What actually comes across when you move.
Every church-software company says migration is easy. Here is the specific version: which fields survive, what happens to the duplicates you already know about, and how you'd get your records back out again if you ever wanted to leave.
You can do all of this inside the 30-day trial, before you pay anything.
It's a spreadsheet, not an integration.
Export a CSV from Planning Center, Breeze, ChurchTrac or whatever spreadsheet your church actually runs on, and upload it. Stewara reads your header row and fills in the mapping. There is no direct connection to those products, and we're not going to imply one — a "one-click migration" that quietly drops half your fields is worse than an afternoon of honest work.
Upload the file
Any CSV with a header row. Stewara matches your columns to its fields and tells you how many it recognised.
Check the mapping
Every column is yours to correct or ignore before a single record is created. Nothing has been written yet.
Review the duplicates
Stewara compares every row against your existing people and against the rest of the file, and shows you what it found — still before writing anything.
Three imports, and what each carries
People
Names, contact details, addresses, birthdays and status, from any CSV. Stewara reads your header row and pre-fills the mapping for you, and you can correct every column before anything is created.
Giving history
Donor, amount, date, fund, check number and a note per gift. Amounts are handled as whole cents end to end, so nothing rounds on the way in. A donor who isn't in Stewara yet is created as part of the import; a fund has to exist first, and the import won't run until you've said which fund each unmatched name belongs to.
Your song library
Titles, authors, key, tempo, CCLI number and tags. Keys are normalised as they come in, and songs you already have default to skipped.
Every field a people import can carry
That's the whole list. If a field you rely on isn't on it, it's in the next section rather than missing from this one by accident.
Nothing merges itself.
Every church that has run software for a decade has three copies of the same family. Stewara finds them and then stops, because guessing wrong about who two records belong to is not a mistake software should make on its own.
Found before anything is written
Matching email or phone reads as a likely duplicate; an exact name, a nickname (Bob and Robert), or a near-miss spelling reads as a possible one. You see the match and the reason on the review screen.
Skipped by default
A flagged row does nothing unless you tell it to. Per row you can create it anyway, fill in the blanks on the person you already have — which never overwrites anything you already filled in — or skip it.
Merging is a decision, not a setting
There's a separate tool for pairs you find later. You choose which record survives; giving, groups, events and check-in history follow it, and staff notes from both are kept rather than one being dropped. It can't be undone, so it asks first.
One honest caveat: duplicate detection compares against the first 5,000 people in your church. If you're larger than that, talk to us before you import and we'll run it differently.
The part nobody puts on their website.
You will find all of this out eventually. Finding it out now costs you an afternoon of planning; finding it out after you've switched costs you a Sunday.
Households and family links
The people importer has no family field. Everyone arrives as an individual and you group them into households in Stewara afterwards. We would rather you knew that before you started than discovered it on the other side.
Song lyrics and chord charts
Deliberately, not accidentally: lyrics are licensed content and we are not going to move copies of them between systems on your behalf. Bring your CCLI numbers across and your charts stay where your licence says they live.
Photos and attachments
Profile photos come across only if your export gives us a public image URL. Receipt images, uploaded charts and email images do not travel in a CSV — send them over and we'll help you place them.
Tags, custom fields and notes
Not on the first import. These are the fields most likely to mean something different in your old system than in ours, so they're a conversation rather than a column map. Tell us what you have and we'll tell you honestly whether it's worth moving.
How you'd get your records back.
A migration guide that only explains how to get in is a sales page. Your records are your church's, and the way out matters more than the way in — because it's the reason you can afford to try.
Download it yourself, any time
Your people (including your custom fields), any event's registrant roster, and your online giving for a date range all export to CSV from inside Stewara, whenever you want, without asking anybody.
Or the whole church, in one file
An admin can build a complete archive from Settings: every table Stewara keeps for your church, one CSV each, with a manifest naming every file and how many rows it holds — and naming what isn't included, so you're never guessing. Money in whole cents. No ticket, no waiting on us.
No hostage-taking
No contract, no cancellation fee, and stopping payment steps you back to free Flock rather than locking you out. We don't sell or share your church's data, and each church's records are isolated from every other church's at the database level.
What "we help you move" means, specifically.
Send us the export file you're planning to use — before you start — and we'll tell you which columns will map, which won't, and what your duplicate situation looks like. If the file needs reshaping, we'll reshape it. That's a real person reading your actual spreadsheet, not a knowledge-base article. Email support@stewara.com or use the form.
Try the import before you commit to anything.
Start a trial, upload your export, and look at the review screen. If it doesn't carry what your church needs, you'll know in twenty minutes and it will have cost you nothing.