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Jun 28, 2016

Expanding Check-Ins with our API

Last year at Orange, a children’s ministry conference, we met Brian Jones, a youth pastor that dabbles a bit in development. He shared with us how he uses our Check-Ins API to help with his ministry. We loved his ideas and implementation so much that we wanted to share two of them with you! (If you’re not a tech person, an API is an “Application Program Interface,” a tool to make one piece of software “talk to” another piece of software, especially when they’re built by different software develo

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Jun 28, 2016

Custom Views for Your Lists

Lists are our powerful tool for finding groups of people, using real-time data and activity across the entire suite of Planning Center applications. Today we're making it easier to not only get a list of people but to also get the information you need about those people all in one place. Let me show you how it works! The first thing you'll notice is that we've updated the design to include profile pictures right in the list. Next, we've changed the default columns that you first see. Wait, de

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Jun 07, 2016

Introducing the Roster Station

We’re excited to announce a new type of station, a Roster Station. A Roster Station assembles a list of anyone who has checked in to this location within the last three sessions. The initial idea is to replace the clipboard you might have used when taking roll. But with Check-Ins, it can do a lot more. If labels are attached, they will print immediately. If there’s an issue that needs to be resolved, you’ll see an error message so you can fix the problem before finishing the check-in. You can

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Jun 01, 2016

Lists Updates—Search, Stars, and Relative Dates

In PCO People, Lists are the way-too-easy tool to find groups of people based on real-time data from all of our applications. Using Lists, you can find all the donors who checked in a kid last year, all the people who have volunteered to serve but haven't completed their training, or just about any other group you can imagine by combining data from Check-Ins, Giving, People, Registrations, Services, and soon, Groups. Now we've added a few new features to supercharge Lists even more. Relat

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Jun 01, 2016

Get a Groups Sneak Peek

Talk to customers. Sketch. Design. Code. Test. Repeat. This has been our life the past 6 months as we've been building Planning Center Groups. We wanted to pause for a quick sneak peek as we're about a month away from launching Groups. If you know anything about Planning Center Online, you know that the first version of an application is hardly the last. Actually, we don't even really have versions for most of our software. It's just constant, relentless improvement and a continuous dialog wi

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

4 min read

May 24, 2016

Announcing Text-to-Give

UPDATE: When we originally launched Text-to-Give, it was an add on to your subscription. It's now included with every subscription! It's here! Text-to-Give has landed in Planning Center Giving. All your donors need is a smart phone, a payment method, and couple minutes to get set up. Sign up is lightning fast whether they're a brand new donor or a longtime giver. Standard Message & Data Rates May Apply. Easy to set up Text AMOUNT to 84321 to give. (Standard message & data rates

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

May 18, 2016

Check-Ins now supports Zebra printers!

The Check-Ins team is proud to announce a new member to our family: a Zebra! No, it’s not a new cross-species developer that requires a lot of hay; it’s support for a new printer… which instead requires a lot of labels. Zebra printers are arguably one of the leading printers for their durability and their quick printing speeds. Although they may be pricier than our other supported printers, if you’re needing to print out mass quantities quickly, you’ll want this printer. At 5 - 6 inches of la

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Apr 20, 2016

Activity Feeds: The Story Behind the Data

Your church is your people, and everyone has a story. When you know that story, you’ll be better equipped to do what you do best: love and serve these people. Today we've released a brand new tool to show these stories so that you can do your ministry even better. It’s called "Activity Feeds." Regardless of which Planning Center applications you use, you’re already using a free, powerful database management system: PCO People. It sits at the center of our church management suite and stores al

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Apr 14, 2016

Import Avatars from Social Media

Supposedly a picture is worth a thousand words, but it's probably worth a lot less if it's a generic placeholder avatar. Wouldn't it be great if you had photos for everyone in your church? A picture for each profile in your PCO People account will help you connect a face to a name. But photos are much more powerful than that. They will help you remember that these profiles represent real people that you've gone into ministry to serve. Unfortunately, getting these photos can be tricky, and we

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Apr 14, 2016

Workflows Now on Mobile!

Workflows has revolutionized the way thousands of churches are staying connected with their members. After months of work, we're excited to announce that it’s made it to our free mobile app for both iOS and Android. With the mobile app, you can do anything in a workflow that you can do from the website. You can complete steps, leave notes, send emails, or snooze a card to come back to it later! Now you can stay on top of your cards anywhere you are. We're not done with the mobile app eithe

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

1 min read

Apr 12, 2016

Introducing Filters in PCO Registrations

When your event has more than a few attendees, viewing and communicating with just the right people can be overwhelming, or even impossible. Today that gets much easier! We've added a new tool so that you can filter your registrations and find just the people you're looking for. Filters are easy to use. Click on the Filters button and choose a filter from the menu. There are lots of options here: you can filter by attendee type, discounts used, add-ons applied, or any other criteria you m

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

1 min read

Mar 31, 2016

Easter 2016 Brings a Basket of New Features

Last weekend was Easter, and it was a tremendous success! With over 280,000 check-ins during the week, it was a joy to see and hear about churches that had a safe and secure week, especially on one of the busiest weeks of the year. We have a rule at Planning Center that we won't add any new features a few weeks ahead of Easter, just to make sure that our churches' Holy Week events go super smoothly. What that means is that YOUR Easter basket is now filled with a lot of new features that have

Scott Myers

Product Manager

3 min read

Mar 03, 2016

Instant Bank Account Verification

We're super excited to announce this new feature for Planning Center Giving! Your donors can now set up ACH bank transfer donations by logging into their bank instead of using bank account and routing numbers. It works with 13 of the largest banks in the US. That means, statistically, the majority of your donors will be able to use this. Why is it the best thing ever? 1. It's faster than the current method of verifying bank account ownership: waiting for "micro-deposits". 2. It's eas

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

Mar 02, 2016

Skipping Steps and Going Backwards

Today we've got a couple more quick updates for Workflows to make them even more flexible and to help keep card history more accurate by allowing you to skip steps or send cards back to a previous step. There are lots of reasons you might want to skip a step in a workflow. You don't want to invite people to check out your children's ministries if they don't have any children, and you shouldn't send your welcome basket full of homemade cookies to a gluten-sensitive guest (send them this way in

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Feb 23, 2016

Headcount Reports and Dymo-Mite Browser Support

Headcount Report After the release of Headcounts, we took some time to figure out exactly what type of reports were needed. Check out our newest report option! This update includes quite a few background changes that lay the groundwork for the future of reports. Now that you can choose a “type” of report, we hope to expand on that idea a bit more. Stay tuned for some new types of reports! Check-Ins now supports all browsers! If you were with us back in September 2015, you might

Scott Myers

Product Manager

1 min read

Feb 22, 2016

Announcing Assignments

We've got a brand new feature in PCO Registrations to tame one of the most chaotic parts of event management. In your event, you probably need to keep track of who is assigned to your cabins, vans, tables, or groups, which can be really hard to get right! Now it's been made easy with our new assignments feature. Let's take a look at how assignments work. First, we're going to create our assignment type. We'll assign our campers to their cabins for this example. Next, we'll add our

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Feb 08, 2016

List Automation

Over the last few weeks we’ve been burning the midnight oil to crank out a few important updates and features. We’ve had five major People features released and a couple more approaching on the horizon. But enough about the future, let’s take a look at what’s ready to go right now: Introducing auto-refreshing lists and automatic actions. Auto-refreshing lists We know you’ve been clicking that refresh button all the time, so you’ll feel refreshed with this fresh new update… Auto-refresh! I

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Jan 29, 2016

Bulk Updates and Custom Membership Types

Workflows aren't the only thing we've been working on lately! We've got two more helpful features to show off today. Bulk Update Anybody Last September we made it really easy to update all the members of a list at one time. Now you can harness that same power to quickly update anybody, whether or not they are on a list. Just open up the Bulk Action tool from the People tab, select people by searching for them by name, then choose an action. You can use actions to set membership typ

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Jan 27, 2016

Workflows Bonanza!

Workflows have been one of the most popular features we've ever launched, and now they’re even better! This week we've added three huge updates to make workflows more powerful. Save Your Cards for Later A common pattern in workflows is to wait a certain amount of time before performing the next action on a card. For example, you might want to call a first time visitor the day after they come to church, then send them an email a week later. With snoozing you can tell that card to hide itse

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

3 min read

Jan 21, 2016

It's here! PCO People for Android!

The wait is over! And it was even shorter than I expected it to be! PCO People for Android is now available for free in the Google Play Store, with the exact same feature set as our recently announced iOS app. With PCO People for Android you'll be able to look up any information about the people in your church and give them a call or send them an email, right from your device. All the data stored in custom fields and lists is available, and there's even some nice looking graphs to get you more

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

3 min read