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Jul 27, 2017

Creating and Resolving Conflicts

There are times when you'd like to request a room or resource even though it is already booked for an event. Let’s say your men’s breakfast always has the Fellowship Hall every Friday morning, but the pastor’s daughter would like to use that room for her wedding on an upcoming Friday. Now we have a conflict. We all know who is going to win the conflict in this scenario, and Resources is here to help manage that! The Room or Resource, in this case the Fellowship Hall, will still indicate th

Scott Myers

Product Manager

1 min read

Jul 06, 2017

Workflows V2: Faster & Real-time

When you logged into your People account today, you may have noticed a major change in Workflows: SPEED! In the former version of Workflows, you and another team member could be working on the same project simultaneously and be completely unaware of the changes and progress being made by the other person until you refreshed the page. In the new version of Workflows, all updates occur in real time, so as you work on your cards—updating, completing, and reassigning tasks—the changes will ref

Jeff Berg

1 min read

Jun 19, 2017

Send Text Messages with Clearstream

We've wanted to build a text messaging solution directly into Planning Center People for a long time now, but we've been kind of busy with some other things, and our list of ideas keeps getting longer. That's why we were so excited to find out that Clearstream, an online text messaging provider, has built their own integration with Planning Center! Clearstream is a great tool for sending text messages. You can use it to send out a reminder about an event, inform everyone in your church of imp

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Jun 07, 2017

Giving Comes to Canada

O Canada! We are so excited today to bring Planning Center Giving to our northerly neighbors. As of today, Canadian churches are welcome to sign up. Let's take a look at some of the larger aspects of the service that we've reshaped for our Canadian customers. Donor Statements We've been in tight communication with our Canadian beta testers, learning exactly what churches expect to see in an annual donor statement. All the mandatory fields and compulsory information required by the

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

Jun 06, 2017

Introducing: Registrations and Check-Ins Integration

We are excited to introduce our most highly requested integration -- with Planning Center Registrations and Check-Ins. Assignments All filters you create in your Registrations Assignments will automatically be carried over to Locations inside of Check-Ins. This is great for things like camps or Vacation Bible School where you want to assign certain people to groups or cabins, and have Check-Ins automatically direct them to the right location when they arrive. In Check-Ins, you

Scott Myers

Product Manager

3 min read

Jun 05, 2017

Archiving Groups

Today, we're excited about the release of an important new feature in Planning Center Groups: the ability to archive groups when they're disbanded or no longer in session. We've noticed Groups is often being used for classes and seasonal groups which rotate membership on a regular basis. When the class or the quarter has ended, this new feature will let you close down the group while leaving membership records, event history, and attendance data intact. How Archiving Works On the grou

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

May 31, 2017

Better Background Checks

Our integration with Checkr to provide background checks launched just a couple months ago, and it's been a huge hit! (Check out the announcement if you don't know what I'm talking about). With a lot of feedback and a little time, background checks are even better today. Here's some of the most important improvements we've made. More Access At first, only organization administrators could access background checks in Planning Center People. That meant that in order for a volunteer in your

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

May 25, 2017

Smarter, Faster Lists

We've got a couple quick updates to lists to make your life easier! New: Nothing! One of the most common uses for lists is to find people who don't have any recent activity so that you can follow up with them or mark their profile as inactive. This update will make that a little bit easier! Here's how: Before, you'd create a list that looks something like this: Make sure your rule is set to find people who match all those conditions, not any of those conditions. But since all th

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

May 02, 2017

Grade & Age Range Assignment Filters

Hello! My name is Benson, I'm the new product manager for Registrations. You've long been able to create assignment filters connected to a specific grade — we have heard your suggestions, and we are happy to announce that you can now assign registrants by grade or age range. This works by manually assigning registrants to the assignments or by clicking on the auto-assign button to let Registrations handle it automatically for you. The auto-assign button respects the various filters you've

Benson Lee

Product Manager

1 min read

May 01, 2017

Recurring Donation Forecasts

Today we've added some new forecasting tools in Planning Center Giving! Now, it's easy to see how much money you'll receive this month if everyone who has set up a recurring donation actually follows through. Even though it's simple math, getting these numbers by hand can be tricky. Some months have five Sundays. Some donors have recurring donations on hold until a specific date. These new forecast numbers take all of that into account so you don't have to. The View Funds buttons will,

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

1 min read

Apr 27, 2017

New Household Scheduling Preferences

Until now, you could go to your profile and indicate you want to be scheduled with a family member, or that you prefer to not be scheduled with them. However, this was only ever considered from within the exact same service. If you were both being scheduled within the Traditional Service, you were good to go. But if you were scheduled to Traditional Service, and your spouse served in the Nursery, it wouldn't actually show any conflicts. Now it can! The old options that included simply "wh

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

2 min read

Mar 29, 2017

Introducing Trusted People

Sometimes there are situations where you’d like your neighbor, or grandmother, or a close friend to pick up your children from church. However, as a church, you need to clearly record who can check children in, and be notified of who should not check them out. That’s why we’ve created the concept of Trusted People and people who are Not Authorized for Pickup. Let me show you what that looks like. More Household Flexibility Trusted People are the type of close friends and family to your ho

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Mar 16, 2017

Secure Your Church with Background Checks

🚨Since we published this blog six years ago, Checkr has updated their pricing. For more information on what you and your church can do with this tool, see this article. Here at Planning Center, we do what we do because we love our churches. We want to see them saving time, saving money, and being more secure. Today’s new feature wins in all those categories. We're thrilled to release background checks, both manually tracked statuses and fully integrated checks with our new friends, Checkr!

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

4 min read

Mar 07, 2017

Pinned Assignments in Workflows

A couple of new tools in workflows are going to make your life easier, the sun shine brighter, and prevent hair loss. More importantly, they'll help your ministry be more effective. Workflows are a handy tool that churches are using to keep on top of all they do. They’re used to track and delegate tasks like following up with visitors, training new volunteers, and ensuring that people who need pastoral care are getting it. When you add someone to a workflow, a card is created to track the

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Feb 28, 2017

Email Formatting in Groups

Today we released a rich-text editor in Planning Center Groups! It's available to administrators (on the admin side of Groups) and for group leaders (when they log in to their Group's page). Here's what it looks like: Recipients will get a nicely formatted email that looks like this: Enjoy! ~ Team Groups

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

1 min read

Feb 13, 2017

Households, Activity Feeds, and Workflows come to People Mobile

Our team finished version 1.5 before I could even write the blog post for 1.4. So here's a double dose of updates for you! Edit Your Households First up — now you can manage the members of a household right from your phone! When a new family is at your church, you can use the app to capture everything you’ll need to know about them. And just like in the desktop site, our app supports assigning someone to multiple households so that your data stays accurate, and when used with Check-Ins, your

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Feb 12, 2017

Apple Pay for Giving

Planning Center Giving customers can now join the ranks of UNICEF, the American Red Cross, charity: water and many other nonprofits in supporting Apple Pay for donations. Apple Pay on iPhone or iPad All your donors will need to do is tap the familiar Apple Pay button, scan their thumb on their phone, and that's it. A record of the donation will appear in their Wallet app, just as it would if they had used Apple Pay at a retail location. Giving will issue them a receipt via email and t

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

2 min read

Feb 08, 2017

Detailed Stripe Transfers in Giving

Today, we're launching detailed Stripe Transfer reports within Planning Center Giving. Stripe is the payment processor that powers Giving and Registrations. After funds are collected, Stripe transfers these funds to your church bank account. These new Stripe Transfer Reports in Giving will help your bookkeepers understand what's in each transfer so the deposits are easier to balance with your general ledger. Here is the new screen: All your Stripe Transfers are listed on the left with

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

Feb 01, 2017

Printable Views in Giving

We've made two changes to Planning Center Giving that will make your life a little easier when bringing Giving data from the screen to the printer. "Print View" There's a new option in the "Export" menu: "Print View." Selecting this option will open a print-friendly view in a new browser tab. You'll find this on the Dashboard, Donations view, and anywhere you see a listing of donations such as the Batch page and Donor page. Generally Printable Pages Now, when you select Fil

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

2 min read

Jan 12, 2017

One-click Calendar Subscriptions

Today we have a small update to the calendar subscription options for Planning Center Groups. When clicking "Subscribe to calendar" button on group pages, you'll see new options for Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, and Outlook.com. If you're on a Windows computer, the first option will be Microsoft Outlook (the desktop application). On an Mac, that option will change to to Apple Calendar. In the example below, I'll show how to subscribe to my group's calendar in Google Calendar and the

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

1 min read