The challenge
The church's finance records were spread across a Microsoft Access database, spreadsheets and paper. Expense approvals and Gift Aid claim preparation were largely manual, and a clear monthly picture of income and spending took real effort to put together.
The finance team wanted one place to record everything once — and to trust what came out of it.
The solution
CJ TEAMS designed and built GraceFlow around the way a church finance team actually works: record each offering and expense once, and the reports, Gift Aid claim files and bank reconciliation follow from it. Every change is logged — who did what, and when.
The front-end is built in Flutter for web and mobile, with a bilingual English/Korean interface. The back-end is Python on AWS Lambda with a managed PostgreSQL database, and data isolation is enforced inside the database with row-level security.
GraceFlow is a CJ TEAMS product. We host and operate it on our own AWS infrastructure and license it to the church, which keeps full ownership of its records.
What's inside
From the Sunday offering to the HMRC claim — income, expenses and Gift Aid in one system
bank import
& matching
approve
& post
& HMRC
claim files
& households
& Excel
bank
payments
& audit
trail
Technology stack
- Flutter (web & mobile front-end)
- Python on AWS Lambda
- Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
- Amazon Cognito (sign-in & MFA)
- Amazon S3 (receipt storage)
- Amazon SES (email notifications)
- AWS Amplify (hosting & CI/CD)
- GoCardless (online giving)
Timeline
- November 2025 — Build began, starting from an analysis of the church's existing Access database.
- December 2025 — Separate development and production environments set up on AWS.
- 2026 — Iterative releases, with the finance team testing on a dedicated preview environment.
- Now — Acceptance testing with the church's finance team ahead of go-live.
Where it stands
GraceFlow is built and deployed. The church's finance team is testing it on a separate preview environment before it goes live for day-to-day use — we'll update this page when it does.
The church reviews and submits its own Gift Aid claims to HMRC; GraceFlow prepares the claim files from the records it holds.
Why this approach
Generic accounting software handles the ledger, but a church finance team also has to manage Gift Aid declarations, household giving, cash and cheque deposits and HMRC claim files. A system shaped to that workflow removes the manual steps instead of moving them into yet another tool.
Because CJ TEAMS also hosts and operates GraceFlow, the church doesn't have to run servers, backups or security updates itself.
Outgrown an old database and spreadsheets?
If your finance or operations still run on Access, spreadsheets and approvals in chat, we can build a system that fits the way you actually work.
Talk to CJ TEAMS →