Every funeral home software feature, explained plainly
From the 2 am first call to the final invoice, FuneralBuddy covers the complete workflow of an Australian funeral home — and every plan includes 100% of these features. No tiers, no add-ons, no surprises.
Ready to try it? Start your 14-day free trial — no credit card required — or see pricing first.
Built by funeral professionals, for funeral professionals
Most funeral director software in Australia is either a generic CRM with a new coat of paint or a legacy system that hasn't changed since the fax machine. FuneralBuddy is different: it's purpose-built case management designed around how Australian and New Zealand funeral homes actually work — the regulations you answer to, the documents you generate, and the families you serve. Below is the full feature set. If you'd rather see it live, book a free 30-minute walkthrough, read what directors say on our reviews page, or start with our guide to choosing funeral home software.
Case Management & Dashboard
Your entire caseload at a glance. The Kanban-style case whiteboard tracks every case through its full lifecycle — from first call through arrangement, preparation, service, and aftercare — so nothing slips through the cracks during a busy week. Colour-coded phases make it obvious which cases need attention right now, and which are quietly on track.
Team members see only what they need. Assign staff to cases, log every action in a running activity timeline with staff attribution, and search across your complete case history in seconds. Whether you're confirming a detail for a family on the phone or reviewing last month's services, the answer is two clicks away — not buried in a filing cabinet or someone else's spreadsheet.
- Kanban whiteboard with drag-and-drop progression through every case phase.
- Team assignment and role-based visibility for every staff member.
- Full activity timeline recording who did what, and when.
- Instant search across all current and historical case records.
First Call Wizard
When a family rings at 2 am, the last thing your on-call staff need is a clunky multi-page form. The First Call Wizard captures the deceased's details, next of kin, and initial instructions on a single mobile-friendly screen — only the fields that matter in those first critical minutes. Most calls are captured in under two minutes, and the case file is created instantly.
Jurisdiction is detected automatically from the place of death, so the correct government forms and procedures are queued from the very start. The moment the call is saved, a transfer authority and a printable first-call checklist are generated with every detail pre-filled — your transfer team leaves the depot with the paperwork already done.
- Single-screen form, mobile-optimised for after-hours calls.
- Automatic jurisdiction detection from the place of death.
- Instant transfer authority and printable checklist generation.
- Works on any device — no app to install for on-call staff.
Arrangement Wizard & Quoting
Walk families through arrangements with confidence. The tablet-first guided interview presents choices in a logical sequence — service type, venue, coffin or casket, flowers, urns, and additional services — with a visual product catalogue showing real photographs, not cryptic item codes. Pre-loaded supplier catalogues for coffins, urns, and flowers mean your products are ready on day one, with your own pricing overrides preserved.
Pricing updates in real time as selections are made, so families always see a running total. The itemised quote is built to satisfy QLD Fair Trading disclosure requirements and the WA Funeral Pricing Code — no surprises for families, and no awkward letters from regulators. Read more in our post on funeral pricing compliance in Australia.
- Tablet-first guided interview with a logical step-by-step flow.
- Visual catalogue with photos of coffins, flowers, and urns.
- Real-time itemised quotes with a transparent running total.
- Pricing-code compliant — QLD Fair Trading and WA Funeral Pricing Code.
- Package builder for your common service bundles.
Family Portal
Give families a private, warm space to take part from home. The portal carries your funeral home's branding and lets families review arrangements at their own pace, contribute biographical details, upload photos, and work together on the obituary — without scheduling extra meetings or playing phone tag across three siblings in three cities.
E-signatures collect quote approvals digitally, with every approval recorded against the case. Service preferences with live pricing give families transparency and control. After the service, the portal transitions into a permanent memorial and tribute page with a digital guestbook, where friends and extended family can share memories. No accounts to create, no apps to install — just a secure private link. We've written more about why families love the portal on the blog.
- Photo uploads and a collaborative obituary editor for the whole family.
- E-signature approvals for quotes and arrangements, fully recorded.
- Live pricing transparency on every service preference.
- Permanent memorial pages with a digital guestbook after the service.
Regulatory Compliance & BDM Lodgement
Australian funeral directors juggle death registrations across multiple jurisdictions, each with different forms, deadlines, and submission methods. FuneralBuddy handles the lot, with built-in BDM compliance workflows for Queensland, New South Wales, and Western Australia, plus support for funeral homes across the rest of Australia and New Zealand. Electronic BDM lodgement means registration data flows straight from the case file — no re-keying, no transcription errors, no hours lost to paper forms.
Cremation permit applications and coroner cases each get their own tracked workflow, and the compliance dashboard gives you a colour-coded view of every outstanding obligation: red means overdue, amber means due soon, green means sorted. When regulations change, FuneralBuddy updates — so you stay compliant without lifting a finger.
- Electronic BDM lodgement with workflows for QLD, NSW, and WA.
- Cremation permit workflow from application to authority.
- Coroner case tracking with clear status at every step.
- Compliance dashboard with colour-coded urgency indicators.
- Jurisdiction-specific forms pre-populated from case data.
Task Automation, Scheduling & Documents
Every arrangement generates dozens of tasks: book the chapel, order flowers, confirm the celebrant, prepare documents. FuneralBuddy auto-generates the task list from the selections made during the arrangement, schedules everything backwards from the service date, and assigns each task to the right team member based on their role. Dependency tracking keeps tasks in the correct order, and overdue notifications plus a daily digest keep the whole team on the same page.
Document generation is built in. The order of service, newspaper notices, transfer authorities, and government forms are all generated from case data into your own branded templates — customise logos, fonts, and layout per funeral home, then print or email directly from the case view. No re-keying, ever.
- Auto-generated task lists from arrangement selections.
- Backward scheduling from the service date, with role-based assignment.
- Branded document templates — order of service, notices, and forms.
- Overdue alerts and daily digests so nothing slips.
Invoicing, Payments & Xero/MYOB Integration
Convert any approved quote to an itemised invoice with a single click. Stripe integration lets families pay online by card, payment plan support breaks larger invoices into manageable instalments, and insurance assignment tracking keeps funeral bonds and pre-paid funeral claims organised — all without leaving the case file or running a second billing system on the side.
Bi-directional sync with Xero and MYOB means your accountant always has the latest figures without manual data entry. Payments received in either system flow back automatically, so the case record and the ledger never disagree. At the end of the month, reconciliation takes minutes instead of an afternoon.
- One-click quote-to-invoice conversion from the approved arrangement.
- Stripe online payments and flexible instalment plans.
- Insurance assignment and funeral bond tracking.
- Bi-directional Xero and MYOB sync — no double entry.
AI-Powered Tools
Writing an obituary under time pressure is one of the hardest parts of the job. FuneralBuddy's AI obituary writer takes the biographical details already in the system and drafts a warm, respectful starting point that families can refine in the portal — hours saved, personal touch kept. The tone is tuned specifically for funeral communications, never generic.
Beyond obituaries, the AI layer extracts data from uploaded documents like medical certificates and coroner reports, validates form fields before government submission, and powers natural-language search — so staff can simply ask "show me all cremations in March" instead of building filter queries. It's practical intelligence applied to real funeral home work, not a chatbot bolted on for show.
- AI obituary writer drafted from case biographical data.
- Smart data extraction from medical certificates and reports.
- Form validation before BDM and government submission.
- Natural-language search across all case records.
Reporting & Analytics
Understand your business with data, not guesswork. Dashboards show average case value trends, service mix breakdown — burial versus cremation versus direct cremation — and staff workload distribution, so you can plan resourcing ahead of busy periods instead of scrambling through them. Owners of multi-branch homes see each location side by side.
Compliance completion rates highlight which processes are consistently running late, and vendor performance reports track which suppliers deliver on time and which need a conversation. Every report exports to CSV for further analysis, so your accountant or business advisor can work with the raw numbers. It's the visibility most funeral homes have never had — and once you have it, you won't run the business without it.
- Case value and revenue trends in clear dashboards.
- Service mix breakdown by type, branch, and period.
- Staff workload and capacity planning views.
- CSV export on every report for deeper analysis.
Every feature, in every plan
Unlike most funeral home software, FuneralBuddy never locks features behind a higher tier. Whether you're on Starter, Professional, or Enterprise, you get 100% of everything on this page — the plans differ only by users, branches, and per-case rate. See exactly what you'd pay on our pricing page, browse common questions in the FAQ, or hear from directors already using it on the reviews page.
See these features with your own cases
Start your 14-day free trial right now — no credit card needed — or book a free 30-minute walkthrough and we'll show you the complete workflow first.