Help centre

You're exploring a live demo of Vestry β€” try anything you like; the sample data resets every few minutes.Get Vestry for your church β†’

Help centre

What every part of Vestry does. Look for the ? by any page title for the same help in context.

Printable guides

Downloadable PDF guides you can print or share with your team.

Attendance

Open β†’

Record weekly counts (adults, children, online). The chart shows your recent trend; figures feed the Statistics for Mission helper.

Billing & plan

Open β†’

Your plan and which modules are active. The free core is always included; contact support to add modules or arrange a licence.

Birthdays & anniversaries

Open β†’

Browse who has a birthday or anniversary each month. Add dates on each contact's record.

Bookings

Open β†’

Book a room once or on a repeat β€” the single place to manage room hire.

  • Tick one or more rooms for a multi-room booking.
  • Repeats? turns a booking into a regular booking that fills the diary.
  • Approving checks for clashes (including linked/adjoining rooms).
  • Raise quotes and invoices from a booking's page.

Bookings calendar

Open β†’

Room-by-week grid so clashes and free slots are obvious.

  • Each row is a room; a multi-room booking shows in every room it uses.
  • Pending and confirmed bookings are colour-coded.

Buildings & maintenance

Open β†’

Log issues against a building with priority, owner and due date. Overdue tasks are flagged.

Calendar

Open β†’

Your whole-church diary of services and events.

  • Switch between Month and List views.
  • Click a day's event to open it.
  • Add an event at the bottom β€” set a type, optional capacity and open it for public registration.
  • Colours: services, events and private bookings.

Children's check-in

Open β†’

Secure check-in with a pickup code matched at collection.

  • Open the kiosk for a foyer tablet, or check in from here.
  • Each child gets a code printed on a child tag + matching guardian tag.
  • At pickup, enter the code from the guardian's tag; a leader can override a lost tag.
  • Keep allergy/medical records under Consent & medical.

Contacts

Open β†’

Everyone connected to your church β€” members and visitors.

  • Search, tag and segment people; add your own custom fields.
  • Import or export a CSV; find and merge duplicates.
  • Open a contact for their timeline, giving, groups and family links.

Dashboard

Open β†’

Your overview: key numbers, what needs attention, the week ahead and this month's birthdays. Click any tile to jump in.

Data & privacy

Open β†’

Your GDPR toolkit: manage consent, export a person's data (subject access request), and erase records on request.

Documents

Open β†’

Policies, PCC minutes and risk assessments. Upload a file or link to one; mark each Public or Restricted.

Event registration

Open β†’

Events open for public sign-up. Tick 'open for registration' on a calendar event to list it here and collect RSVPs.

External contacts

Open β†’

Suppliers and non-member hirers β€” the people who rent your rooms.

  • Link a contact to bookings to raise quotes and invoices.
  • Keep organisation, phone and notes in one place.

Finance & budgets

Open β†’

Income, expenses and budget-vs-actual across funds.

  • Record a spend, or let volunteers submit claims with receipts for approval.
  • Only approved expenses count as spend.
  • Year-end pack gives PCC/APCM totals; Collection counting reconciles cash.

Giving & Funds

Open β†’

Record gifts, track funds and manage Gift Aid.

  • Record manual gifts or take card gifts on your public giving page.
  • Funds show progress to target; export the Gift Aid schedule for HMRC.
  • Pledges, statements and QR/text-to-give are linked here.

Home groups and ministries β€” who leads and when they meet. Open a group to manage its members; see per-group reports.

Households

Open β†’

Group people into families/homes. Deleting a household unlinks members but keeps the people.

Import data

Open β†’

Bring existing records in from a spreadsheet (contacts, giving, events). Each importer reads a CSV with a header row.

Member directory

Open β†’

An opt-in photo directory. Members switch on their own listing and choose what to share β€” nobody appears without consent.

  • Turn the directory on/off for the church.
  • Members opt in and upload a photo from their portal.
  • Print a confidential directory of those listed.

Messages

Open β†’

Email and SMS to your congregation.

  • Pick an audience; email sends for real.
  • Leave the schedule blank to save a draft, or set a date (and repeat) to send automatically.
  • Save reusable layouts under Templates.

Pastoral care

Open β†’

Confidential notes on visits, bereavements and follow-ups. Restrict who can see this area via roles/permissions.

  • Log a note with a category and status.
  • Care plans handle recurring visits.

Pastoral care plans

Open β†’

Recurring visits and follow-ups that roll their next-due date forward when you mark them done. A weekly email reminds the office what's due.

Payment providers

Open β†’

Connect your own Stripe (and others) so online giving and invoice payments go straight to the church.

Permission groups

Open β†’

Custom access groups that override a person's role β€” tick exactly which areas they can use. The matrix shows what each built-in role can access.

Prayer requests

Open β†’

Requests submitted from your public prayer page. Mark them Open / Answered / Closed; 'Prayer chain' items were shared with consent.

Quotes & invoices

Open β†’

Every quote and invoice across your lettings, with what's owed and overdue.

  • Filter by type or hirer; print a hirer statement.
  • Outstanding and overdue totals at the top.
  • Create quotes/invoices from a booking, then send or take card payment.

Regular bookings

Open β†’

Bookings that repeat (e.g. a weekly toddler group). Set one up by choosing a repeat on a New booking; manage them here.

  • Pause an agreement to stop generating new dates.
  • Generate upcoming fills the diary now (a nightly job also does this).
  • An end date makes term-time or short-run hires stop on their own.

Reports & trends

Open β†’

Twelve-month trends across the church, with a printable report and the Statistics for Mission helper.

Resource library

Open β†’

Reusable liturgies, prayers, talk outlines and readings to draw on when planning services.

Plan who's serving and spot gaps.

  • Create a rota, then add roles and assign people.
  • Gaps are flagged; members can self-sign-up from their portal.
  • Print four weeks for the noticeboard.

Safeguarding & DBS

Open β†’

DBS records, training and casework.

  • Track DBS status and renewal dates; expiring/expired are flagged.
  • Cases, Training and the incident log are linked from here.
  • What's due shows everything needing action.

Safeguarding incident log

Open β†’

Confidential record of concerns, disclosures and accidents.

  • Each gets a reference and a status workflow.
  • Record facts only; sign off to close.
  • Serious concerns must be referred to your DSA/authorities.

Find a contact, event, booking, group or external contact anywhere in Vestry.

A record of talks with passage, speaker, date and media link.

Service planner

Open β†’

Build an order of service β€” songs, readings, talks and who's doing what.

  • Open a plan to add items in order.
  • Print the order of service, or use Projection for a full-screen slide view.

Settings

Open β†’

Church details, public content and integrations, organised into tabs.

  • Public content & branding appear on your public pages.
  • Add your own email (SMTP), SMS, spam protection and invoicing details.
  • Switch on the public room-booking page.

Setup guide

Open β†’

A step-by-step checklist for getting your church set up, in the best order, with live progress.

Sign-ups & forms

Open β†’

Public forms (newsletter, events, prayer, enquiries). Each gets a shareable link; responses land in Contacts with the right consent.

Songs & CCLI

Open β†’

Your song library with CCLI usage logging.

  • Log each use to build your CCLI return.
  • Open the CCLI usage report for the totals.

Add staff and volunteers and set their role. They sign in with a 6-digit email code β€” no passwords.

  • Roles set what each person can access.
  • For finer control, assign a custom permission group.
  • Add multiple login emails to one person.

Visitor follow-up

Open β†’

Welcome newcomers through to belonging.

  • New sign-ups appear here automatically.
  • Move people along the stages, then mark them as members.

We missed you

Open β†’

Members with no recent giving or rota activity, so you can reach out.

  • Set the lapsed threshold (days).
  • Send a gentle nudge email; the date is recorded.
  • A weekly email also flags these to the office.