Accounts, Churches & Team Invitations

In Parsonage, your personal login account and your church’s congregation directory are kept completely separate on purpose. Understanding the difference makes setting up your church office much simpler.

Team logins vs. directory people

• Team logins (Accounts & Team) are the people who sign in to Parsonage with an email address and password to view or manage your church—such as pastors, administrators, elders, deacons, ministry leaders, or trusted volunteers. Team logins are managed under Team (/app/team) and never count toward your church’s plan limit.
• Directory people (People) are the congregation profiles stored in your church’s People directory—members, regular attenders, visitors, and children. People in your directory never need a login account to be listed in a household, added to a group, included in an email list, or cared for by your team.

Every person on a church’s team holds one of three roles for that church: Owner, Admin, or Member. All church data is strictly scoped on the server to the active church and checked against the signed-in person’s role.

Owner

Full administrative control over the church, including everything an Admin can do plus owner-only settings:

• Team: Invite or remove anyone (including other Owners), and promote or demote members between Owner, Admin, and Member.
• Billing: Subscribe to a paid plan, open Manage billing to switch plans, update payment methods, view invoices, or cancel a subscription.
• Church data: Export a complete JSON backup of the church or permanently delete the church and all of its records.

Admin

Day-to-day church office management across congregation records and communications:

• People & Households: Add, edit, and delete people and family/household links; import and export directory CSV files; manage custom directory fields.
• Groups: Create, edit, and delete groups, manage group members and roles, and print group rosters.
• Notes: Write and manage public notes and their own private notes (with file attachments) on people, families, and groups.
• Tasks: Create, assign, edit, complete, and delete tasks across the church.
• Events, Bulletins & Responses: Create, edit, and delete calendar events (including recurring schedules), service bulletins, and form responses.
• Email: Compose and send broadcasts to the whole directory, a group, or an individual, and manage church email settings (once their personal email address is confirmed).
• Team: Invite new Admins and Members, resend or withdraw their invitations, change roles between Admin and Member, and remove Admins or Members. (Admins cannot grant ownership or modify/remove an Owner.)
• Billing & Church data: View the church’s current plan and directory count under Billing, and export CSVs under Church data (cannot change billing plans or delete the church).

Member

Read-focused access for volunteers, elders, or committee members who need to look up information and help with care without changing core church settings:

• People, Households & Groups: View the directory, household relationships, and groups (cannot add, edit, import, or delete people or groups).
• Notes: View public notes and write/edit their own notes (including private notes visible only to themselves).
• Tasks: View tasks, create tasks, and update tasks they are working on.
• Events & Bulletins: View the church calendar and service bulletins (cannot create or edit events, bulletins, or responses).
• Email, Team, Church data & Billing: Not accessible to Members.

Owners and Admins manage everyone who can sign in to the church from Team (/app/team).

Confirming your email address first

When you create a new Parsonage login at /signup, we send a confirmation link to your email address that is valid for 48 hours. Until you click that confirmation link, an amber banner appears at the top of the app with a Resend link button. Confirming your email is required before you can send team invitations or send church emails. (If you join Parsonage by accepting a team invitation sent to your email address, your email is confirmed automatically when you accept.)

How to invite someone to your church team

1. 1

   Open Team (/app/team)

   In the Invite someone card, enter the person’s Email address and choose their Role (Member, Admin, or—if you are an Owner—Owner).

2. 2

   Send the 7-day invitation link

   Click Send invitation. Parsonage emails them a personal link to /invite that expires after 7 days.

3. 3

   The invitee accepts the link

   When they open the link at /invite: if they are new to Parsonage, they enter their name and a password (at least 8 characters) and click Create account and join. If they already have a Parsonage account, they click Sign in to accept (or Join [Church Name] if already signed in with that email). If they are currently signed in under a different email address, Parsonage prompts them to Sign out first so the invitation is accepted by the right account.

Resending or withdrawing pending invitations

While an invitation hasn’t been accepted yet, it appears in the Pending invitations card on Team along with who sent it and when it expires (or an Expired badge if 7 days have passed). Click Resend to send a fresh email and reset the 7-day expiration window, or click the × (Withdraw invitation) button to revoke the link immediately so it can no longer be used.

Changing roles, removing someone, or leaving a church

• Changing a role: In the Members list on Team, use the role dropdown next to a person’s name to switch them between Member, Admin, and (for Owners) Owner. Every church must always have at least one Owner, so the last owner cannot be demoted until another owner is appointed.
• Removing a team member: Click the remove icon next to their name and confirm Remove. They lose access to this church immediately, while their personal login and any other churches they belong to remain intact.
• Leaving a church yourself: Click the remove icon on your own row (marked (you)) and click Leave church. As long as you are not the sole Owner, you will be removed from that church’s team.

Creating your first church

To start a brand-new church on Parsonage, visit /signup, enter your Church name, Your name, Email address, and a Password (at least 8 characters), and click Create your church. Your church is created on the Free plan with your browser’s local time zone, and you are signed in as its first Owner.

Starting an additional church or switching churches

If your account belongs to more than one church—or you want to start another church under the same login—open the account menu in the top-right corner of the app and choose Switch church (or go directly to /churches). From there you can:

• Click any church in your list under Choose your church to make it your active workspace.
• Use the Start a new church form at the bottom of /churches (enter a Church name and click Create church) to spin up an additional congregation where you are the Owner.

Resetting a forgotten password

If you forget your password, click Forgot password? on the sign-in screen (/forgot-password), enter your email address, and click Send reset link. We’ll email a single-use reset link that stays valid for 1 hour. Choosing a new password signs out any other browsers or devices that were signed in to your account and signs you straight in.

You can close your personal Parsonage login at any time by opening the account menu and choosing Your account (/account). Under Close your account, enter your current password and click Close my account.

What is deleted vs. what stays with the church

• Deleted permanently: Your personal login, your active sessions, your team memberships and pending invitations across all churches, and all of your private notes along with any files attached to those private notes.
• Kept safe for each church: Congregation directory records, households, groups, public notes (and their attachments), tasks, calendar events, and service bulletins that you created or edited remain with each church so the office never loses shared history when staff or volunteers change.