Planning Center Software

We used Planning Center for volunteer scheduling and orders of service for years. When they expanded into event registration and giving, we were very excited. In the 2 years we've been using both modules, they have continued to improve and add services to each. They are very open to product suggestions and very quick to respond to support requests.

Pros

Modules for volunteer scheduling, event registration, groups coordination, resources management, giving, and more that work together seamlessly. Responsive support, continually adding new features and refining modules. Very intuitive for users.

Cons

We are currently not able to set up a kiosk for people to register themselves for events without logging in through their email. A POS setting would be amazing.

Pros

Planning Center is a dynamic and user -friendly tool that has been useful for planning my church's Sunday morning meetings

Cons

The only challenge I've had with Planning Center that I can think of is in finding Security preferences when they need to be updated.

Planning Center is very intuitive and easy to use, even for beginners. I would recommend it for any ministry that schedules teams of people.

Pros

Planning Center allows us to schedule a very large group of different ministry teams, assign tasks, and see at a glance who has "accepted" an assignment and who declines the assignment. This software allows us to plan our services and keep our entire ministry team in touch. It gives our team members a view of the entire ministry and opportunities available.

Cons

It could have better database capabilities. It is not as robust as other databases, but then again, it's not meant to be a database program.

Pros

Ability to collect a messy matrix of data (people, places, dates, roles, resources) into one central management location

Cons

Interface can be clunky. Ease of use could greatly be enhanced through more intuitive implementation

Pros

We use it for checking in children church and volunteers sign up, it is also good because the admin can create signups remotely and when you go to the kiosk everything is there

Cons

sometimes the signing up and adding children can be counterproductive...Sometimes new parents get confused when signing up their kids...

Pros

The ability to see when & who will be available to cover the shift in need. Team members can block off dates they are unavailable for serving.

Cons

No complaints at the present. I have recently joined our Dream Team and only 2 months ago was added to the group.

Pros

Planning Center is great for not just planning church services but any event you have in your ministry. We used it for camp, funerals, weddings, services, special events etc.

I volunteer with the AV team for our church to run lights or Pro-Presenter and this is what we live and die by from a scheduling standpoint. I've always appreciated the order and clarity it creates when used well.

Pros

It is a very clean website that has great functionality for us to coordinate our church services. I am able to use tools like the schedule blackout, or list what skills I am able to volunteer with. The mobile app experience is really just as good as the full site version, which is great for me!

Being a new user, I appreciate the notifications for events I am being requested for and that you have the ability to respond and notify the leaders of the request what your status is. If accepting you get all the details of the event or meeting once you accept.

Pros

Pros are you can have scheduled events and or assignments that carry to your team. They can review all the aspects of a meeting, who are involved and the flow of the meeting. Also, you can block dates that show you are not available for that particular meeting or event.

Planning Center is hard to review because it's not one product, it's actually six different products. That's both a strength and a weakness. Most people using Planning Center are used to its core functionality: Planning Center Services. This is the tool used for actually planning a worship service (complete with tech sheet, ProPresenter integration, etc) and scheduling people to be there. It also has a Check-In component, a Groups component, a Resources (room scheduling) component, and a Giving component. Supposedly, if you add them all together you get a viable whole-church database solution. It's hard to see that being the case, since a lot of the functionality you'd want to see for a whole-church database (especially around reporting, metrics, dashboards, etc) are missing. But the parts that are there mostly work well.

It's impossible to overstate how far ahead Planning Center Services is from everything else in the field. Everyone I'm in contact uses Services for service planning. Their other modules, though, are all missing important features. Work is clearly being done to improve those components, but mostly it seems more like rearranging existing features than adding the ability to solve new problems.

We'll keep using Planning Center Services, but have transitioned away from Planning Center Groups and anticipate moving away from Planning Center Resources. Luckily our new system integrates well with PCO, so we'll be able to keep our contact databases in sync. This is an underappreciated feature for PCO: a full API to develop and integrate against!

Pros

Great ease of use. Excellent for planning services and scheduling volunteers. Makes it easy for volunteers to respond to schedules without having to remember account details. Solid people management.

Cons

Everything outside of the core (service planning & scheduling) functionality seems half-baked. Very difficult to pull reports, group scheduling & attendance don't work well.

Great set of tools at a reasonable price; and good customization based off customer needs.

Pros

Several products and options to choose from. 'Resources' is a great tool for multiple room management and event setups. It's great that you can choose 1 product or all of them depending on your needs. I know our church uses every product and most certainly get their moneys worth. 'Services' is a good tool for all sizes of groups because of the ability to choose team sizes from 25 people to Unlimited.

Cons

It seems that whenever you get use to the mobile apps the company decides to update them and totally change everything you learned. Certain aspects of planning center 'services' on the end user side don't always make sense the way they are laid out.

Pros

Ease of Use
Helpful videos and tips that provide step by step instructions for each and every option we want to utilize.

Have been a customer for years and despite some issues, will continue to use it!

Pros

There are many great aspects of Planning Center. We don't use every piece, but the Check-Ins are HUGE. This is THE way to allow kids to be checked in during our Sunday services. Having a barcode scanner makes the process much quicker and easier. The update allowed past registration issues to be fixed (users were listed twice - once as an "employee" and second as "customer"). The second biggest piece we use is the Services portal. Allowing every member of the worship/media team to see the flow of service is great! Everyone can be on the same page while allowing service to flow smoothly - almost without the congregation even knowing there's an order to things...

Cons

Have to jump through hoops to get any type of technical support. The answers aren't always online in the FAQ or Help pages. On top of that, not "anyone" can create a ticket, it must come from the contact person. That's normally fine, but what if they're on vacation, or just happen to be the person who pays the bill? On a Sunday morning when kids are going crazy and parents are looking at you like you did something wrong - it doesn't help.

Pros

Pricing is flexible and low if you only need to track names and contacts. You can add features as you grow. There are plenty of useful features for startup churches like us. The mobile apps are great too.

Cons

You need separate apps for the different features, so occasionally I found I had to go to my web browser on my laptop to have all the functionality I needed for a task (such as adding admins) successfully.

I would recommend Planning Center to any church.

Pros

Planning Center is very user friendly, and even more importantly they are very open to suggestions and even adapting the software to your needs.

Cons

Sometimes I wish I could talk to someone instead of just communicating through email or a chat line.

We have used Planning Center for over 5 years. The ease of use, integration with other programs like CCLI and price make it a great program for us. The automated communication features make scheduling easy and efficient and save us time doing it manually.

Pros

Scheduling, ease of use, price, integration

We have been using Planning Center for almost a year. Our congregation has grown a lot this year and this software has kept up with the new services and groups we have added. The different modules that you can add or remove help with the overall functionality. It lets me use features I want and lose the ones I don't need. The mobile apps are particularly exceptional for keeping track of peoples information and checking them in at service.

Pros

The bang for the buck. Many of their features are free depending on the size of your congregation and are reasonably priced as it grows.

Cons

They are lacking mobile apps for some of the modules

Advice to Others

It's a great product for streamlining your services and check-ins

We've used Planning Center for the past five or so years, and have been impressed with their commitment to keeping the product up to date. New improvements are consistently rolled out and the communication around each release has been excellent. Online help is valuable and readily available. Meets most of our planning needs across all our church environments.

I have been a Planning Center user for a few years now and I am so happy to share about this product/service. Managing volunteers is a difficult task for any leader, but Planning Center provides the tools necessary to manage teams of volunteers quickly and easily.

Pros

Communication with volunteers and staff is excellent. Scheduling requests can be sent in batches which saves so much time and it makes planning ahead so much easier.

Cons

The mobile app for iphone has been known to have a bug here and there, but this is such a minor issue to run into when it does happen.

Advice to Others

If you're a church admin looking for a software platform that will increase your productivity and lessen the labor burden of scheduling volunteers, this software will change your life!

Likes Best

Everything is in one place, need I say more? Okay, I will anyway. I can plan services, keep my volunteers organized, communicate with them and I have check-ins ALL IN ONE PLACE. Phenomenal.

Likes Least

The extras that cost so much "extra"... As a small church it's more cost effective for us to find other vendors for them.

Recommendations

Don't be intimidated, it is really easy to use. Since I use it for Children's Ministry that is what I can speak to- and for those purposes I find this tool to be incredibly helpful.