley was wanting to access their printer while she was working directly within the Contributions module instead of having to exit the module and then access the printer. Briley reported, “Sure enough, when the next upgrade came out, I was able to access our printer without exiting the module. ACS is able to fix our problems and make the system work well to accommodate our needs.”

Implementing Stewardship Campaign. Customizing the program to meet the needs of the church has been a tremendous asset for Briley especially when she works on a project such as the stewardship campaign. Briley is able to customize the user defined fields to include the brunches that they hold during the stewardship campaign. This helps her to determine who is planning to attend, which brunch they are attending or if members just plan to attend the Sunday service. Briley also uses the built in mail merge program in the People Suite to assist her with sorting the five types of letters that she mails out during the campaign.

After each of the three services has ended, while the brunch is being held in the dining area of the church, Heald and Briley are hard at work compiling the data from the pledge cards. Within only 30 minutes, pledges for approximately 1,100 members are input into ACS and compiled to reflect the forecasted pledges. Amazingly, Eastridge is able to report the outcome of the pledges back to the parishioners as they finish their brunch.

About Eastridge Presbyterian Church
Eastridge Presbyterian Church was chartered in 1953. It began meeting at Holmes Elementary School until a church building was constructed at 1135 Eastridge Drive. At that time, 56th Street represented the eastern edge of Lincoln. Through the many opportunities for worship, Christian education, and fellowship, the church strives to assist people in realizing the presence and power of God in their lives, and to equip them to carry out the work of Jesus Christ in the community of Lincoln and the world.

ACS Technologies Products and Services Used
People Suite: People, Contributon, Attendance, Connections, Special Mailings
Financial Suite: General Ledger, Payroll, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Fixed Assets
Growth Products: Ministry Scheduler, MAX It!, CASS It!, Faith Outreach Card, Report Designer, Livestor
Services: Network/Multiuser

Web Site
www.eastridge.org