The first thing you notice about OnlineRostering.com (OR) is that the font size is very small. When it’s difficult to view a website, this isn’t a good start!

However, the functionality of OR is promising – check out the list of features on the OR website. The process within OR in a nutshell is:

• create services (e.g. Sunday at 9.45am),
• create teams (e.g. worship leaders),
• allocate teams to services,
• create positions within teams (e.g. female worship leader),
• add team members (people) to teams,
• assign these people to positions within the teams,
• roster the teams of people to serve at particular dates,
• activate the roster.

It sounds a bit complex, doesn’t it? However, to give it the benefit of the doubt, all new processes take time to learn, and I’ve only spent a short amount of time looking around.

Some of the benefits of this system include:

• people can log-in and see when they’re rostered on to serve,
• reminders can be automatically sent out,
• people can indicate when they’re unavailable to serve and this is made clear within the system (i.e. avoid confusion and complex note-taking),
• you can assign leaders of teams to manage their own teams (if you so desire).

In terms of pricing, for a church of 250, the cost would be $112.50 per month. See a full list of the pricing structure.

You can access a demo, and check it out for yourself.

My verdict (after admittedly a relatively short trial) is that OR includes some very useful functionality, that might be a tad complex for my church to administer – though for larger churches and those with complex structures, the administrative savings in this set-up could make it worthwhile. Also, the font small enough to make it difficult to use on a regular basis. Font size is a small issue, but for regular use, it would become tiresome. Clearly, a lot of work has gone into this program, and the developers have done a great job. Thanks for your service of the kingdom in producing this application!

Time for some feedback – have you used it? What do you think? Try out the demo and share your feedback!