Your guide to PewHQ

Welcome

PewHQ keeps everything your church runs on in one place — your people, your giving, your groups and events, and an app for your members. This guide walks through it all in plain language, so you don’t need to be “techy” to feel at home.

A few things that make PewHQ easy to trust:

• Two sides, one system. You and your team run the church from your PewHQ dashboard after you sign in. Your congregation gets a separate, friendly member app — they never see the admin side.
• Your information is private. Your church’s data belongs only to your church. No other church can ever see it.
• You’re always in control. PewHQ’s smart helpers (like data import and “ask your data”) only ever suggest or look things up — you and your team make every real change to money and people.

Your first week

You don’t have to do everything at once. Here’s a comfortable order to get going:

1. Add your church details. In Settings, fill in your name, address, and tax ID. These appear on giving receipts.
2. Invite your team so you’re not doing it all alone (Settings → Staff & roles).
3. Add your people. Bring them over from a spreadsheet or your old software (see Bringing your data over), or add a few by hand.
4. Turn on giving. Connect your bank through Stripe on the Giving page — money goes straight to your church.
5. Share your links. PewHQ creates ready-made links for online giving and your member app. Look for the Copy buttons next to them and share those — no need to type any web address yourself.

Your team

Add your staff and volunteers so the workload is shared. In Settings → Staff & roles, invite someone by email and choose what they can do:

• Owner — full control (that’s you, to start).
• Admin — can do everything except remove the last owner.
• Staff — the day-to-day work.
• Volunteer — limited access, just their own serving teams.

They get an email invitation and join when they sign in. You can change someone’s role or remove them at any time.

People & families

Everyone connected to your church lives here — the heart of PewHQ. Open a person to update their contact info, add a photo, note allergies, mark them as a child, or place them in a family.

Families (People → Households) group people who live together, and roll up things like the family’s giving and when they last attended. If you import your data, PewHQ groups families for you automatically.

Handy touches on each person’s page: whether they use the member app, their giving this year, care notes, and life milestones like baptism.

Groups

Small groups, classes, and ministries. Add the people in each group, then take attendance right on the group’s page — pick a date and check off who came. That feeds your dashboard and each person’s history, so you can spot who’s drifting.

Group email threads

Turn on Group email on a group’s page and the group gets its own address, like youth@your-church.pewhq.com. Anyone in the group emails that address and everyone in the group receives it, in whatever mail app they already use. Nobody has to log in, install anything, or learn a new tool — which is the whole point, because the people you most need to hear from are the ones who never open the app.

Replies do the sensible thing: Reply goes to the person who wrote, Reply all goes to the group. Every message is also kept on the group’s Conversations page, where members can read back through the thread and post from the web if they’d rather. Mention someone with @ and they get a nudge even if they’ve muted the thread.

Each member chooses how they receive it: every message, a daily digest, or nothing (they can still read the web archive). Set yours from the group page; leaders can set it for someone who asks.

Groups with young people in them

If a group contains anyone under 18, PewHQ switches on supervision automatically — no setting to remember, no policy to enforce by hand:

• Parents and guardians are copied on everything sent to or from their child in that group.
• A parent can download the whole record of their child’s messages at any time, as a file they keep.
• Nothing is ever quietly deleted. A leader can remove a post from view, but the record of it stays.
• Every time a transcript is opened, that is logged — including by your own staff — so you can show who looked and when.

The group page tells you plainly which young people have no guardian on file, and which have no date of birth recorded so PewHQ can’t tell. Fix those two lists and your youth ministry is covered. This is the answer to “what was said to my child?” that a group chat can’t give you.

Serving & worship

Build serving teams (worship, nursery, greeters, and so on), add your volunteers, and schedule them for a service. Volunteers confirm or decline right from their member app.

Worship planning: build a set list for each service from your song library, with the key you’re playing it in. PewHQ also keeps a song-usage report for your CCLI copyright reporting.

Weekend services

Set up your gatherings (for example, 9am and 11am). For each one you can record a quick headcount or mark exactly who attended, and build an order of service — the run sheet for Sunday, with each segment, how long it runs, and who’s leading it.

Events & calendar

Keep a church calendar with times, locations, and capacity. Turn on “show in the member app” and members can RSVP (Going, Maybe, or Declined, with guests). You’ll see the guest list and headcount.

Child check-in

Safe, simple check-in for kids. Search for a child, confirm who’s dropping off, and print a two-part label: one for the child (with photo and any allergies) and a matching tag for the parent. A child can only be picked up with the matching code — peace of mind for families.

Giving

Once you connect Stripe, money settles straight to your church’s bank. Members give online — one-time or recurring — and can cover the processing fee if they choose.

Connecting Stripe is a quick, one-time setup for your church. On the Giving page, the Payments box shows exactly where you stand:

• Connect Stripe — you haven’t started yet. Click it to begin.
• Continue setup — you’ve started, but Stripe still needs a few details (your bank account, your church’s tax ID, and a phone number). Click to pick up where you left off.
• Connected — you’re all set and can accept online gifts.

Stripe is our secure payments partner. It collects your bank and identity details on its own pages, so PewHQ never sees them — and every gift settles directly into your church’s bank account, never through us. Most churches finish in a few minutes.

You can also record what comes in the offering plate: use Record offering on the Giving page to count a batch of cash and checks. Everything — online and in-person — flows into your totals and each giver’s year-end tax statement, so nothing is counted twice or missed.

Budgets & expenses

Under Money → Church money, open Budgets & expenses to set a yearly budget for each fund and record what you spend. You get a clear budget-vs-actual view — money in from giving, money out from expenses — so you always know where each fund stands.

Alongside it are the four screens a treasurer actually lives in:

• Fund balances — every fund split into with donor restrictions and without, the way an auditor asks for it. When restricted money is spent on what it was given for, record the release and it moves across properly instead of being fudged.
• Bank deposits — Stripe pays out in batches, so a $4,182.19 line on your bank statement matches no single gift. Click Check for new deposits and PewHQ lists every gift and paid registration inside each deposit, with the processing fee as the difference. That’s a bank reconciliation you can hand to anyone.
• Closing the books — lock a month once it’s counted. Afterwards PewHQ refuses to backdate anything into it, so last year stops moving after the board has seen it.
• Board statement — the summary your board and your Form 990 preparer ask for: income, expenses, and net assets by restriction, for any period.

Reimbursements live here too: a volunteer submits an expense with a receipt, an approver signs it off, and it lands against the right fund.

Giving campaigns

Running a building fund or a missions push? Create a campaign (from the Giving page) with a goal and a linked fund. Members can pledge from their app, and PewHQ tracks pledges against what’s actually given — so you can see progress toward the goal at a glance.

Reaching your congregation

All the ways to stay in touch, under Communications:

• Email — send a message to everyone, a group, or people with a certain status.
• Text messaging — text your whole church or one group, and see replies in an inbox. People can opt out any time by replying STOP. (Texting is a paid add-on; PewHQ sets up your texting number for you.)
• Alerts — urgent, one-off notices like a weather closure, sent as a phone notification and/or email. They also appear in the member app so no one misses them.
• Announcements — friendly notices that show in every member’s app; pin the important ones.
• Newsletters — nicely designed email issues with a web version and one-click unsubscribe. The composer is a set of building blocks, not a blank box. There are three: words, a photo, and this week’s events — which PewHQ writes for you from your own calendar, dates and places included. Put them in the order you want with the arrows. You are not asked to lay anything out: a photo next to a short note, or two photos, or two brief notices, become a two-column row on their own, and everything stacks on a phone. Preview shows the finished email at phone and desktop width before anyone receives it. If the letter runs long, PewHQ sends the opening of each section and links to the web version for the rest, because nobody reaches the bottom of a long one. Addresses that bounce or unsubscribe are suppressed automatically, so you can’t keep mailing a dead address.
• Social media — under Communications → Social media, pick a sermon or an upcoming event (or start from scratch) and PewHQ drafts a ready-to-post caption for you with hashtags and an image idea. Tidy it up, then copy it straight to Facebook, Instagram, or X. Your church’s own social handles live in Settings so they’re there when you need them.

Chat groups

Create chat spaces for your congregation. Tie one to a group so it’s just for those members, or leave it open to everyone. Members chat from their app; staff can join and post too. Members can choose to be notified when there’s something new.

Website, blog, sermons & streaming

Your website: in Settings → Website, fill in a few details (service times, a welcome, a photo) and publish a clean one-page church site — with your events, sermons, and a give button built in. Share the link; no web design needed.

Your blog: Settings → Website → Blog. Write a pastor’s note, what happened Sunday, or why the church is doing what it’s doing. Posts appear at /blog on your site, and the Blog link only joins your menu once you turn it on — an empty blog link reads as neglect. Write in Markdown (**bold**, # headings, - lists), save a draft, or set a date and it publishes itself. There’s an RSS feed for anyone who wants one.

Who can write, and who can publish, are separate. Owners and admins have both. Anyone else needs to be added under Who can write, where you choose whether they can publish or only leave drafts for you — the volunteer with the words usually isn’t the person you want deciding what appears on the church’s front page. Authors see and edit only their own posts.

Sermons: paste the link to a message on YouTube (or Facebook or Vimeo) and add the title, speaker, and date. PewHQ shows it in a tidy public archive and even creates a podcast feed you can submit to Apple or Spotify. Your video files stay where they already live — you just add the link.

Live streaming: add your live link in Settings, and members can watch the service right inside their app.

Forms & sign-ups

Build a form for anything — an event registration, a VBS or camp sign-up, a mission-trip application, or a survey. Add your own questions, and if you like, a price so people can pay when they register (through your church’s Stripe). Share the link and watch responses come in.

Caring for people

Outreach (People → Outreach) is the one page for everyone who isn’t settled yet: first-time guests who need a follow-up, people who’ve stopped showing up, and anyone waiting to be connected to a group. It doesn’t rely on you remembering — a guest who fills in a connect card is picked up and put in front of whoever follows up, automatically.

The tools that help no one slip through the cracks, under People:

• Care — prayer requests (members can send them from their app), a place to log visits and calls, and life milestones like baptisms and memberships. Set a follow-up date and PewHQ reminds you when it’s due.
• Workflows — turn a good intention into a repeatable process: a first-time guest follow-up, a new-member path, baptism prep. Enroll a person and work them through the steps. PewHQ can even draft a warm follow-up email or text for you.

Facilities & safety

Facilities (under Gatherings) lets you reserve rooms without double-booking — request a room, approve it, and PewHQ flags any conflicts.

Background checks (under People) let you record a check and its renewal date for anyone serving — especially with children — so you can see at a glance who’s cleared and who’s coming due.

Ask your data

Have a question about your church? Just ask it in plain English — “How many people joined this year?” or “Who visited three times but isn’t in a group?” — and PewHQ answers from your information. It only ever reads your data, never changes anything.

The member app

Your congregation’s own space. Members sign in and can give, see announcements and events, join the directory, request prayer, make a pledge, confirm serving, watch the service, read the Bible, follow a reading plan, and update their details. On a phone, they can install it to their home screen like any other app.

To let people join, share your member-app link (there’s a Copy button in Settings). New sign-ups can wait for your approval first — you’ll see requests under People → Member requests.

The built-in Bible

Every member has a fast, distraction-free Bible built in — with search, highlights, notes, and bookmarks that sync to their account and work offline once downloaded (tap the ⤓ button in the reader). On a phone they turn the page with a swipe, like a real book. English ships with the King James Version and the World English Bible, and members can switch versions from the reader. They can also open two translations side by side (the ▥ button) to compare them verse-by-verse — and the two columns can even be in different languages, so a bilingual reader or a language-learner can set English against Spanish or Chinese. Reading plans (Proverbs, the Gospels, the whole Bible in a year, and more) track progress on their device.

Two things make the reader usable during a sermon rather than only at home. History (the ⏲ button) keeps the last ten chapters, so a member following a preacher who jumps from Romans to Isaiah and back can walk it in reverse; tapping an entry lands on the verse and flashes it rather than dropping them at the top of the chapter. And a note can carry a reference: type @Matthew 6:2 while you write and it becomes a tap, so the passage the preacher went to is still a passage on Tuesday. Book names complete as you type, and abbreviations work.

Reading lists from your church

Under Sunday → Reading lists, staff can publish either a reading list (“six passages on forgiveness”) or the passage you’re preaching this Sunday so people can read ahead. It appears on every member’s home screen and on their Reading page, and publishing pushes a notification to everyone with app alerts on — once, not again if you unpublish to fix a typo and republish.

Type references the way you’d say them (“Jn 3:16-18, Romans 8”); they’re checked as you type, so a misspelling fails in front of you rather than on four hundred phones. Each one opens at its first verse. A Sunday read-ahead disappears the day after the Sunday it was for.

In their language

The entire member experience — and the staff dashboard — is available in English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Portuguese. Each person chooses their own language from their profile (the church sets a default under Settings → Church settings → Default language), and the Bible switches to a matching translation automatically. Adding another language later is just a matter of dropping in a translation file — no rebuild of the app.

Bringing your data over

Switching from Planning Center, Breeze, CCB, or another tool? Export a spreadsheet from it, and PewHQ’s importer lines up the columns for you (with a little AI help). You can bring over four kinds of data, each with its own importer:

• People & families — names, contact details, addresses, and children. Families are rebuilt automatically from a household ID or shared surname and address.
• Giving history — past contributions, matched to funds and to the right giver, so year-end statements and totals include everything.
• Group membership — who belongs to which group, matched to the people you’ve already brought over.
• Attendance history — who attended when, so your trends and each person’s history go all the way back.

Every importer works the same reassuring way: preview exactly what will happen before anything is saved, then import. If you run the same file twice it won’t create duplicates, and if anything looks off, a single Undo removes exactly what that import added. No fear, no mess.

Keeping things tidy

A few gentle habits keep PewHQ humming:

• Approve new member requests as they come in (People → Member requests).
• Remove team members who move on, and keep everyone’s access to what they need.
• Build set lists and schedules a few weeks ahead so volunteers can confirm in time.
• Mark people inactive rather than deleting them — you keep the history.

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Common questions

Short answers to what churches ask us most, before and during an evaluation. Each one is covered at length in the section above it.