The synagogue software demo questions worth asking all end the same way: show me. Anyone can describe a feature. Far fewer can run a shul’s awkward week on screen. This is the checklist to carry in: six scenarios to make every vendor attempt live, then the practical questions that decide year one.<\/p>\n
Send the six scenarios two days ahead. A vendor who gets them early comes prepared or comes with excuses, and both tell you something. Ask for a working account holding a sample of the shul’s own data, not the canned demo account every prospect sees.<\/p>\n
Keep the room small: whoever runs the billing, whoever answers the phone, and one board member who will ask about cost. Same people every time, notes under the same headings. A bake-off only works when each vendor faces the same questions.<\/p>\n
Leave price for last, after you have watched each system try the work. The buyer’s guide to synagogue management software<\/a> covers building the requirements list. This is what comes next.<\/p>\n Each one is an ordinary week in a shul office and murder on a slide deck. Watch the screen, not the presenter.<\/p>\n This tells you how the system handles a family. Ask for a family where the father pays his own dues on a plan, the mother’s are covered by someone else, and an adult son at home is billed separately. Build it live, then produce a statement for each.<\/p>\n Watch how the family shows up in the record and what each statement looks like, because who gets billed and who gets the reminder both follow from it.<\/p>\n The billing job every office does weekly and no vendor volunteers to demo. Ask them to bill Shabbat morning’s aliyot to eight members in one pass, then change one afterwards because the gabbai misremembered who had the third aliyah.<\/p>\n Watch for a reusable template, not eight invoices typed by hand. MyShul’s dues and invoicing<\/a> includes a Quick Invoice built from a template the shul makes itself. Then watch the correction: nobody demos it, and the office does it every week.<\/p>\n Get this wrong and a family is called on the wrong day. Ask them to enter a date of passing that occurred after nightfall, then show the Hebrew date it produces and where the reminder goes.<\/p>\n Watch whether the conversion accounts for nightfall, whether members can enter and fix their own dates, and how the reminder reaches them. MyShul converts the civil date with nightfall taken into account and emails yahrzeit reminders<\/a> ten days ahead.<\/p>\n The whole membership tests seating in one week, so test it first. Ask for a map with the main sanctuary, the women’s section and a second minyan at the same hour, priced differently, then printed: seat labels and the full map with names.<\/p>\n Watch for several maps inside one event rather than one map per event, and whether members choose their own seats or the office assigns them. MyShul runs several maps inside a single event and prints the seat labels the gabbaim work from before Rosh Hashanah.<\/p>\n This decides whether a donor services their own pledge or calls the office every month. Ask them to record a pledge paid over ten months, then show the open balance, the schedule of what is left, and the donor’s own view of it.<\/p>\n Does the system warn you when the schedule will not cover the balance by the last payment? Can the donor pay the rest without calling? And when an installment fails, ask what happens to the retry, who gets the email, and who in the office finds out. MyShul tracks each pledge with its open balance and gives the donor a pay link, so the rest gets paid without a call to the office.<\/p>\n Ask for this one with the bookkeeper in the room. Refund a payment, then open the accounting file and show where the refund and its processing fee landed \u2014 the actual entry, not a diagram.<\/p>\n MyShul posts every payment, refund and processing fee to the mapped QuickBooks Online account nightly, so the entry is there the next morning. Ask every vendor for the same. If the answer is that the bookkeeper reconciles it by hand each month, hear that now, not in February.<\/p>\n Nothing sours a first year like a migration nobody owned. Put these to whoever will actually do the work.<\/p>\n MyShul does its own migrations, covering members, balances, transactions, dates and family relations, asks shuls to send the data as it is, and gets them up and running quickly.<\/p>\n "We’re here for you" is not support. These are.<\/p>\n MyShul’s published support hours are Sunday to Friday, 9 to 5 Eastern, and training is done with someone who uses the system daily.<\/p>\n You will never have more leverage than the week before you sign up.<\/p>\nSix Synagogue Software Demo Questions to Ask Live<\/h2>\n
1. The Family With Three Billing Arrangements<\/h3>\n
2. A Week of Aliyot, Then the Correction<\/h3>\n
3. A Yahrzeit From a Civil Date After Nightfall<\/h3>\n
4. A Seating Map With a Second Minyan Running<\/h3>\n
5. A Pledge Paid in Installments<\/h3>\n
6. A Refund and Its Fee in the Books<\/h3>\n
Who Does the Migration Predicts Year One<\/h2>\n
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Ask for Support in Numbers<\/h2>\n
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Settle the Exit While You Are Still a Prospect<\/h2>\n
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