Better Budgeting, No ERP Upgrade Required: Central Christian Church Scales Finance with Martus + Shelby Next

Central Christian Church relied on Excel spreadsheets to manage budgeting across multiple ministries, requiring cumbersome, multi-attachment financial distributions that were inefficient and time-consuming.

With Martus, Central's finance team streamlined monthly budget reviews, improved ministry-level visibility, and gained the ability to make more informed financial decisions through real-time actuals tracking and forecast reporting.

About Central Christian Church

Central Christian Church is a thriving, multi-campus church serving Phoenix, AZ. Committed to engaging worship, relevant biblical teaching, and strong community impact, Central offers ministry programs for all ages as well as community outreach programs, a leadership institute, and foster care and adoption support.

The Challenge

Central Christian Church was managing its budgeting process through Excel spreadsheets, distributing financials to ministry leaders via multiple separate email attachments each month. The process was time-consuming for the finance team and made it difficult for non-finance team members and ministry leaders to engage with their budgets or add context to their numbers.

Central wanted a solution that would:

• Consolidate budgeting and reporting into one place
• Be accessible for non-finance staff
• Integrate with their legacy accounting system, Shelby Next, rather than replace it

Why Martus

Martus stood out as the right fit for two key reasons: its purpose-built design for ministry budgeting, and its ability to integrate directly with Shelby Next through a simple file-based integration. Central's team could add powerful budgeting and reporting capabilities without disrupting existing accounting workflows or switching ERPs. Because Martus is designed with non-finance users in mind, ministry leaders were able to get up to speed quickly, ensuring there were no delays or interruptions to the budget planning cycle.

The Solution

With Martus, Central Christian Church has transformed the way it manages and communicates financial data across its organization. Budget and actuals now live in a single location and are accessible to ministry leaders in real time, eliminating the bottleneck often caused by the finance department manually compiling and distributing separate reports.

With Martus’s Forecast Reporting feature, leadership has also gained a real-time view of their full financial picture by combining actuals from closed months with projected budget performance for the rest of the year. This gave ministry leaders greater visibility, improved collaboration, and more confidence in financial decision-making across the organization.

The Results

Martus has made Central's budgeting process more efficient at every level, giving the finance team more time to focus on analysis and decision-making rather than report preparation.

• Time saved: Finance staff have regained hours previously spent formatting and distributing spreadsheet-based reports.
• Improved decision-making: With real-time actuals tracking and forecast reporting, leadership can make more informed decisions about how ministry dollars are allocated.
• Ministry empowerment: Non-finance leaders now create and manage their own budget worksheets, reducing the burden on the central finance team and the risk of errors.
• Seamless integration: Martus's file-based integration with Shelby Next allowed Central to add powerful budgeting capabilities without replacing their accounting system.
• Greater transparency: The notes feature gives every budget line item context, improving communication between finance and ministry teams.

For churches and faith-based organizations still managing budgets in Excel, Nicole's message is clear: "Martus is a game changer… I can't imagine going back to our old process."