There’s something magical about October: The air is crisper, and it’s finally cool enough to bundle up in my favorite chunky sweater and sip on a pumpkin spice latte. 🍂

Since sweater weather is officially upon us, there’s no better time to cozy up and highlight the new Planning Center features and improvements that make managing your church easier than whipping up a homemade apple pie. 🥧

Connect AI tools directly to Planning Center 

Using AI tools to manage your admin work used to mean digging for data and spelling out context, with the fleeting hope that you’d found enough for a helpful answer. 

With the Planning Center MCP, your AI tools get secure and direct access to the data that matters, so you can spend less time digging and more time with your people. Now, a question like “How many volunteers did we need for VBS last year?” yields an instant answer, all while keeping your people’s privacy protected. 

Learn more

Swap WhatsApp for Church Center direct messaging

Communicating with groups and teams at your church often means managing multiple GroupMe, WhatsApp, or text threads chaotically. 

The new DM chat feature saves you from going back and forth between messaging apps and Church Center: Your people can now message any fellow group or team member directly from Church Center. And because safety always takes a front seat, every chat with a minor automatically includes two adults.

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Switch to Giving and import your past donation history

If you’ve been curious about using Giving as your donation platform but loathe the idea of maintaining two systems and splitting end-of-year statements for donors, the import donation tool might change your mind. 

Integrating the donation history from your old platform into Giving now only takes a few simple steps, so you're not juggling a second donation platform while running the rest of your church's operations in Planning Center. Giving also links all donation history to your current donors, making it one less thing to worry about as the year comes to a close. 

Learn how it works in Giving

View your weekly calendar on the go 

If you manage groups or volunteers, you’ve almost certainly shuffled through a jam-packed monthly calendar just to find one event’s details.

The new week view in Calendar provides a simple breakdown of all your events and meetings. Whether you want to quickly confirm there aren’t any scheduling conflicts or just want a simplified view of everything on the agenda, you can now see your week at a glance on mobile or desktop. 

See it in Calendar

Create a digital bulletin for church announcements

Meet announcements in Church Center: your digital bulletin board where your people can get a full view of events, volunteer opportunities, and announcements all in one place. 

Announcements provide a one-stop shop for your church’s most important updates, so your people can have a clear view of how and where to get involved. You can even add links to each announcement, making engaging with events and opportunities easier than ever before. 

See how it works

Set action automations for your People workflows

From adding a new small group member to welcoming first-time guests, workflows automate the follow-up process so nothing slips through the cracks. You can create workflow steps that perform actions automatically—such as sending a welcome email to new church members or creating a follow-up task for volunteer onboarding—further speeding up your follow-up processes. 

Whether you’re configuring your workflows to snooze overnight or skip actions for certain people, creating automatic action steps is a must-have tool in your admin toolkit.

See how it works in People

Improved iOS compatibility for Services

Services just got a facelift that’s not only aesthetic, but efficient. By adopting iOS 26’s Liquid Glass design, we’re making sure Services mobile works like a charm with new capabilities. Next time you quickly check which songs you’re playing on Sunday, enjoy Services’ improved design that runs smoother on iOS 26. 

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Send emails with attachments and in-line images

If you rely on email to connect with your people, you know how difficult it used to be to build emails the way you wanted. Emails became walls of text without images, and accessing relevant attachments like PDFs left members digging through resources just to sign a waiver. 

Now, you can share attachments and add in-line images to your emails so your people can access everything they need to get involved the moment they read your email. 

See it in People, Groups, Giving, Calendar, Services, and Registrations

View Registrations and Giving payout reports in one place 

Reviewing payment data used to mean jumping between three different dashboards just to compile payout reports. Now, the unified payout report provides a single view of your church’s payout data, all without having to leave Planning Center. You can find your payment data in Accounts under the Payments tab, shaving time off of the payout reconciliation process.

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More Church Center, Giving, and Planning Center updates to watch 

The improvements don’t stop there. Here’s a rapid-fire overview of a few more features that automate your ministry work even more seamlessly:   

Preparing for the holiday season is hectic enough without communication and admin work adding fuel to the fire. These updates take a little off your plate, so that you can focus on what really matters: eating mashed potatoes with the ones you love. 😉