Multi-Parish: How to setup up your churches in ChurchDesk

This article guides you through the steps to set up and manage multiple congregations/church locations in ChurchDesk. Learn how to create your different locations and assign resources accordingly.

How does the Multi-Parish tool work? All participating congregations work together in one shared ChurchDesk installation – there is no "invitation" from one account to another. The setup is done by a person with the Organisation Administrator role at the main congregation: create the additional parishes, add their staff as users (they receive an invitation email to set their password), and use roles to control who can access what. Roles can be limited to one or more parishes, so each congregation keeps control over its own calendars, contacts and forms. If the other congregations already use their own separate ChurchDesk installations with existing data, that data cannot simply be transferred by invitation – a merging service is available for this. See also Create Users and assign Roles.

A Guide to Setting Up Your Congregations in ChurchDesk

Step-by Step-guide:

To set up your parishes, please go to your user name in the blue bar above. From the menu, choose "ChurchDesk Settings"

Then, please go to the black bar on the left side and click on "Parish & Resources".

Click on the blue "Create" button to create a new parish.

Write the name of the parish and the corresponding address in the input area. You can also enter mappings from external sources and the start numbers for intentions, legacies and foundations here.

Now all you have to do is allocate your resources to each church. In the action options (right) of a resource, click Edit.

There you can assign to which parish the specified resource belongs

Adding staff from other congregations

After creating the parishes, add the staff of the other congregations under ChurchDesk Settings > Users. Enter their name and email address; they automatically receive an invitation email to set their password. Then assign each user a role and limit it to the relevant parish or parishes, so each congregation keeps control over its own calendars, contacts and forms.

Keywords: multi-community, church locations, organisation, administration, locations, communities, assignment, invite staff, invitation email, roles, access control

Updated on: 16/10/2026

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