Open Check In is free, open source, and customizeable church management software that can be deployed to the cloud. Among the more notable features are independent user profiles for parents of children during Sunday service, adding points to a map to display missions, the ability to handle payments for events and products, making requests for prayer to church staff, and the ability to set different permission levels for areas within a church.
In most instances Open Check In will be deployed to an online provider, such as Python Anywhere. But it is possible to set up a small server and broadcast within your own Wifi and be run entirely for free.
Many aspects of Open Check In have requirements that are set and I cannot change them, because I either did not program the plug-in or I do not control the servers.
How to deploy to Python Anywhere
In this video we will make a copy of Open Check In and make a proper configuration so that your secure copy can be accessed from any place.
This appears to be way more challenging than it actually is. Feel free to send me a message for help.
How parents add youth to their profile
Admins can set full, partial, or specific permissions to users, volunteers, or staff.
How staff can check in children on Sunday
Church events could be anything from VBS to Bible study groups and more.
Adding products such as coffee and snacks is a similar process.
How to help a user do a password reset
How to check-out after service with a QR code
How to broadcast over wifi locally
Setting up Open Check In to be managed entirely locally is not a difficult process to set up. Once this is done though, make sure to make back ups of your database file from time to time.
If Open Check In is broadcast locally, there are never any fees and only people within wifi distance of your church can access your software.
Python Anywhere seems to be reasonably priced compared to most others, however Open Check In would function just as properly on any other provider such as Amazon AWS or Heroku.
How to setup Porteus Kiosk to point to Open Check In
For this last how to video, I showed Open Check In configured for boot on the free and open source Porteus Kiosk.
I have a lot of instructions for each category of information based on what it is that you would like to do, please click on the corresponding video for more information and a brief view of how to proceed in that category.