- Starting price
- Free · Growth $70/month
- Free tier
- Yes
- Platforms
- Web · Plaid and church-platform integrations · API/MCP on some plans
- Developer
- Grain Ledger Company
- Launched
- 2025
- Updated
- Aug 9, 2026
The verdict
Grain Ledger is one of the more compelling young church-accounting products on paper. Native fund accounting, cash and accrual views, donor and giving imports, bank reconciliation, bills, approvals, budgets, reports, QuickBooks migration, and ledger-connected payroll address real church workflows; free access up to $20,000 in monthly expenses is exceptional. Its June 2026 privacy, terms, and security pages are also far more specific than many ministry vendors. But Grain itself does not claim its own SOC 2 audit—only SOC 2 Type II cloud infrastructure—and the public record does not prove close controls, immutable audit logs, backup recovery, payroll filing performance, permission granularity, support levels, or migration accuracy. Pilot through a parallel close with a church accountant before replacing the books.
Try Grain Ledger ↗Opens grainledger.com
Grain Ledger is cloud accounting software designed around nonprofit and church fund restrictions instead of treating funds as an afterthought. It advertises a double-entry ledger, unlimited funds, cash and accrual basis, a custom chart of accounts, bank imports through Plaid, transaction categorization and reconciliation, bills and vendors, approval workflows, budgets, dashboards, donor intelligence, giving statements, dimension tags, and standard GAAP-style reports. The aim is to make restricted and unrestricted activity visible from the transaction through board reporting.
The product also connects giving and church systems to the ledger. Its current integrations page labels Planning Center, Pushpay, Subsplash, Rock RMS, Ramp, and Bill.com or Divvy as available, with Plaid supporting bank import; Tithely is still marked coming soon. Donations can be matched to people and funds and reconciled to settlement deposits. That can eliminate spreadsheets and duplicate entry, but it also brings donor identity, fund designations, payment batches, bank data, and accounting records into one sensitive environment.
Pricing is unusually accessible. Starter is free with one bank connection, three users, one active budget, standard roles and reports, giving intelligence, church-management integrations, AI invoice scanning, unlimited funds, and up to $20,000 in monthly expenses. Growth is $70 monthly for three bank connections, unlimited monthly expenses and active budgets, email-invoice automation, priority support, and MCP access. Enterprise adds unlimited bank connections and users, custom roles and reports, multi-scenario planning, phone support, MCP, and REST API access. Payroll is a standalone $50 monthly plus $10 per employee, including time tracking, approvals, direct deposit, federal and state tax filings, and fund allocation.
We reviewed the current home, features, price, integrations, security, privacy, terms, and support pages on August 9, 2026. We did not create an account, import a QuickBooks company, connect a bank or giving processor, scan an invoice, run a reconciliation or close, issue statements or 1099s, process payroll, test tax filings, export after cancellation, measure support, inspect permissions or audit logs, restore a backup, review financial statements with a CPA, or conduct a SOC, penetration, privacy, legal, tax, payroll, accessibility, or security audit. Feature, compliance, security, and performance statements are vendor claims unless independently identified.
✓ The good
- Native fund accounting - restricted and unrestricted funds are part of the ledger model rather than improvised through classes or spreadsheets
- Excellent free threshold - churches under $20,000 in monthly expenses get most headline capabilities without a card or subscription fee
- Transparent Growth price - $70 monthly is easy to budget and avoids a sales call for the normal next tier
- Giving-to-bank reconciliation - donor and fund imports can be matched to processor settlements and Plaid bank transactions
- Cash and accrual support - a church can maintain the basis appropriate to its reporting while preserving double-entry records
- Integrated operational workflow - bills, vendors, invoice capture, approvals, budgets, reports, dashboards, and payroll reduce disconnected tools
- Named integration status - available products and Tithely’s coming-soon state are distinguished on the current page
- Concrete security statements - AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.2+, encrypted tokens, production MFA, access review, logging, and a security contact are published
- Export and deletion commitments - terms provide a 30-day export grace period and the privacy policy gives account-termination handling and user rights
- No data-sale claim - the June 2026 policy says personal information is not sold, leased, licensed, or rented
✗ Watch out
- Young-vendor execution risk - long-term uptime, support staffing, product continuity, close performance, and complex migration evidence are still limited publicly
- SOC wording can be misread - Grain says it uses SOC 2 Type II compliant infrastructure, not that Grain Ledger has completed its own SOC 2 examination
- Starter has concentration limits - three users, standard roles, one bank connection, and one active budget may prevent good segregation of duties as a church grows
- Payroll liability remains with the church - terms place responsibility for classifications, inputs, approvals, funds, filings, deadlines, and many penalties on the customer
- Security detail is incomplete - no public independent audit report, penetration-test summary, uptime history, recovery objectives, SSO details, or customer-admin MFA mandate is shown
- Retention needs configuration clarity - PII targets 30-day deletion while financial and payroll trails may remain encrypted for up to seven years under legal exceptions
- AI invoice scanning needs human review - recognition can misread amount, vendor, date, account, fund, tax, duplication, or approval context
- Free threshold must be defined in practice - the page says monthly expenses, but customers should confirm calculation, averaging, excluded flows, enforcement, and upgrade behavior
- Integration scope can differ by provider - “available” does not prove every refund, fee, split, designation, household merge, pledge, or historical correction syncs correctly
Best for
- Small churches moving from spreadsheets or business accounting workarounds and remaining under $20,000 in monthly expenses
- Growing congregations that need real fund accounting plus Planning Center, Pushpay, Subsplash, Rock, Plaid, or spend-tool integration
- Finance teams able to run a parallel close, reconcile every balance, and retain independent exports during migration
- Churches with a treasurer or accountant who will configure funds, chart, roles, approvals, close, and retention deliberately
- Organizations evaluating integrated payroll after legal, tax, banking, insurance, control, and service-provider review
Avoid if
- You need a long public operating record, vendor SOC 2 report, audited SLA history, advanced SSO, or enterprise assurance before storing financial and payroll data
- Three users and standard roles cannot separate entry, approval, payment, bank reconciliation, payroll, reporting, and administration adequately
- Your country, denomination, entity structure, multi-entity consolidation, grant rules, payroll jurisdiction, or audit needs are outside documented support
- You expect software to replace a qualified accountant, legal or tax advice, finance committee oversight, bank controls, or independent review
- You cannot maintain complete exports, source documents, bank records, payroll filings, permission reviews, and a tested exit plan outside one vendor
What Grain Ledger is
Grain Ledger is a cloud general ledger and operational finance system for churches. It models funds, accounts, dimensions, journal entries, transactions, donors, settlements, bills, budgets, reports, and payroll in one workflow. Connected services reduce manual entry while dashboards and drill-down reports aim to serve staff, treasurers, finance committees, and boards.
It is not a bank, contribution processor, independent auditor, CPA, lawyer, tax adviser, fiduciary, fraud guarantee, or complete church-management system. Integrations move data; they do not decide whether a restriction is enforceable, a worker is classified correctly, a disbursement is authorized, a reconciliation is complete, a statement is tax-compliant, or a report fairly represents the church.
Why church finance teams may choose Grain Ledger: funds are the accounting structure, not a reporting patch
Many general-business accounting systems can approximate church funds through classes, locations, projects, or tracking categories. That can work, but the finance team must constantly preserve a mapping the product was not designed around. Grain begins with fund-based double entry. Gifts can map to funds, processor settlements can reconcile to bank deposits, expenses can post against the right restriction, and statements and dashboards can carry the same structure into board reporting.
Software cannot determine donor restriction or release by itself. Before configuration, a church should have an approved fund policy, gift-acceptance terms, chart of accounts, closing rule, board authority, budget structure, stale-fund treatment, interfund transfer policy, and documentation standard. Map every legacy balance and run reports side by side. Native funds reduce mechanical work only when governance defines what each fund means and authorized people review every movement.
Giving, bank, and spend integrations: automate entry, preserve reconciliation evidence
Planning Center, Pushpay, Subsplash, and Rock RMS feed donor and giving data; Plaid supplies read-only balances and transactions; Ramp and Bill.com or Divvy bring spend activity. Grain says the workflow can match donors, map funds, turn gifts into double-entry journals, and reconcile settlement deposits. Tithely is explicitly coming soon. This can save substantial time and reveal discrepancies sooner.
Test the ugly cases before trusting automation: processor fees netted from deposits, refunds, chargebacks, split gifts, anonymous donors, donor-advised funds, household merges, changed designations, recurring gifts, failed transactions, batches spanning month end, duplicate imports, closed bank accounts, voided bills, reimbursements, card credits, and retroactive corrections. Every import should be idempotent, traceable to the source, reviewable before posting, reversible through a proper entry, and reconciled to both processor and bank totals.
Bills, budgets, reports, and AI scanning: speed must keep approval separate from payment
Grain advertises bills and vendor records, invoice capture, email invoice automation on Growth, approval workflows, budgets, custom dashboards, dimension tags, drill-down reporting, GAAP-style reports, audit trail, 1099 support, and giving statements. AI invoice scanning can extract data from uploaded documents instead of requiring full manual entry. Enterprise adds custom roles, reports, and planning scenarios.
The control design matters more than scan speed. Require a source document, duplicate detection, vendor-master approval, verified payment-instruction changes, fund and account review, budget visibility, dollar-based approval, two-person release at the bank, period locks, no self-approval, logged administrator changes, and independent bank reconciliation. Confirm whether Starter’s standard roles can enforce this. AI output should remain a draft, and historical audit records should never be overwritten when a correction is posted.
Integrated payroll: clean fund allocation with high legal and operational stakes
The standalone payroll offer connects time tracking, approvals, pay calculation, direct deposit, federal and state filings, pay records, and fund allocation to the ledger. At $50 monthly plus $10 per employee, it is competitively priced for a small church and can eliminate re-keying a payroll journal and manually splitting compensation among ministry funds.
Payroll failure harms people immediately. Verify supported states and local taxes, minister dual-tax treatment, housing allowance handling, accountable plans, clergy benefits, exemptions, multi-state work, contractors, garnishments, leave, year-end forms, amended returns, tax notices, filing agency, funding cutoff, reversals, fraud controls, and continuity if Grain or a subprocessor is unavailable. The terms say the church remains responsible for classification, inputs, approvals, funding, deadlines, and many penalties. Run at least one parallel payroll and have a qualified payroll or tax professional sign off.
Pricing
Starter
Free
For churches up to $20,000 in monthly expenses: one bank connection, three users, standard roles, one active budget, unlimited funds, cash and accrual, standard reports, dashboards, giving intelligence, integrations, AI invoice scanning, and QuickBooks migration.
Growth
$70/month
Adds three bank connections, unlimited monthly expenses and active budgets, email invoice automation, priority email support, and MCP access while retaining three users and standard roles. A public blog also mentions $700 yearly; confirm checkout pricing.
Enterprise
Contact sales
Adds unlimited bank connections and users, custom roles and reports, multi-scenario planning, phone support, MCP access, and REST API access. Obtain implementation, SLA, security, support, and pricing terms in writing.
Church Payroll
$50/month + $10/employee/month
A standalone product usable with any accounting plan. It advertises fund allocation, mobile time clock and approvals, direct deposit, and federal and state tax filings. Pass-through, correction, return, paper, and compliance charges may apply under the terms.
Migration and support
Included or quote-based
One-click QuickBooks migration and email support are advertised. Complex cleanup, opening-balance validation, historical attachments, custom reporting, training, and enterprise implementation scope need confirmation.
Starter is not a token trial. If the live product matches the public matrix, it includes enough accounting, giving, spend, budget, and reporting capability for a small church to conduct a serious pilot without a card.
Confirm how “up to $20K in monthly expenses” is measured: cash payments, accrual expenses, payroll, transfers, card clearing, reimbursements, one-time capital purchases, and seasonal spikes may affect eligibility differently. Ask what happens before an enforced upgrade.
Growth at $70 monthly is simple and reasonable, but it still lists only three users and standard roles. A church may need Enterprise for control design before it needs unlimited expense volume. Do not weaken segregation of duties to stay on a cheaper tier.
Payroll pricing is separate and clear at the base level. Terms permit disclosed pass-through and event charges for returned funding, corrections, amended or delayed filings, paper forms, governmental assessments, and related services. Obtain the fee schedule.
Total cost includes migration validation, accountant time, staff training, integrations, control design, document storage, annual 1099 and giving-statement review, payroll support, data exports, cyber insurance, and a fallback procedure—not just subscription fees.
Where Grain Ledger falls behind
Clarify assurance language by stating whether Grain Ledger itself has completed SOC 2, publishing scope and date under NDA where appropriate, and distinguishing vendor controls from compliant cloud infrastructure.
Publish uptime and incident history, service commitments, support hours and targets, maintenance notice, backup frequency, tested recovery objectives, regional redundancy, status page, and business-continuity plan.
Document customer security: mandatory or optional MFA by role, SSO, session controls, password and recovery policy, IP or device alerts, audit-log coverage, support impersonation, permission matrix, and quarterly access review tools.
Publish accounting-control documentation for period close and lock, journal approval, immutable history, void and reversal, vendor changes, bank reconciliation, duplicate imports, attachment retention, segregation of duties, and accountant access.
Give each integration a field and edge-case matrix, sync direction and frequency, historical limits, failure and retry behavior, idempotency, reconciliation report, permissions, deletion behavior, and current status.
Publish payroll coverage, responsible legal entities and subprocessors, supported jurisdictions and church-specific tax scenarios, tax guarantee if any, cutoff calendar, correction fees, notices, continuity, insurance, and service responsibilities.
Provide migration reconciliation reports, trial balance and fund balance validation, attachment and audit history scope, opening-entry approval, rollback, parallel-close guidance, and verified full exports before termination.
Grain Ledger vs. Aplos vs. QuickBooks Online vs. ChurchTrac
Grain’s strongest case is modern native fund accounting at a very low entry price, joined to giving, bank, spend, donor intelligence, and payroll workflows. Aplos has a longer nonprofit operating record and combines fund accounting, giving, and donor tools, usually at a higher price. QuickBooks Online has the largest accountant ecosystem, broad integrations, and mature general-business controls, but church funds require careful category design and some church functions remain separate. ChurchTrac combines membership, giving, events, and accounting for churches that prefer a broader management suite, though finance depth and workflow differ.
Do not select from feature checkmarks alone. Give each finalist the same anonymized month: opening fund balances, restricted gifts, processor fees, split deposits, bills, card expenses, payroll allocation, refunds, interfund activity, budget, bank reconciliation, closing adjustments, giving statements, board reports, audit log, and export. Have the treasurer and an independent accountant grade correctness, traceability, control, speed, and exit—not visual polish. Grain may win on architecture and price; the incumbent may win on evidence, ecosystem, or complex edge cases.
The bottom line
Grain Ledger understands the shape of church finance unusually well. Funds, donor gifts, settlements, bank transactions, bills, approvals, budgets, dimensions, reports, and payroll belong in one traceable accounting story, and the current product map addresses each piece. Starter’s free $20,000 monthly-expense threshold can transform access for church plants and small congregations. Growth is plainly priced. The June 2026 policies name encryption, read-only Plaid access, US SOC 2 Type II cloud infrastructure, production MFA, retention, portability, a 30-day export window, and 72-hour verified-breach notice—real positives. The remaining question is evidence at the vendor and workflow layer. Infrastructure certification is not Grain’s own SOC report. Marketing cannot prove a permission model, audit trail, close, backup restore, giving edge cases, payroll filings, or migration accuracy. Start with anonymized or limited data, obtain security and contract answers, design roles around segregation rather than plan price, import one complete period, reconcile every balance and source, run reports beside the old system, test export and deletion, and keep the incumbent until an accountant approves at least one parallel close. If Grain passes that test, it could be an excellent value; if it does not, free software is still expensive when the books are wrong.
Alternatives to Grain Ledger
AplosEstablished nonprofit fund accounting and giving software with a longer operating record and broader nonprofit recognition.QuickBooks OnlineA mature general accounting platform with a huge accountant ecosystem, but church funds and giving workflows need careful configuration.ChurchTracA wider church-management suite combining people, giving, events, communication, and accounting at accessible pricing.Realm AccountingAn integrated church-management and accounting option for congregations already invested in the Realm ecosystem.Xero with nonprofit controlsA strong general ledger and accountant ecosystem; fund reporting and church-specific giving connections require additional design.Frequently asked questions
Is Grain Ledger really free?
Starter is listed at $0 with no card for churches up to $20,000 in monthly expenses. It includes one bank connection, three users, one active budget, unlimited funds, standard reports, giving tools, and several integrations. Confirm how the expense threshold is calculated.
How much is Grain Ledger Growth?
The current pricing page lists $70 per month. A vendor blog also describes $700 yearly. Growth adds three bank connections, unlimited expenses and budgets, invoice email automation, priority email, and MCP access, but still lists three users and standard roles.
Does Grain Ledger have church payroll?
Yes. Payroll is a standalone $50 monthly plus $10 per employee and advertises time tracking, approvals, direct deposit, federal and state filings, and automatic fund allocation. Verify clergy and jurisdiction-specific requirements before use.
Which integrations are available?
The current page marks Planning Center, Pushpay, Subsplash, Rock RMS, Ramp, and Bill.com or Divvy as available, with Plaid for bank data. Tithely is marked coming soon. Test your exact fields and edge cases.
Is Grain Ledger SOC 2 compliant?
Its public wording says customer data uses cloud infrastructure providers that maintain SOC 2 Type II certifications. That is not the same as saying Grain Ledger itself has a SOC 2 report. Ask for the vendor’s own assurance scope and evidence.
Can Grain Ledger replace an accountant?
No. The terms say it supplies record-keeping software, not accounting, tax, legal, investment, or fiduciary advice. The church remains responsible for data, classifications, reports, filings, controls, and review.
How should a church migrate safely?
Keep the old system, export complete source data, map funds and accounts, import a full period, compare trial and fund balances, reconcile giving and banks, review permissions and logs, run a parallel month-end close, test full export, and obtain accountant approval before cutover.
Sources & further reading
More Church Giving & Donation Platforms
OutpourOutpour brings missionary profiles, newsletters, prayer, messaging and fundraising into one free platform for ministries and supporters—generous software that also concentrates donor, location and spiritual data requiring disciplined privacy choices.
My Well GivingMy Well pairs a free donor app with nonprofit-owned church giving, public $49–$499 monthly tiers and pass-through processing—but churches still pay interchange, 30¢ per gift and must validate the savings with their own statement.
SecureGiveFounded in 2004 by a pastor who put the first giving kiosk in an American church, and still selling to churches on a published rate card rather than a sales call - with a transaction cap on both priced tiers that decides whether it fits you.
OverflowThe one giving platform built around the gifts most churches quietly turn away - appreciated stock, crypto and donor-advised funds - sold on an annual subscription whose real price is published nowhere.
ZeffyThe only platform in this category that charges a church nothing whatsoever - no monthly fee, no transaction fee, no card fee - and pays for itself by asking your donors for a tip instead, which makes this a pastoral decision rather than a financial one.
AnedotThe only platform here that processes its own payments rather than reselling somebody else's - no monthly fee, no contract, and a card rate that quietly pays for both.