FairTurns and Elvanto: a church system or just the roster?

One job, or the whole office

Grace Community Church in a country town has 45 adults, a part-time office and a roster on the hall noticeboard. Ruth, who keeps it, asked about Elvanto because a bigger church nearby uses it. The question she was really asking: do we need a church management system, or do we need the roster to sort itself out?

Both are fair answers. If your church wants one place for member records, giving statements, children’s check-in and rosters, Elvanto is built for that. If the noticeboard roster is the one real headache, a roster tool may be enough.

What Elvanto does for rosters

From Elvanto’s own worship features page: you set up departments and positions and assign volunteers. Volunteers set how often they want to be on and submit the dates they can’t do. An auto-schedule tool fills positions. Volunteers can request others to swap or replace them. They log in to see their roster, and a mobile companion app lets them accept, decline, swap, replace and view upcoming dates. Automated reminders go out and follow up anyone who hasn’t responded. You can message volunteers by SMS or email.

Beyond rosters, Elvanto has service run sheets, a song database with chord transposing, children’s check-in with security codes and label printing, pastoral care and financial tools. Its footer describes it as a Tithe.ly company.

What Elvanto costs

Elvanto charges by active adults: people who attend, volunteer or give. Children and community contacts are not charged. On the Australian pricing page, all prices are in Australian dollars:

FairTurns is free for any number of people. Pro is A$1 a month per organisation, paid one to five years at a time (A$12 to A$60), GST included, and adds reminder emails and replies.

Side by side

When Elvanto is the better choice

• You want member records, giving, children’s check-in and rosters in one system.
• Volunteers should be able to swap with each other, or get SMS messages.
• You plan run sheets and songs each week alongside the roster.
• You want phone support and help migrating your records.

When FairTurns is enough

If the roster is the whole problem, FairTurns covers it without a system to adopt. Add Sunday as a repeating date, give each team its positions (“Welcomers, 2 people”, “Morning tea, 2 people”), and press Fill. Each place goes to whoever has had the fewest turns in it. People mark when they’re away; members without email can be added by name only. Print it for the noticeboard and put the public roster link in the bulletin. When a family moves on, Redistribute shares their dates out and shows who gains one before anything changes.

People don’t swap or book their own turns in FairTurns: you put them on, and on Pro they can say “I can’t make it”, and with filling by itself switched on the next person in line is asked.

Questions

Checked against Elvanto’s own pages on 24 October 2026; prices and features change, so check theirs before you decide.