Chimes: Congregation Management
A complete management platform for churches, temples, mosques and any institution that keeps a congregation. Directory, giving, calendar, pastoral care, public website and member portal — running on hardware you control, with your records in your own database.
Software for the community, not the vendor
Chimes is deployed once and owned outright. There is no seat count to watch and no subscription that can be revoked.
Surfaces: public site, member portal, staff console, API
Functional modules, from the directory to the audit log
Per-member fees, forever
Runs on your infrastructure
A single Elixir release and one PostgreSQL database. Deploy it on your own VPS, a parish server, or a cloud box you already pay for.
Your records stay yours
No shared multi-tenant database, no analytics pipeline, no third party reading your membership roll. Only what Stripe needs to take a gift and Postmark needs to deliver an email leaves your server.
No per-member pricing
Register five hundred people or five thousand — the licence does not change. Growth costs you nothing but disk.
One System for the Whole Life of a Congregation
Most congregations run on a pile of half-systems: a spreadsheet for the directory, a payment link for the offering, a shared calendar for the roster, a website nobody can edit, and a filing cabinet for everything else. Each one holds a fragment of the same community, and none of them talk.
Chimes replaces the pile. The person who gave last Sunday, the household they belong to, the baptism recorded in 2011, the hospital visit they asked for last week and the statement they will need in April are all the same record, in one database, on one server.
Gatherings are gatherings — a Sunday service, a Friday prayer, a puja, an Iftar dinner. Member records, milestones and request types follow church practice out of the box, and adapting them to another tradition is part of setting Chimes up.
Nine Modules, Shipped Together
Not add-ons or tiers. Every deployment includes all of it from day one.
Explore every feature, with screenshots arrow_forwardPeople & Households
A living directory, not a spreadsheet.
- check Person records with title, marital status, contact details and the dates of birth, baptism, confirmation and membership
- check Households anchored to an address, with people able to belong to more than one household
- check Person-to-person relationships, groups with dated membership, and a per-member family view
- check Groups members find and join for themselves or their children, with leaders who run their own calendar, RSVPs, attendance and chat
- check Milestones — baptism, confirmation, first communion, membership, marriage, ordination, dedication, funeral
- check Birthday wishes sent automatically by a scheduled background job
- check Directory import and export as CSV, and people archived rather than deleted
Membership Applications
From the website form to the directory.
- check A public application for a whole household, confirmed by an emailed link — no account needed
- check Private document uploads, such as transfer letters and certificates, kept off the public site
- check Your own workflow steps, worked on a board, with a digest of applications that have stalled
- check Approval creates the people and the household in the directory
Giving & Funds
Every gift accounted for, down to the split.
- check Named funds — open-ended, capped at an amount, or bound to a date range — with running totals
- check One-time and recurring giving, with a single gift splittable across several funds
- check Cards and US bank accounts through your own Stripe account, so money settles into your bank
- check Donors can choose to cover the processing fee at the point of giving
- check Text-to-give: after a one-time setup, donors text GIVE 25 to the church's number
- check Cash and cheque offerings entered in batches, with envelope numbers and reconciliation
- check Recurring gifts paused or stopped, past-due tracking, and refunds and disputes followed end to end
Gatherings, Events & Volunteers
Weekly rhythm and one-off occasions.
- check Recurring gatherings defined by day of week and time — services, prayer meetings, study groups
- check Dated events created ahead of time by a background job, so the calendar is never empty
- check Attendance registers with guests, headcounts and corrections
- check Event registration for households and visitors, with capacity limits, free or priced per attendee
- check Paid camps, retreats and conferences: deposits, office cash and check receipts, scholarships, refunds and an event finance report
- check Volunteer rosters: roles, needs per event, invitations accepted by link, and reminders
- check Service planning: several Sundays drafted at once, team rotations, volunteer cover and swaps, and a printable running order
Pastoral Care & Requests
Pastoral care with a paper trail.
- check Ten request types: baptism, marriage, prayer, counselling, hospital visit, funeral, membership transfer, record request, facility booking and giving statement
- check A clear status path from pending through processing to completed or cancelled
- check Each request offered to a staff member, who accepts it or declines with a reason
- check Care notes and a full event timeline on every request, so nothing gets lost between conversations
- check A follow-up list of first-time visitors to welcome and regulars whose absences have built up
Sunday School & Child Check-in
Classes, registers and safe pickup in one place.
- check Classes with age ranges, teachers, a location and a schedule, published on the website
- check Parents request enrolment for their children from the member app
- check Registers marked by teachers and finalised, with attendance visible to the family
- check Child check-in by room and service, with printed tags, private claim slips and pickup only by approved adults
Website & Announcements
Your public presence and your mailing list, in the same console.
- check A public site — home, about, events, Sunday school, news, membership, contact and a giving page
- check News posts with categories, slugs and an RSS feed, and a library of uploaded images
- check A contact form that lands in an inbox in the staff console
- check Email announcements to groups or filtered lists, scheduled ahead, with delivery tracking and one-click unsubscribe
Statements & Reporting
Giving statements without the spreadsheet weekend.
- check Per-member giving statements generated as PDF and CSV over any date range
- check A configurable financial year, so statements follow your reporting calendar rather than the software's
- check Year-end statement batches for the whole congregation: preview, then email or print
- check Members download their own statements; staff export funds, gifts and refunds as CSV
Roles, Permissions & Audit
Who can see what, decided by you.
- check Six membership roles — owner, admin, staff, volunteer, member and congregation
- check Granular permissions per resource and action, layered on top of the role defaults
- check Service periods and job titles on each membership, so the treasurer's access ends when their term does
- check Invitations with join links for onboarding new staff and members
- check An audit log of every create, update and archive, and a token-authenticated JSON:API
Everyone Gets the View They Need
Chimes serves four distinct surfaces from a single application and a single database. A visitor, a member, the treasurer and your accounting software each see a different face of the same records.
www.
Public site
Visitors and the wider community
The face of your institution — service times, events with online registration and payment, news, a membership application and a giving page anyone can use without an account.
See its features arrow_forwardapp.
Member portal
Your congregation
Members keep their profile up to date, give and download their statements, raise requests, enrol their children in Sunday school, join groups and answer the volunteer roster.
See its features arrow_forwardadmin.
Staff console
Clergy, office staff and volunteers
The working surface for the directory, membership applications, funds and giving, the calendar, service planning, pastoral care, Sunday school, child check-in, announcements and the audit log.
See its features arrow_forwardapi.
JSON:API
Your other systems
A token-authenticated JSON:API over the same records, for the display screen in the foyer or a report your treasurer runs. Each token can do only what its membership may.
Boring Where It Counts
A congregation management system is a system of record. It should be dull, durable and easy for whoever inherits it to reason about. Chimes is built on well-worn technology with no exotic dependencies. The only outside services it needs are Stripe to take the gifts and Postmark to deliver the email, both on accounts in your name.
Elixir & Phoenix
One application, one database, low idle footprint. Comfortable on modest hardware and calm under a Sunday-morning spike.
Durable background work
Email, announcements, birthday wishes, volunteer reminders, calendar materialisation and statement generation all run as retryable queued jobs.
Encrypted configuration
Credentials live encrypted alongside the code; the decryption key stays on your machines and never enters the repository.
Abuse protection built in
Sign-in, password resets, public forms, online giving and the API are rate limited out of the box, before any email is sent or card is charged.
account_balance Payments settle into your account
Giving runs through your institution's own payment processor account using credentials you hold. Contributions move from the donor to your bank without passing through a platform that takes a cut of the offering or holds your funds in escrow.
From Vision to Launch
Consultation
Understanding your structure, your vocabulary and where your records live today.
Deployment
Standing up the release, database and certificates on infrastructure you own.
Configuration
Roles, funds, gathering schedules, branding and migration of existing records.
Handover
Training your office team, documenting the runbook, and handing you the keys.
Buy It Once, Run It Forever
- check_circle Unlimited people, households, funds and gatherings
- check_circle Every module and all four surfaces included
- check_circle Deployed on your own server — no hosting lock-in
- check_circle No per-member, per-seat or per-transaction platform fee
You provide the server and the Stripe and Postmark accounts. Hosting, domain, processing and email costs are paid directly to those providers at their rates, never marked up.
What the licence covers, and what it does not arrow_forwardBase Software Package
One-time licensing fee for the standard Chimes deployment.
Customization: $30/hr
For bespoke features, custom integrations, data migration, server maintenance or specialized training.
Interested in Chimes?
Tell me about your congregation — its size, how you currently keep records, and where you would like it hosted. I will come back with a deployment plan and a straight answer on what it will take.