1. The agreement
These Terms of Service & Acceptable Use Policy (the "Terms") are a binding agreement between the operating team of nChurch ERP ("we", "us", "the platform") and each church, ministry or religious organisation that registers a workspace (the "church"), together with every person granted access to that workspace (each a "user"). If the person registering does not have authority to bind the church, they must not register it. If you do not accept these Terms, do not use the service.
These Terms govern the whole service: the software, the application, the public website, the Bible index, exports, backups and related tooling. Separate signed agreements, where they exist with a specific church, take precedence only to the extent they say so.
2. The service & the free-forever promise
nChurch ERP is a church and religious management system: membership, giving, accounting, HR & payroll, events, Bible & projection, media, prayer and pastoral care inside one multi-tenant platform, offered for self-hosting or hosted use.
"Free forever" is a promise with a definition. The starter plan — every module, up to five branches and two thousand members per church — is and will remain free of charge, with no trial period and no expiry, for as long as the platform operates. "Free forever" is not a promise of perpetual uptime, of any particular feature, of individual support service levels, or that the platform will operate endlessly; it is a promise about price. Usage beyond starter-plan limits, and any future institutional add-ons (such as managed hosting assistance or bespoke onboarding), may be quoted separately — but paid add-ons can never remove or shrink the free starter plan from a church that already carries it.
3. Eligibility & authority
A church workspace may be registered only by an adult acting with the church's express authority (a pastor, administrator or equivalent officer). The registering person represents that the church exists, that the details given are accurate, and that they have the right to bind the church to these Terms. We may ask for verification and may decline or remove a workspace created without authority, for an organisation that is not a genuine church or religious ministry, or that misrepresents itself.
4. Accounts & security
Each church designates at least one administrator, who manages its users, roles and permissions. Churches are responsible for: keeping credentials confidential; enabling two-factor authentication for privileged roles; promptly removing access for people who leave; and everything that happens under their accounts. We provide least-privileged roles, optional two-factor sign-in, recovery codes and an audit trail — but the choice and day-to-day management of those controls belongs to the church. Notify us without delay at platform@mishkanministries.org of any suspected unauthorised access.
5. Your church's data
The church owns its data. Membership records, donations, payroll lines, counselling notes, documents and every other record the church creates remain the church's property. We claim no ownership of it and we do not sell, mine or monetise it.
The church is the data controller for personal data it stores about members, staff and visitors. The church is responsible for having a lawful basis to hold that data, honouring the privacy expectations of its people, controlling which of its own users can see confidential records, and complying with the data-protection law that applies to it (including the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) of Ghana where applicable). We act as a processor: we store and transmit the data only to provide the service, with tenant isolation and encrypted credentials, and we log access so the church can audit it.
Financial exports (CSV files, payment files, reports) are the church's records; the church is responsible for keeping its own backups of data it exports and, where its law requires it, for retaining books and records.
6. Acceptable use
The church and its users must not, and must not attempt to:
- use the platform for anything unlawful, fraudulent, hateful, defamatory, or harmful to any person — including anything unrelated to genuine church or ministry operation;
- upload or distribute malware, or probe, scan, overload or disrupt the platform or any other church's workspace;
- scrape, bulk-export or harvest another church's data, or attempt to cross tenant isolation;
- resell, rent, lease, sublicense or white-label access to the platform to other organisations, or frame the platform as a product of anyone else's;
- reverse-engineer the service to build a competing offering, or misrepresent the origin of the software;
- send unsolicited bulk communications through messaging features;
- bypass or disable security controls, rate limits, or plan guardrails;
- share administrator credentials beyond people authorised by the church, or register more than one workspace for the same church to multiply plan limits.
A church in breach risks suspension under section 14. Fair-use abuse of shared capacity (registered churches far beyond normal ministry load without arrangement, automated load, mining or storage abuse) is treated as an acceptable-use breach.
7. Scripture & spiritual content
The Bible module indexes complete public-domain translations (King James Version, American Standard Version, World English Bible). Verse text always comes from that indexed corpus, never generated, and known textual omissions are tracked honestly. Sermon, prayer, counselling and prophecy content belongs to the church that created it; we do not review, endorse or verify spiritual content, and nothing in the platform is pastoral, medical, psychological or legal advice. Churches are responsible for how their ministers use counselling and prayer records — we recommend the restricted-permission pattern the module ships with.
8. Donations, money & taxes
The platform records donations and produces ledger entries, payslips, donation receipts and export files — it never takes custody of church funds, processes card payments, or moves money itself. Where a church connects a payment or banking provider, that relationship is strictly between the church and the provider. Reports, payroll calculations (including statutory-style lines such as PAYE or pension contributions) and financial statements are informational tools for the church's own accountants; they are not tax, audit or compliance guarantees. Each church remains solely responsible for its statutory filings, tax registrations and returns, employment-law obligations and the integrity of figures it enters.
9. Our brand & intellectual property
The name "nChurch ERP", the "nChurch" mark, our logo, visual design, product screenshots, marketing copy, documentation and the platform itself (code, architecture and content we created) are our intellectual property or our licensors'. We grant each registered church a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the platform and, for the church's ordinary internal and congregational communications, to refer to the service by name and show ordinary screenshots of its own workspace.
Churches must not: use our name, logo or marks in a way that suggests we operate, sponsor or endorse the church (we do not); register "nChurch"-confusing names, domains or handles; use our brand in paid advertising without written consent; remove or hide platform attribution where the interface displays it; or copy, adapt or redistribute our proprietary content beyond the licence above. Feedback the church gives us may be used to improve the service without obligation, but churches never become part-owners of the platform by contributing ideas.
10. Third-party integrations
Optional integrations (Google/Microsoft sign-in, calendar-.ics import, payment providers, push/WebPush where configured) are offered for convenience and remain governed by those providers' own terms. They can be modified, rate-limited or withdrawn by their providers at any time; we are not responsible for third-party availability, accuracy or policy changes. Where an integration is not configured, the platform reports that state honestly rather than pretending it works — the absence of such a service is never a breach of these Terms.
11. No warranties
The service is provided "as is" and "as available", free of charge. To the maximum extent permitted by law we disclaim all warranties of any kind, express, implied or statutory — including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy of computed figures, and non-infringement — and we do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, that defects will be corrected on any schedule, or that data will never be lost. Nothing in this section removes any consumer right that cannot lawfully be excluded.
12. Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:
- we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages — including lost donations, lost offerings, lost data, lost goodwill, business interruption, payroll or tax penalties, or spiritual or reputational harm — arising from or relating to the service or these Terms, even if advised such damages were possible;
- our total aggregate liability to any church or user for all claims in any twelve-month period is capped at the greater of (a) the amount that church paid us in that period (for a church on the free starter plan: zero) or (b) one hundred United States dollars (US$ 100);
- these limits apply to every legal theory (contract, tort, negligence, statutory duty or otherwise) and allocate the risk of a free service in a commercially reasonable way — reflecting that the church paid nothing for it;
- where a jurisdiction does not allow an exclusion or cap above, our liability is limited to the greatest extent that jurisdiction does allow.
13. Indemnification
To the maximum extent permitted by law, each church will defend, indemnify and hold harmless the platform, its operators and contributors from and against all claims, demands, damages, losses and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or relating to: (a) the church's use or misuse of the service; (b) data or content the church stores or publishes through it, including claims that the church lacked lawful basis to hold member data; (c) the church's breach of these Terms; (d) claims by the church's members, staff, donors, regulators or payment providers concerning the church's operations, filings, employment decisions or collection and use of donations; and (e) any representation the church makes that we endorse or are part of the church. We will promptly notify the church of any indemnified claim and may participate in its defence with counsel of our choice at our own expense.
14. Suspension & termination
We may suspend or limit a workspace — in whole or part — where we reasonably believe there is a security risk, unlawful use, a breach of these Terms, or use that endangers other churches' workspaces. We will give notice where practicable and lawful. A church may stop using the service at any time; either party may end this agreement on written notice. On termination: workspace access ends; where practicable we offer a 30-day window for the church to export data it is entitled to; afterwards the workspace may be deleted. Sections on data ownership, brand, no-warranties, limitation of liability, indemnification, governing law and general provisions survive termination.
15. Changes to these terms
We evolve these Terms as the platform and the law evolve. The version number and effective date above always show the current text. For material changes we will notify workspace administrators in the app and/or by email with reasonable advance notice, and require re-acknowledgement of the new version at the next administrator sign-in; for minor (non-material) changes, continued use after the effective date is acceptance. Registrations always record the version accepted, so the terms binding each church at any moment are never in doubt.
16. Governing law & disputes
These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of Ghana, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. The parties will first attempt, in good faith and with the goodwill this platform exists to serve, to resolve any dispute by negotiation for at least thirty (30) days from written notice of the dispute. Failing resolution, disputes will be finally settled by the courts of competent jurisdiction sitting in Accra, Ghana, and each party submits to their exclusive jurisdiction and waives any objection to venue. Nothing prevents either party from seeking urgent interim relief (for example, to stop a security incident or data misuse) from any court of competent jurisdiction.
17. General provisions
- Entire agreement. These Terms (including any signed supplements) are the whole agreement about the service and replace prior discussions.
- No waiver & severability. A right not enforced is not waived; if any part is held unenforceable, the rest stands, and the unenforceable part is enforced to the maximum lawful extent.
- Assignment. The church may not assign this agreement without our written consent; we may assign it to an operator of the platform with notice.
- Force majeure. Neither party is liable for failures caused by events beyond reasonable control (including power or network failures, natural events, epidemics, acts of state or war, and failures of third-party infrastructure).
- Notices. We may notify the church by email to its workspace administrators or by prominent in-app notice; the church notifies us at platform@mishkanministries.org.
- No agency / no endorsement. The platform and the church are independent; nothing creates a partnership, agency, employment or endorsement relationship with any registered church.
- Headings. Headings are for convenience only.
- Language. These Terms are written and interpreted in English.