Somewhere in your week there is a task that should take ten minutes and takes an hour. You need to send a message to people who have not paid. To do it, you open the payments spreadsheet, then the members list, compare the two, build a new list by hand, paste it into your email client, and send. By the time you are done, you have touched four tools, retyped the same names twice, and introduced at least one mistake you will not find until next month. This is not a technology problem. It is what happens when the records that belong together are kept apart.

Daviah keeps a church's congregation, a club's membership, a lodge's member roll and a school's student records in the same place as the dues or fees ledger, the meeting minute book, the website and the messages — so the same name does not have to be typed in four places. The sections below describe how that plays out in practice for each kind of organisation, and what Daviah does not yet fix.

What changes when the records are in one place

The clearest sign of a fragmented setup is that raising dues, subscriptions, fees or giving for the year means going back to the member list to check who is in scope, opening a separate ledger to record what is owed, and then opening another tool to write to people about it. When those three things live in the same office, the treasurer raises the year's charge for everyone in one step.

Member records in Daviah carry a dated history of every change. When a role changes, a payment is recorded or a record is corrected, that is written down with a reason. Bringing in records you already have from a spreadsheet is handled with a column-matching step that flags problems and duplicates before anything is saved. And because each organisation's records are walled off from every other organisation's — checked by automated tests — the information you bring in stays yours.

What Daviah does not promise is that every piece of data you currently hold in separate tools will flow in automatically. The spreadsheet import covers people records. Documents, photos, minutes and payment history from other systems are not imported for you. The sections below say plainly what is covered for each kind.

For churches: congregation, giving and ministries without the drawer full of spreadsheets

A church administrator's week typically involves at least three separate systems: one for the congregation list, one for giving records, and whatever the pastor uses to track ministry teams. When a family moves, the address is updated in one place and forgotten in another. The tangle grows quietly, and the time it eats comes out of ministry.

In Daviah, the congregation list, giving records, ministry committees, services and meeting notes, the church website, and messages to the congregation all live in the same office. The treasurer raises giving for the whole congregation in one step. Ministries are named groups you can write to directly. Approved meeting notes sit in a minute book that moves from draft to submitted to approved. The public website draws its events, news, leadership and photo galleries from the same records the office holds.

The one thing to say plainly: Daviah does not explicitly confirm that data entered in one module is instantly reflected in every other in a way that eliminates all manual cross-referencing. What the office does is keep all of these things in one place, under one login, with one member list — which removes most of the retyping. The church-specific guide goes into more detail.

For clubs: membership, subscriptions and documents without the scattered inboxes

In a club, the membership list lives with the secretary, the subscription records with the treasurer, the constitution with whoever last updated it, and the minutes in someone's email. When the committee needs a complete picture, someone has to collect all of those copies and reconcile them. Nobody ever quite has everything.

Daviah gives the committee one place for member records, subscription records, documents shared at the right visibility level, an audit trail of changes, officer history year by year, and reports the whole committee can read. Documents are private by default and can be shared with officers, members or the public site. The audit trail is append-only: what was changed, when and by whom is always on record.

What the spreadsheet import does is bring in member records from a CSV. It does not migrate data from separate inboxes or personal laptops. The ongoing problem of copies held in different places is addressed by keeping new records in one system — but historical data outside that system has to be brought in deliberately, one import at a time. The club-specific guide covers this in more detail.

For lodges: member details, dues and attendance without the cross-referencing

A lodge secretary is often the only person who knows where anything is. Dues are tracked in one spreadsheet, attendance in another, member details in a third. Preparing a return for the jurisdiction means opening all of them and reconciling by hand. When the secretary steps down, the knowledge about where everything lives leaves with them.

In Daviah, member records, dues and attendance all live in the same office. Dues are raised for the whole membership in one step. Attendance is taken at stated meetings from the office, or from a tablet at the door that shows only a first name and initial. Reports on membership, officers, attendance and dues are counted live from the records and can be exported to CSV. Officer history is kept year by year, so the next secretary can see who held each role in previous years.

The officer-as-single-point-of-knowledge problem is addressed by centralising the records and by allowing a second administrator to be invited in. The lodge-specific guide is the place to go for the full picture.

For schools: student records, fees and messages without the tab-switching

A small school's front office typically runs on a collection of separate apps and spreadsheets that do not share data. Enrolling a new student means entering the name in the roll, then again in the fees system, then again in the communication tool. The time lost to this switching and retyping is real.

In Daviah, the student roll, fee records and messages all sit in the same office. Fees are raised for the whole roll in one step. Messages can be sent to all students, to staff, to a department, or to members with unpaid fees — without building a list by hand each time. Staff records and officer history are kept year by year. Bringing in records from a spreadsheet is handled with a column-matching step that flags problems before anything is saved.

The honest limit: Daviah does not promise that switching from separate tools means no duplicate entry at all, or that every gap in a patchwork system is closed. What it does is put the student roll, fees and messages in one place under one login. The school-specific guide goes into more detail on what that means for a typical school week.

What the member portal changes for everyone

Across all four kinds, one recurring cost is fielding requests from members, congregation, students or lodge members who want to update their own details, check what they owe, or find a document. Each of those requests takes a small amount of someone's time — and adds up over a year.

Every organisation on the Website + Members plan gets a member portal on its own site where members can sign in, update their own details, see their record, pay what they owe by card, reply to events, and open members-only documents and photo albums. A payment is recorded only once Stripe confirms the money moved. Members-only pages are kept out of search engines, and access-protected files are not accessible by guessing a link.

Card payments go straight to the organisation's own Stripe account. Daviah takes no cut of the money. Stripe's fees are paid by the organisation directly.

What it costs, and how to start

Signing up is free and asks for no card, no phone number and no domain — just a name, an email address and a password. On the free plan an organisation can build and save its whole site and view it through a private link, but the site is not published until a paid plan is chosen, and nothing expires.

The Website plan is $29.99 a month and publishes the site with events, news and galleries, a contact form, and the organisation's own address on the platform. The Website + Members plan is $79.99 a month and adds the full office: member records, dues or fees, meetings, minutes, attendance, documents, messages and the member portal. Paying yearly works out to about $68 a month and saves $139.89 against the monthly price. Both plans run month to month with no contract.

If a subscription payment fails, nothing is withheld for ten days, and the organisation receives three emails before anything stops. If an organisation stops paying, its records stay readable and its CSV exports continue to work.

Questions

Can I bring in the records I already have from a spreadsheet?

Yes. People can be imported from a CSV spreadsheet: columns are matched automatically, and any problems or duplicates are flagged before anything is saved. This covers member, congregation, student and lodge member records. Documents, minutes and payment history from other systems are not imported automatically.

Does Daviah use the words my organisation already uses?

Yes. The office menus and main screens use each kind's own words throughout — a church sees Congregation, Giving and Ministries; a club sees Members and Subscriptions; a lodge sees Membership and Dues; a school sees Students and Fees. No other kind's vocabulary appears on your screens.

Can more than one person access the office, with different levels of access?

Yes. An administrator can invite other people to help run the organisation. There are seven roles — administrator, presiding officer, secretary, treasurer, officer, website editor and member — each named in the organisation's own words. Someone given the website editor role can edit the site without access to money or member records.

Are my organisation's records kept separate from other organisations on the platform?

Yes. Each organisation's records are walled off from every other organisation's, and this isolation is checked by automated tests.

What happens to our records if we stop paying?

If an organisation stops paying, its records stay readable, its CSV exports for members, dues, payments and officers continue to work, and the site and office come back as soon as it pays again.

Is there a contract to sign?

No. Both paid plans run month to month with no contract. Paying yearly is cheaper, but there is no requirement to do so.

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