Hi there 👋
Roles are one of those things nobody thinks about until the wrong person can see the wrong thing. Over the past months, churches told us where roles felt too broad, and where they were simply hard to explain. So we sat down and made them clearer, especially around the information that matters most: giving, families, and children.
One promise before anything else: nothing was taken away. Every role in your church can still do everything it could do yesterday.
✨ What's new
Four simple levels for Giving. Every role that touches giving now sits at one of four levels, and each one includes the one before it:
- Reviewer sees the totals and how funds and campaigns are doing, but no names.
- Counter enters gifts into the batches they open on a Sunday.
- Bookkeeper sees donors, giving history and statements, and closes batches.
- Administrator can do everything, including refunds, exports and deposits.
Your counting team can count, your finance team can review, and only the people who truly need to know can see what a family gives. Anyone else, including people who only work in Accounting, sees the word Donor where a name would be. That holds on the ledger, in the bank-import review, in gift notifications, and even for an AI assistant you've connected to your church.
To set a level, open Roles, choose New Role, and start from the Counter, Reviewer or Bookkeeper template (there's an Executive Administrator template for the person who runs both the church and its finances). Prefer to set it yourself? On the Giving & Donations row, View makes a Reviewer, View plus Create a Counter, Edit a Bookkeeper, and Full Access an Administrator. If a page ever tells you something "needs Contribute access in Giving", it means the Bookkeeper level.
Team leaders see their own teams. Roles set to Their teams, like Team Leader, will see only the people, groups, classes, follow-ups and families connected to the teams they lead. Your youth leader sees her students and their families, not the whole church. This starts seven days after this update. Until then, administrators see a notice at the top of the admin pages with the exact date, and receive one email. If a role really should keep seeing the whole church, open Roles and click Change to Whole church on that role. It takes effect right away, and the people in that role get a short note.
Invite someone to a group by email. A leader meets someone new on Sunday and wants them in the small group. Now they can do it themselves: open the group, choose Add Member, then Invite by email and Send group invitation. The person gets a link that is good for 14 days, confirms it's really them, and appears under the group's Requests for the leader to approve. If you'd like leaders to search your whole directory instead, turn on Leaders can search the church directory under Church Setting → Group leaders.
Joining from your website is confirmed by email. When someone who is already in your directory asks to join a group from your church's public pages, they get a confirmation email first and are added only after they confirm. Everyone sees the same friendly message: "Thanks! Check your email for next steps."
Check-in stations look families up more carefully. A station finds a family by the last four or more digits of a phone number, or by at least three letters of a name, and only while a check-in session is open. When more than one household matches, the screen shows just their names until you pick the right one.
🛠️ About that "Review your roles" email
Some things a role used to do as a side effect of another permission, like deleting, publishing, refunding or using the AI assistant, are now their own choices. So that nobody lost a thing, we added those choices to every role that needed them, and your administrators received one email listing exactly what changed. There's nothing you have to do. If a role shouldn't have one of them, open it on the Roles page and switch it off.
Try it
If clearer giving levels, team reach, and invite-by-email would help your church office this week, try them in TimelyChurch.
💬 Got an idea, or something bugging you? Share your feedback — it shapes what we build next.
We're here to help,
The TimelyChurch Team