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Help centre

27 short guides to doing the thing you are trying to do. If yours isn’t here, the support team will answer within a working day.

Getting started

Your first hour in ChurchHub.

Create your church account

Start here. It takes about two minutes and needs no card.

  1. Go to chhub.app and click "Start free trial".
  2. Enter your church name — for example, Grace Church Basildon.
  3. Choose your web address. This becomes your permanent hub address, so pick something short: grace-basildon gives you grace-basildon.chhub.app.
  4. Set your country, timezone and currency. These drive service times and giving totals, so get them right now rather than later.
  5. Enter your own name, email and a password of at least 8 characters.
  6. Click "Create church" — you land on your new dashboard, signed in and on a 30-day trial.
chhub.app/sign-up
About your church
Church name
Grace Church Basildon
Web address
grace-basildon.chhub.app
Country
United Kingdom
Currency
GBP (£)
Continue
The sign-up wizard — your web address is set here and kept for good.
Worth knowing: Your web address cannot be changed afterwards without support moving you, so agree it with whoever else will use the system.

Find your way around

What the dashboard shows and how to reach the ten modules.

  1. Sign in at your own address — yourchurch.chhub.app — not the main site.
  2. The dashboard opens first. It shows this Sunday at a glance: services, rotas needing people, newcomers waiting on follow-up and giving so far this month.
  3. Use the sidebar to move between modules: Address Book, Calendar, Attendance, Bookings, Children, Giving, Planning, Network, Rotas and Groups.
  4. Click the ChurchHub mark at the top left from anywhere to come back to the dashboard.
gracechurch.chhub.app/dashboard
This week at Grace Church
Sunday attendance
247
▲ 6% vs last month
Rota gaps
3
Sunday 26 July
Giving this month
£8,140
General fund 72%
The dashboard — this Sunday at a glance.
Worth knowing: You will only see the modules your role allows. If a colleague cannot see Giving, that is the permission model working — an administrator can grant the Finance role in Settings → Team & roles.

Invite your team and set their roles

Volunteers are unlimited on every plan, so invite generously.

  1. Go to Settings → Access & roles.
  2. Click "+ Invite".
  3. Enter their email address and choose the role that matches what they do.
  4. Send the invitation. They get an email with a link, set their own password and join.
  5. To change someone later, find them in the list and edit their roles, then click "Save changes".
Worth knowing: Grant the narrowest role that solves the problem. Giving needs the Finance role and pastoral notes are restricted separately — most volunteers need neither.

Onboarding your church

Getting your real data in and your providers connected.

Bring your existing people across

Moving from ChurchSuite, iKnow, a spreadsheet or paper.

  1. Export from your current system, or gather your spreadsheets.
  2. Email the export to help@chhub.app and say which church you are.
  3. Our team maps your columns to ChurchHub fields and tells you what has no home.
  4. You review a dry run — a full import into a sandbox copy, with a report of everything that landed and every row needing a decision.
  5. Once you approve it, we run the real import, usually on a weekday evening.
Worth knowing: Migration is free on every plan, including the trial. Your old system is never touched, so there is no point of no return.

Set up your starter tags

Tags are how you slice your Address Book — teams, courses, pastoral flags.

  1. Go to Address Book.
  2. If you have no tags yet, click "+ Add starter tags" to create a sensible starting set.
  3. Rename or remove any that do not fit how your church actually talks about people.
  4. Open any person and apply tags to them from their record.
Worth knowing: Resist inventing forty tags on day one. Add a tag when you first need to filter by it.

Connect Stripe, email and SMS

Your own accounts, so donations land in your bank and messages come from you.

  1. Go to Settings → Integrations.
  2. For online giving, paste your church's own Stripe secret key, then copy the webhook URL shown on the page into your Stripe dashboard under Developers → Webhooks.
  3. For email, add your Resend API key and the address messages should come from.
  4. For SMS or WhatsApp, add your Twilio account SID, auth token and sending number.
  5. Save. Each one shows as connected once the key is accepted.
gracechurch.chhub.app/settings
Integrations
StripeConnected
ResendConnected
TwilioNot set up
Settings → Integrations. Each key is encrypted before it is stored.
Worth knowing: Every key is encrypted before it is stored, and donations go directly to your church's Stripe account — we never hold your money. Without email or SMS connected, messages are recorded as queued rather than sent, so nothing is lost.

Address Book

People, households, tags and notes.

Add a person

The one you will do most often.

  1. Go to Address Book.
  2. Click "+ Add person" in the top right. A form opens over the page.
  3. Fill in their details — first and last name are the only required fields, so a name and phone number is a perfectly good start.
  4. Add them to a household if they live with someone already in the system.
  5. Apply any tags that apply, such as a team or course.
  6. Click "Add to Address Book". You land back on the list with them in it.
gracechurch.chhub.app/people/new
Add person
First name
Priya
Last name
Odedra
Email
priya.odedra@gmail.com
Mobile
07700 900312
Add to Address Book
The form opens over the list — "Add to Address Book" saves it.
Worth knowing: Add the email address if you have it. Imports and duplicate detection both match on email, so a record without one is more likely to be duplicated later.

Merge duplicate people

After an import, or when two people added the same person.

  1. Go to Address Book → possible duplicates.
  2. Review each suggested pair. ChurchHub matches on name and email, so check they really are the same person before merging.
  3. Choose which value to keep for each field where the two records disagree.
  4. Click "Merge and archive duplicate".
Worth knowing: Nothing is deleted. The duplicate is archived, and its giving history, attendance and notes move to the record you kept.

Record a pastoral note

Visit notes, prayer requests, anything the pastoral team needs to remember.

  1. Open the person's record from the Address Book.
  2. Scroll to the pastoral notes section.
  3. Write the note, and set who can see it.
  4. Click "Add note".
Worth knowing: Pastoral notes are visible only to the group the author chooses — they are not part of the general person record, and are excluded from ordinary exports.

Calendar

Services, events and public feeds.

Create an event

Everything else — rotas, check-in, attendance — hangs off an event.

  1. Go to Calendar.
  2. Click "+ New event".
  3. Give it a name, date and start time.
  4. Mark it as a service if it is one — services are what Attendance and Children check-in look for.
  5. Set it to repeat if it happens weekly, so you are not creating Sundays by hand.
  6. Click "Create event".
gracechurch.chhub.app/calendar/new
New event
Name
Morning Worship
Date
Sunday 26 July
Starts
10:30
Repeats
Weekly
Create event
Mark it as a service — check-in and attendance look for those.
Worth knowing: Create your regular Sunday service as a repeating event first. Rotas, check-in sessions and attendance figures all attach to it.

Put your calendar on your website

A live feed, so the website never disagrees with the office.

  1. Go to Settings → Calendar → Embed.
  2. Copy either the .ics feed address or the JavaScript widget snippet.
  3. Paste it into your website builder.
Worth knowing: The feed itself is always live. If your website looks stale, that is your site builder caching it — some refresh only once a day. The JavaScript widget updates hourly.

Giving

Donations, funds, pledges, Gift Aid and Stripe.

Record an offline donation

Cash, cheque or standing order — anything that did not come through Stripe.

  1. Go to Giving → Donations.
  2. Click "Record donation".
  3. Choose the giver, or leave it blank for an anonymous gift.
  4. Enter the amount, the date and which fund it belongs to.
  5. Tick Gift Aid if the giver has a valid declaration.
  6. Click "Record donation".
gracechurch.chhub.app/giving/donations/new
Record donation
Giver
Joan Ainsworth
Amount
£40.00
Date
20 July 2026
Fund
General fund
Gift Aid
Yes — declaration on file
Record donation
Leave the giver blank for an anonymous gift.
Worth knowing: You can only claim Gift Aid on a donation if the declaration was dated on or before the gift, so record declarations as soon as you receive them.

Create a fund

Building fund, missions, general — however your treasurer splits giving.

  1. Go to Giving → Funds.
  2. Click to add a fund and give it a name.
  3. Click "Create fund".
Worth knowing: If you end up with two funds that mean the same thing, you can merge them from the fund's own row — donations move across rather than being lost.

Prepare a Gift Aid claim

Produces the figures and the schedule HMRC expects.

  1. Go to Giving.
  2. Click "Prepare Gift Aid claim".
  3. Check the period and review what is included.
  4. Open "Excluded donations" to see exactly why anything was left out — usually a missing or late declaration.
  5. Send the built-in declaration request to anyone missing one; their gifts are picked up in the next claim.
  6. Export the claim and submit it to HMRC.
Worth knowing: Gift Aid records must be kept for seven years, so a donation that has been claimed on cannot be fully deleted — erasing the person anonymises the financial record instead.

Take giving online

A giving page on your own address, paying into your own Stripe account.

  1. Connect Stripe first in Settings → Integrations.
  2. Share your giving page — yourchurch.chhub.app/giving/give — from your website, order of service or a QR code.
  3. Givers choose a fund, enter an amount and pay by card.
  4. Completed gifts appear in Giving → Donations automatically, with Gift Aid applied if they made a declaration.
Worth knowing: Test it with a real card for a small amount before you announce it, then refund yourself from the Stripe dashboard.

Children & check-in

Secure kiosk check-in and safeguarding records.

Register a child

Do this once per child; check-in is quick from then on.

  1. Go to Children.
  2. Start a new registration.
  3. Enter the child's name and date of birth.
  4. Add their guardians and the phone number to call during a service.
  5. Record any medical or allergy notes, and set photo consent.
  6. Click "Register child".
gracechurch.chhub.app/children/new
Register child
Child's name
Ada Fashola
Date of birth
14 March 2019
Guardian
Tolu Fashola
Contact during service
07700 900118
Allergies
Peanuts
Register child
Visible only to the Children team, and every change is logged.
Worth knowing: Children's records are visible only to the Children team, and every view or change is written to the audit log your safeguarding officer can review.

Run a check-in session

Sunday morning, at the kiosk or from a laptop.

  1. Create the service in the Calendar first if it does not already exist.
  2. Go to Children → check-in and choose today's session.
  3. Find the child and click "Check in". A label prints with their name, any allergies and a pick-up code.
  4. Give the matching slip to the adult who brought them.
  5. At the end, match the slip to the label and click "Check out".
Worth knowing: If a parent loses their slip, do not release the child on the strength of recognising them. A team leader can verify identity against the record and check the child out manually — the action is logged with their name.

Rotas

Serving teams, assignments and reminders.

Create a serving team

Welcome, sound, coffee, kids — one team per thing people sign up for.

  1. Go to Rotas → Teams.
  2. Name the team and describe what it does.
  3. Click "Create team".
  4. Add members to the team from your Address Book.

Fill a rota and send reminders

Assign people to a date, then let ChurchHub do the chasing.

  1. Go to Rotas and pick the service you are filling.
  2. Click "+ Unfilled — assign" on any empty slot.
  3. Choose the person and click "Add". Use "+ Add another" where a role needs two people.
  4. When the rota is complete, click "Send reminders".
gracechurch.chhub.app/rotas
Sunday 26 July · Morning Worship
Send reminders
WelcomeFilled
SoundGap
CoffeeFilled
Kids teamGap
Empty slots read "+ Unfilled — assign" until someone is on them.
Worth knowing: Turn on clash detection in Rotas → Settings and ChurchHub warns you before assigning someone who is already serving elsewhere that day. Existing clashes show an amber badge you can reassign in one click.

Groups

Small groups, membership and attendance.

Create a group

Home groups, Alpha, youth — anything with a leader and a membership list.

  1. Go to Groups.
  2. Click "+ New group".
  3. Name it, say when and where it meets, and choose its leader.
  4. Click "Create group".
  5. Open the group and add its members from the Address Book.
gracechurch.chhub.app/groups/new
New group
Name
Tuesday Home Group
Meets
Tuesdays, 19:30
Where
14 Beech Road
Leader
Sam Boateng
Create group
Worth knowing: Group leaders see only their own group's people. That is deliberate — it lets you give every leader an account without exposing the whole church.

Service planning

Orders of service and the song library.

Plan a service

The running order your musicians and tech team will actually read.

  1. Go to Planning.
  2. Click "+ New plan".
  3. Pick the service it belongs to and give the plan a title.
  4. Click "Create plan".
  5. Add items in order — songs, readings, notices, prayers — with who is doing each and how long it should take.
  6. Print it, or share it with the team.
gracechurch.chhub.app/planning
Morning Worship · Sun 26 July
+ New plan
Welcome & notices3 min
Song — Great Is Thy Faithfulness5 min
Reading — Psalm 1212 min
Sermon25 min
The running order, with who is doing each item and how long it runs.

Build your song library

Add songs one at a time, or import a list in one go.

  1. Go to Planning → Songs.
  2. To add one song, fill in the title, author and key, then click "Add song".
  3. To bring in many, go to "Import songs", paste or upload your list and click "Preview import".
  4. Check the preview, then confirm.
Worth knowing: Preview the import before confirming — it shows exactly what will be created and flags anything that looks like a song you already have.

Bookings

Rooms, equipment and vehicles.

Add something that can be booked

Set these up once — the hall, the minibus, the PA system.

  1. Go to Bookings → Resources.
  2. Click "+ New resource".
  3. Name it and describe it, including anything a borrower needs to know.
  4. Click "Add resource".

Request a booking

Book a room or item for a date, with clash checking.

  1. Go to Bookings.
  2. Click "+ New booking".
  3. Choose the resource, the date and the start and end times.
  4. Say what it is for.
  5. Click "Request booking".
gracechurch.chhub.app/bookings/new
New booking
Resource
Main hall
Date
Saturday 1 August
From
14:00
To
17:00
Purpose
Youth social
Request booking
Clashes are checked as you submit, not afterwards.
Worth knowing: ChurchHub checks for a clash as you submit. Depending on your settings the booking is either confirmed straight away or held as pending for someone to approve.

Newcomers

Follow-up that does not fall through the cracks.

Start following someone up

Someone filled in a connect card on Sunday — this is what happens next.

  1. Go to Network.
  2. Click "+ Add newcomer".
  3. Enter their name and however much contact detail you were given.
  4. Choose which follow-up flow they should go into.
  5. Click "Start follow-up".
gracechurch.chhub.app/network
Newcomers awaiting follow-up
+ Add newcomer
Priya OdedraCall due
Tom MerchantInvited
Ada FasholaNew
Who is waiting on a call, and who owes them one.
Worth knowing: Each step in a flow has an owner and a due date, so the dashboard can show you who is waiting on a call rather than leaving it to whoever remembers.

Account & billing

Plans, branches and your subscription.

Choose or change your plan

At the end of the trial, or when you outgrow your current size.

  1. Go to Settings → Plan & billing.
  2. The card shows your plan, how many of your people allowance you are using, and the plan we suggest for your size.
  3. Click the plan button to go to Stripe and pay by card.
  4. Once you are paying, the same card shows "Manage billing" — use it to change plan, update your card or download invoices.
gracechurch.chhub.app/settings
Plan & billing
Current plan
Trial
25 days left
People used
247
of 1,000
Suggested
Growing
£59/mo
The suggested plan follows your actual size, not a fixed default.
Worth knowing: Only the account owner can change the plan. Upgrades are immediate and pro-rated; if you go over your people limit you can still read, edit and export everything, you just cannot add new people until you upgrade or archive some.

Add another branch

For churches running more than one site under one account.

  1. Go to Branches.
  2. Name the new branch and choose its web address — it gets its own hub at that address.
  3. Create it, then invite that site's team and set their roles.
Worth knowing: Branches need the Growing plan or above. People are counted across every branch together, and the account owner reaches all of them — a branch's own team only sees theirs.
Still stuck?

Email help@chhub.app, call 0117 946 0800, or use the in-app chat from the ? icon once you’re signed in. There’s also a free training webinar twice a week.

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