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SimpleSteward by GoodForge

Church bookkeeping made simple.

Guided fund accounting for the people who record giving, prepare deposits, pay bills, reconcile the bank, and help the church steward money well.

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Controlled private pilot is live. Pilot churches keep parallel books until written acceptance.

Built around the week

Know what to do next without losing the accounting underneath.

SimpleSteward by GoodForge uses plain language and guided actions while preserving funds, permissions, transaction states, and accountability.

SimpleSteward dashboard showing fund balances, guided Nanny Mode steps, and bookkeeping actions
Current private-pilot interface shown with demonstration data.

Church-specific workflows

The work your finance team already does.

One organized place for weekly bookkeeping, monthly review, year-end records, and the documents that support them.

Funds and accounts

Track General, Building, and designated funds with the bank and expense accounts that support them.

Giving and donors

Record gifts by donor and fund, preserve references, and prepare contribution statements.

Deposits

Group undeposited gifts, verify totals, post to the correct bank account, and retain the trail.

Checks and electronic payments

Record checks, ACH, EFT, debit card, and online bill pay with vendor and expense detail.

People and vendors

Add, edit, and remove tenant records or map flexible QuickBooks-style CSV files with validation and duplicate review.

Reconciliation and reports

Compare the register to the bank, review running balances, budgets, fund activity, and contribution statements.

Print and export

Prepare calibrated checks and deposits, then print or download supported reports in PDF or CSV format.

Accountability

Use role-based access, meaningful audit history, controlled corrections, and review-ready records.

Complete private-pilot feature overview

From first setup through review and recovery.

These capabilities are available in the controlled pilot unless a provider setup requirement is called out separately below.

Accounting foundation

Set up and keep the books

  • Funds, bank accounts, chart of accounts, and expense categories
  • Church-owned opening balances and first-run pilot dates
  • People, donors, and vendors with required-field guidance, structured addresses, and normalized email and phone values
  • Flexible CSV import, field mapping, row validation, duplicate review, and tenant-only export
  • Giving, undeposited gifts, deposits, cash back, and controlled deposit reversal
  • Checks, ACH, EFT, debit card, and online bill-pay records
  • Annual budgets, budget-versus-actual review, and running account balances

Printing and supporting records

Fit the church’s real paperwork

  • Three-up check printing and plain-paper alignment tests
  • Independent placement for each check on a page
  • Tenant-specific check and deposit layouts calibrated from a phone photo
  • Automatic page straightening with user review before saving
  • Deposit ticket and deposit-summary printing
  • Multiple receipt or invoice attachments tied to a payment and printed check
  • One-time QR phone capture, photo-library selection, automatic crop proposals, and manual crop adjustment

Review and reporting

Close the loop with confidence

  • Transaction register with running balances and source detail
  • Bank reconciliation with completion locks and controlled undo
  • Fund activity and budget-versus-actual reporting
  • Contribution statements and giving history
  • Deposit records, summaries, and printable support
  • CSV and PDF exports that respect the active church and user permissions
  • Audit-friendly correction and reversal history

Guided experience

Make the next step understandable

  • Nanny Mode for focused Bookkeeper workflows
  • First-login onboarding with an optional GoodForge-controlled welcome video
  • Reorderable navigation and collapsible, rearrangeable page sections
  • Tenant branding, personal profiles, and preferences that follow the signed-in user
  • Responsive desktop and mobile web experiences plus an iPhone and iPad companion
  • Beacon, the floating AI product guide, with built-in privacy limits
  • Per-user Beacon hide control and graceful pause when AI credits are unavailable
  • Privacy-limited Beacon question insights that help GoodForge improve guidance without retaining AI answers
Portrait of Nanny, whose bookkeeping inspired SimpleSteward's guided experience
The inspiration behind the Nanny Test.

The Nanny Test

Simple enough for Nanny. Strong enough for the church.

Nanny's faithful bookkeeping gave SimpleSteward a practical standard: make the next step clear, use plain language, and never trade away the controls the church depends on.

"If Nanny can use it, the church can use it."

That promise lives in Nanny Mode: Bookkeeper, a first-class role that keeps everyday work visible and advanced administration out of the way. Each user can also personalize navigation and page sections without changing anyone else’s workspace.

  1. 1
    Record givingUse safe defaults and add a donor when needed.
  2. 2
    Create the depositSelect undeposited gifts and confirm the total.
  3. 3
    Pay the billsWrite a check or record an electronic payment.
  4. 4
    Reconcile the bankMatch the register to the statement with confidence.

Simple does not mean simplistic

Shared infrastructure with church-by-church boundaries.

The private-pilot platform uses tenant isolation, supported Google or passwordless email sign-in, server-enforced permissions, protected credentials and files, backups, and append-only audit history.

  • Multiple churchesTenant-scoped data and memberships.
  • Role-based accessServer-side permission checks for sensitive work.
  • AccountabilityAppend-only events and controlled corrections.
  • Backup and recoveryTenant exports, named restore points, safety snapshots, guarded rollback, and platform recovery drills.
  • Controlled support accessVisible, short-lived, read-only impersonation for explicitly authorized Platform Owners.
  • Operational awarenessAggregate health, performance, delivery, recovery, AI, and source-backed cost signals.

Review-first connections

Prepared for provider data without surrendering control.

The connection foundations below are implemented but remain disabled until provider credentials, authorization, staging evidence, and separate production approval are complete.

Provider setup required

Planning Center

Map funds, preview contribution data, and approve an idempotent import before it reaches church records.

Provider setup required

QuickBooks Online comparison

Read control totals and compare selected activity without creating, changing, or deleting QuickBooks records. QuickBooks Desktop exports can use the flexible CSV import today.

Provider approval required

Gusto payroll import

Prepare employee-check and tax transactions for authorized review. The integration does not move funds or submit payments to Gusto or a tax agency.

Built by GoodForge

A practical need became a usability standard.

GoodForge is building SimpleSteward because one church needed financial software that fit the way church finance actually works without placing another expensive, confusing system on its volunteers.

That practical need shaped a broader belief: important work deserves software that respects the people doing it, explains itself clearly, and earns trust in the details.

Private pilot

Help shape a simpler way to keep the books.

GoodForge is speaking with church bookkeepers, treasurers, pastors, and finance volunteers as SimpleSteward completes its controlled private pilot and prepares for a broader release.

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