Your brotherhood does not need confraternity software: it needs to know where everything is
The register of brothers, the fees the bank collects, the Lent donations, the governing board and the chapter minutes are the same things any non-profit keeps, under another name. Cairos already has them. What really changes in a brotherhood is the tax treatment of donations, and that is explained here too.
This block is in beta, and we say so up front
The entity modules — members, fees, donations, governing body and minutes — are among the newest parts of the program and are still marked as beta inside the application. They work, and there are entities running their whole year on them, but some detail may move around. Your data is not at risk and you can export it whenever you like.
What you call one thing and Cairos calls another
The screen says «members» rather than «brothers», and «meeting» rather than «chapter». Underneath it is the same thing, which is why you do not need a different program.
| In the brotherhood | In Cairos | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Register of brothers | Members | Admissions and departures with their dates and a sequential number that is never reused when someone leaves, which is what sets seniority. |
| Brother's fee | Recurring fees | Receipts for the whole period in one go, a SEPA file for the bank, and returns imported with their reason. |
| Donations and alms | Donations | One-off and regular donors, each one's annual certificate and form 182, only with what has actually been collected. |
| Governing board | Governing body | Who holds each post and since when, so that the handover after an election does not start from scratch. |
| Chapter meetings | Minute book | Notice of meeting, attendees, quorum, resolutions and how they were voted, and the certificate of a resolution when the bank asks for it. |
| Floats, regalia and silverwork | Fixed assets | Each item with its date and its value. From the Jade plan. |
| Charitable work and worship | Activities | What each activity costs, where the money comes from and how many people it serves. |
When you sign up and choose «Brotherhood or confraternity» as your activity, Cairos switches on the entity block by itself: members, donations, grants, activities, governing body, expenses and cash flow. Almost everything comes with the Ámbar plan; fixed assets, with Jade.
Three things a notebook cannot do
None of them is spectacular. All three are what people miss the year the board changes.
Bank returns, without going through them one receipt at a time
You upload the returns file and each receipt is marked as returned with its reason in Spanish. Who owes the fee is known in a minute, not after an afternoon with the bank statement.
The brother's card with a QR code
You scan it with a phone and it tells you whether that brother is up to date. It is suspended for non-payment without reprinting anything, and becomes valid again when they pay.
The minutes in the same place as the accounts
The chapter resolution that approved a restoration, next to the expense that paid for it. Ten years from now someone will ask why it was done, and the answer will be there.
When a donation to a brotherhood really is tax-deductible
It is the hardest question to answer properly, and the one that comes out worst when answered by guesswork. The answer depends on how the brotherhood is constituted, and it is not the same as for a residents' association.
If the brotherhood is a Church entity
Article V of the Agreement between the Spanish State and the Holy See on Economic Affairs, of 3 January 1979, recognises the right of religious associations and entities engaged in religious, charitable-educational, medical or hospital, or social welfare activities to the tax benefits that the legal system provides for non-profit entities.
Ley 49/2002 picks this up in its ninth additional provision, which does two different things. Its paragraph 3 treats the entities in articles IV and V of that Agreement as beneficiaries of patronage (tax relief on donations) for the purposes of articles 16 to 25 of the law, which are the ones on deductions for donations. And its paragraph 2 applies the law's tax regime to them provided they meet the requirements demanded of any non-profit entity.
For that special tax regime, the Corporation Tax one, the sole additional provision of Real Decreto 1270/2003 refers to opting in through the census declaration, just as for other entities. They are two things worth not confusing: being a beneficiary of patronage and having opted into the special regime.
What a web page cannot tell you is whether your brotherhood is one of the entities in article V: that depends on its registration in the Registry of Religious Entities and on the activities it carries out. Ask the diocese for the registration certificate and confirm it with whoever handles your tax affairs before issuing the first certificate.
If the brotherhood is set up as a civil association
Then it is governed by Ley Orgánica 1/2002, like any association, and comes under Ley 49/2002 through its article 2: it has to be declared to be of public benefit and to have opted into the special regime. Without both, a donation to the brotherhood gives no right to a deduction, however much the money goes to charitable work.
What Cairos does with this, and what it does not yet tell apart
The donation certificate comes out with the deduction each donor is entitled to only when «We are on the special tax regime» is ticked in the entity's settings; without that box, what gets printed is a receipt, with no deduction. And it certifies only what has been collected: a direct debit the bank returned never reaches the donor's paperwork.
What Cairos does not separate today is exactly what the ninth additional provision does separate: that same box also decides the Corporation Tax treatment. If your brotherhood is a beneficiary of patronage but has not opted into the special regime, tell whoever handles your form 200 before accepting what the software calculates.
What Cairos does not do, said here and not in the small print
It does not file anything for you: not form 182, not Corporation Tax, not the accounts to the diocese. It does not decide whether your brotherhood is an article V entity or whether a donation is deductible: its registration says that, and whoever handles your tax affairs confirms it. It does not manage procession place tickets or the order of the confraternity in the street. And the screen says «members», not «brothers». If any of these is what you need, better to know today.
Try it with the register of brothers you already have
The members' register importer reads your spreadsheet, shows you what it is going to create and what it is going to change, and saves nothing until you confirm. And if one day it stops working for you, your data leaves with you.
Questions from brotherhoods
The brotherhood's accounts, in a place that does not change with the board
Whoever joins the next governing board has to find the brothers, the fees and the minutes where the previous one left them.
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