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Aug 28, 2019

Summer Product Update 2019

Pumpkin spice lattes are back on coffee shop menus, which must mean fall is approaching and summer is coming to a close…despite the heat wave! As you and your church settle back into your regular weekly rhythms, we want to highlight some of the major updates we made in the summer months so you can incorporate them into your routine this season! Watch the video to learn how to use each new update and then click on the links below if you want to dive a little deeper. Lower Pro

Jeff Berg

3 min read

Aug 28, 2019

Multiple Times, Multiple Locations

Checking in isn’t always a simple matter of sign in, label print, and drop off. Sometimes a child stays through multiple services times and goes to different locations throughout the same morning; and sometimes, you might offer Nursery as an option during one service, but not during another. Then what? These are some of the common scenarios your church may encounter that make checking in complex, which is why we released an update to help you handle both smoothly. Choose two locations during

Scott Myers

Product Manager

3 min read

Jul 18, 2019

Sync Metronomes Across Your Team

Metronomes are an easy tool you can give your musicians to help them play in sync, which is why we built one into the fabric of Music Stand. But even if everyone on your team is using a metronome to keep themselves in time, what happens if each person’s time starts at a different time? Confusing? Yes. This is why we built in a new technology called Ableton Link, to give you the ability to sync your metronome with other team members’ devices from within Music Stand. After you enable

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

2 min read

Jun 18, 2019

Lower Processing Fees

When it comes to processing online payments, our commitment to you is twofold: we will only partner with providers that meet our high standards of reliability and extensibility; and we will strive to keep your fees as low as possible. Starting today, the credit and debit card processing rate for Giving and Registrations will be reduced to 2.15% + $0.30 for US* customers. Compared to the prior rate of 2.3% + $0.30, this new rate will save our customers at least $1.6 million collectively over th

Planning Center

2 min read

Jun 11, 2019

The New Songs Page

Having an organized song library that can be searched by almost any criteria can help you plan worship sets more effectively, and the main Songs page has been completely redone to take that to a new level. It is now easier to add new songs through the popular recordings search, find existing songs with new filtering features, and keep them organized with bulk editing. Add New Songs When it's time to add a new song, you can now search by Popular Recordings (powered by RehearsalMix), All Songs

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

3 min read

May 17, 2019

Combined Payout Reports

Like most churches, your bookkeeper likely manages your books on a “cash” basis. This means that when it comes to your general ledger, the accounting process begins when a deposit is made to the church’s bank account. If you use Planning Center Giving, the batch system makes it easy to count checks and cash and then track the exact date the batch was deposited in the bank. However, online donations can be a little harder to manage: they happen at any time, the settling time for transactions ca

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

May 15, 2019

Spring Product Update 2019

Get a quick walk through of all exciting feature updates by watching the video, and then dive a little deeper into best practices by checking out the announcement blog posts for each update! Speed Up Check-in Lines Encourage families to pre-check in to events through the Church Center app. Unlock Permissions in Forms Give people on your team access to Forms without giving them higher permissions in People. Simplify Form Collection for Events Attach

Jeff Berg

3 min read

May 09, 2019

Required Tag Groups

As more people in your church find their way into Resources and start creating new events, many may not realize the immense organizational capabilities of tags. Or even worse, they forget to add tags altogether, which prevents their event from showing up when using filters on the Calendar. Not using tags creates a problem for your facilities director or event administrator who then have to dig through untagged events to plan their work. Staying organized is a team effort and Resources is here t

Evan Lemmons

Product Manager

2 min read

May 07, 2019

Deposit Checks Remotely through Paperless Transactions

If your church processes a sizable number of paper checks every week, we have some good news for you! A company called Paperless Transactions released an integration with Planning Center Giving that helps you scan checks, remotely deposit them, and automatically import those donations into Giving. In banking this process is called “Remote Deposit Capture” and this is the first RDC solution that integrates directly with Giving. How it Works 1. Scan Checks: Paperless software (Windows only)

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

Apr 30, 2019

The New Plans Tab

Last October we announced that the Plans tab would be splitting into two pages. My Schedule was released a couple months ago as a page where all users manage their personal schedule. Today the Plans page itself was updated and improves the experience of finding any plan. This page isn't as different as many of our other new pages have been, but there's a lot of polish and few new things. Here's what's new! Plans Calendar The calendar on the left of the page is a completely different calendar

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

4 min read

Apr 04, 2019

Mobile Phone Login for Church Center

On the new Church Center app, your congregation can quickly log in with their phone number— and we’re excited to bring this easier login experience to Church Center in the browser! Until now, when a congregant wanted to log in to Church Center, we sent them an email with a login button. This system was less than ideal. Sometimes emails were slow to arrive, other times they arrived in the wrong place because they got caught in email client filters. Now, when a congregant points their browser to

Allie Rice

Product Manager

2 min read

Apr 02, 2019

Attach People Forms to Registrations Events

Summer events come with a lot of forms. Every summer camp and VBS registration comes with numerous release forms. Forms are necessary, unavoidable...and incredibly difficult to get people to fill out! Until now, you had to upload PDFs of these required forms to any event in Registrations for people to print, fill out, and then remember to bring in for an event manager to manually mark them as complete. So much room for confusion! The Forms feature in the People app is a much simpler way to co

Allie Rice

Product Manager

2 min read

Mar 29, 2019

Announcing Family Pre-Check

Sunday mornings can be stressful. We all know how hard it is to get the family out the door for church! But once families make it out their door and through yours, you can help reset the tone of their morning by welcoming them with a stress-free check-in environment. Now there is a new way for you to speed up your lines, even more than you already are with Check-Ins: the Church Center app. Anytime before an event, people can pre-select all the household members they want to check in. When

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Mar 13, 2019

New Admin Permissions in Forms

Forms are a great way to get information from the people in your church and are sometimes the first step to building a connection. Whether it be to check in on someone who requested prayer, or to invite someone to the next step of volunteer training, there is almost always follow up. One person shouldn’t have to bear the weight of all of these follow-up tasks on their own—ministry is a team effort. To help you delegate tasks and protect the privacy of your congregation’s information, we’ve add

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Mar 12, 2019

Direct Printing for Check-Ins

Printing plays a significant role in the overall speed of your check-in time—if one of your printers backs up or shuts down, you have a problem! Check-Ins strives to offer a consistently smooth printing process so your check-in time can be fast! We have found over the last few years, a few Check-Ins customers have experienced slow printing as a result of problems with external software outside our team’s control. When a browser, operating system, or printer’s software is updated, it can delay t

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Feb 28, 2019

Share Links as Resources

Part of leading a class or a study is making sure the group members have access to all the information they need to engage with the group. This is where the Resources tab in Groups comes in handy! Using the Resources tab, you can easily share a pdf of your weekly study questions or the class syllabus with members. On the other hand, sharing a link to outside resources, like articles or videos, has been a trickier task. But not anymore! Now, when you add a new resource, you can choose between u

Jessica Fleming

Product Manager

1 min read

Jan 24, 2019

Joint Donor Statements

Annual statement season is a good time to connect with and thank your donors. This year, you can honor people who give together by addressing and sending statements to both people using the new Joint Donor feature in Giving. Joining Donors On the administrative side of Giving, there are a few ways to connect two people who give jointly. By visiting the People tab within Giving, you can see a list of everyone who is and isn’t currently a joint donor and edit their status from the list. Alterna

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

2 min read

Jan 21, 2019

The New My Schedule Tab & Household Scheduling

We are excited to announce a new My Schedule page: the home of your pending plans, confirmed plans, signup sheets, and more. Until now the Plans page on the web included a My Schedule section for everyone, and an All Plans section for people with higher permissions. Now those sections are split into two separate pages. By moving My Schedule to its own page, there's room for some great new tools, including the ability to manage the schedules of your entire household, see a list of all your upcom

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

4 min read

Jan 09, 2019

See the New Signup Experience

With the release of our new Church Center app, we made it easier for your congregation to see and sign up for your events anytime and anywhere from their phone. Last week we brought the beauty and simplicity of the app to your congregation’s sign up experience on the web! Simplified Event List With our updated events listing, you can browse Registrations events more easily. See event images and essential information at a glance, or click through for full descriptions and details.

Allie Rice

Product Manager

1 min read

Dec 11, 2018

Announcing the Church Center App

The core purpose of all Planning Center apps is to serve the needs of church staff and volunteers with ministry tools. We are now expanding our attention to provide you with tools to support your congregation with our new mobile app Church Center, a dedicated space for people to connect with the life of your church. Instead of directing people to a specific URL or your website to find more information or get involved, you can tell them to download an app on their smartphone a

Benson Lee

Product Manager

3 min read