Spreadsheet, Paper Book or Software for Mass Intentions

What Does Canon Law Ask of the Book? §

We make Mass intention software, so weigh what follows accordingly.

For every intention it accepts, a parish records four things: the number of Masses, the intention, the offering given and the Mass once said. The Ordinary examines the book every year, himself or through others (canon 958). The canon’s word is librum, a book. When the Holy See restated the rule in 2025, it spoke of “the register kept for the purpose” (decree of 13 April 2025, Art. 4 §1, our translation). Neither says paper or screen.

Dioceses that have written on it differ. Scranton says, “The parish must maintain a permanent mass book bound with consecutively numbered pages.”¹ Rockford allows a computer, but anyone who stops using a paper book “is REQUIRED to have an adequate computer data backup procedure in operation.”² Omaha’s finance office recommends a spreadsheet. Ask your chancery before you change anything.

When Is a Paper Book Enough? §

One priest, one secretary, a steady week, and requests taken at the desk and by phone: that office is well served by a good book (what a good line holds).

A book lives in one place and needs nothing to start. A mistake is struck through with one line and stays legible, so nothing in it changes without a mark, which is what a reviewer wants to see. It needs no password, no update and no subscription.

It strains in four places. Two people taking requests at once can promise the same Mass. Totals are added by hand at the month’s end, when each priest’s offerings are counted against one a day (canon 951). Finding an intention means remembering roughly when it came in. And there is one copy, which is why Rockford tells parishes to keep the book in a fire-resistant cabinet or safe.²

What Does a Spreadsheet Do Better? §

Totals, first. Omaha’s finance office recommends “keeping track of Mass intentions in an Excel file so that if there is a discrepancy, Mass stipends can be totaled by the software and the error found quickly and easily.”³ A spreadsheet also sorts by the date received, so whatever is nearing its year shows at the top (canon 953), and it finds a name in a second.

Its weakness is the book’s strength turned around. A row deleted or typed over leaves no trace, and unless the file keeps a version history, nothing shows who changed it. Two copies on two computers drift apart, and a lost laptop is a lost book unless it was backed up. Rockford asks for safe copies and suggests keeping them in more than one place.²

If you keep one, keep it like a book:

• Never delete a row. Mark a canceled intention canceled.
• Number every entry, and never reuse a number.
• Keep one file, and let one person edit it.
• Back it up in two places.
• Print the year for the annual review, and file the printout with the parish records (closing the year).

When Is Software Worth It? §

Software is worth it when the office outgrows one pen. A good tool lets parishioners ask online at any hour and puts the request in the same register as the phone call. Several people can take requests without promising one Mass twice. The rule that a priest keeps one offering a day, Christmas Day excepted, can be worked out for you instead of counted by hand. Masses sent to another priest can be written down both ways, received and handed on, as the law asks (canon 955).

It has costs of its own. There’s a subscription, or with some companies a fee on each online offering; as of October 2026 the tools that publish a price run from no subscription to $99 a month (the tools, named). Someone has to learn it. And the book now lives with a company, so ask before you start whether you can take the whole register out as a file, and what happens to it if the parish stops paying.

Paper, Spreadsheet and Software Side by Side §

How Do You Move From One to Another? §

Ask the chancery first. Then pick a clean start, the first of a month, and carry over every intention not yet said with the date it was received, so its year still counts from the right day. If you write in both for a few weeks while you settle in, treat the new one as the record from that date (moving the book, step by step; the office’s routine).

Keep the old book. Scranton has its parishes keep both their yearly and permanent Mass books on file permanently,¹ and time never cancels a Mass that was promised and not yet said (canon 199).