Planning Center Change Log

New: Workflow steps that automatically skip the right people

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 11:00:00 GMT

Say you're adding a group of people to your membership workflow, but several of them already filled out the appropriate form. Step one is "Send a next steps email with form" — but for those people, that email would be redundant at best, awkward at worst. Without anything in place, someone on your team would have to remember who needs to be manually moved past it.

Rather than making someone on your team responsible for knowing which steps apply to which people, you can now configure the step itself to know. Set it up once, and from then on — whether a staff member adds someone manually or a form submission kicks off the workflow — the right people move through automatically.

When editing a step, check "Skip this step in some conditions" and define your conditions using the same logic available in People Lists. When a card arrives at that step, conditions are evaluated first — if the person matches, the card moves on immediately without triggering any snooze or actions. No card sits waiting for a manual review it doesn't need, so people arrive at the step that actually matters for them faster.

Someone who already registered for VBS bypasses the "Email registration details" step automatically
Anyone who's already been baptized skips the baptism class invitation step
A person who submitted a form expressing clear interest skips the "Are you interested in learning more?" step

When a card arrives in a skippable step, it will briefly appear with an "Evaluating skip conditions" label. After a few seconds, the evaluation is complete and the person either remains in the current step, or skips to the next step, where new skip conditions might be evaluated. If your first 3 steps all have skip conditions, it's possible to have a card enter the workflow but "land" in step 4, with all of the skipping logged in the Card History so you never have to wonder how it happened.

While we were adding things to the Edit step modal, we refined the rest of its design, not only to make this feature fit in, but to prepare for some future enhancements we have in store. Settings are now presented in the order they are triggered. First skip conditions are evaluated. If the card is not skipped, auto-snoozing could put it on hold for a while. And finally, after any snoozes are done, the card is ready for action and a person is notified.

A cleaner workflow view

The step header and individual cards have both been tidied up to make your workflow easier to scan at a glance. In the step header, default settings that used to appear as full lines of text are now condensed into small icons in the top-right corner, next to the "Edit step" button — a clock for "Mark overdue after," a zz for auto-snooze, >> if skip conditions are active, and the default assignee's avatar if one is set. On each card, status pills now show abbreviated information ("+ 2d ago" instead of "added 2 days ago"). Hover over any icon or pill to see the full description, or open the card to see everything at once.

Expected response time → Mark overdue after

"Expected response time" has also been renamed to "Mark overdue after..." — the name now matches what it does. Cards that exceed the time you set receive an Overdue badge, and you can filter your step view to show only overdue cards.

The power of workflows

Workflows might be the most broadly useful tool in Planning Center People — not just for your admin team, but for almost anyone on staff who follows up with people. That's why we made the Workflow-only permission and these other recent improvements like the assignees tab, the ability to show all assignees on a step, and bulk editing. And we're not done yet — expect to see more workflow improvements in the coming months!

Improved: Emoji support in signup descriptions and emails

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 23:53:50 GMT

You can now use emojis in descriptions and emails for your signups in Registrations

Emojis are the little touches that make communication feel human and more welcoming. They are also visual anchors that draw the eye to what matters, as shown above for Date, Location, and Time.

The Registrations Team

Improved: Auto-create field options during imports

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 17:56:10 GMT

Importing your data is often the very first thing you do in Planning Center, and for a lot of you it's also been one of the most tedious. Before you could bring in custom data, you had to create every field option ahead of time to exactly match what was in your CSV. Even worse, if the field option didn’t exist yet we’d skip importing that value altogether.

With today’s changes, People now detects new field options in your CSV and creates the missing options automatically during import.

How it works

A new "Create new options detected from CSV fields" setting is now available on the Match Fields step of the import process. When it's on, we read the values in your CSV and add any that don't already exist as options on the field you've matched to, so there's nothing to set up in advance. It's on by default, and you can turn it off if you'd rather manage options yourself.

This works for both the following built-in and custom field types:

Built-in fields: Name prefix, Name suffix, Inactive reason, Marital status, and Membership type
Custom fields: dropdowns and checkboxes

A few fields work differently and aren't included here, like Campus, Gender, School, and background checks.

This is just the start

Field options are the first step in a larger effort to make importing less painful. If there's something about importing that still slows you down, we'd love to hear about it.

The People Team,
Zane, Usborn, Shawn, Shane, Saryn, Kody, James, Gabi, Fred, Dave, and Benson

New: Edit Dashboards in the Planning Center app

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:06:22 GMT

You can now create and edit both dashboards and widgets in the Home tab of the Planning Center mobile app (iOS / Android). Tapping the three dots in the header will reveal all of the actions you can take.

When we launched back in April you could only view your dashboards, but now you can do anything that you can do on the web, optimized for mobile!

The Home Planning Center App Team

New: Landscape support in the Planning Center app

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:13:23 GMT

You can now use the month view in the Planning Center app by rotating Calendar into landscape mode. This has been one of the most requested additions since the app launched, and it's finally here!

First, make sure that you’ve installed the latest version of the app. Then, tap into Browse, navigate to Calendar, and turn your phone sideways. You’ll see the familiar month view from desktop, allowing you to get a quick glance at what’s going on week to week without scrolling endlessly.

If you haven't tried the Planning Center app yet, this is a good excuse to download it! It's a single app that brings together Tasks, Dashboards, Calendar and more — so whatever role you play at your church, your tools are a tap away. You can grab it from the App Store or Google Play.

Team Calendar

New: Campus selector on the donation form

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:25:19 GMT

Update 6/18/2026: The campus selector for Giving is temporarily unavailable while we work on a few fixes. We will share an update when it's ready.

You can now add a campus selector to your donation form, so every gift is tied to the right campus.

When you turn it on, donors see a campus field as they give. It defaults to the campus they chose in the Church Center app, and if none is selected, it'll show the campus set in their profile. Donors can select a different campus, and if no default is known, they'll be asked to pick one before completing their gift. The result is accurate campus attribution without adding friction to the giving experience.

This means that new donors, or anyone giving without a primary campus set, no longer fall through the cracks — their gift still lands at the right location instead of going unassigned or to the wrong campus.

To enable it, head to your donation form settings and check the campus selector option. It's off by default and available for organizations with more than one campus.

Note: Enabling this setting does not make any campus changes to donation history or pre-existing recurring donation settings. It also does not change the campus set on a donor’s profile in People.

The Giving Team

New: Teams and Groups hub in People

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 18:29:10 GMT

Not sure whether you should put people in Services Teams or Groups? There’s now a Teams and Groups hub in People to guide you—especially if you’re new to Planning Center.

A quick guide on teams vs. groups

Scheduled serving teams → Services Team
Everything else (small groups, bible studies, community, care, recovery, staff/admin, etc.) → Group

Create a new team or group

This new hub lives in the People product, for organization admins, in the People → Teams & Groups tab

When you click the New team or group button, a guided flow helps you choose the right place to start:

From People → Teams & Groups, you can also:

Browse your existing Services Teams and Groups in one place.
Filter to just Teams or Groups to better understand the differences.
Search and sort by name to quickly find what you’re looking for.

Helping people get connected is hard enough—this hub is designed to make it easier to choose the right “home” for your sets of people so ministry can move forward.

Team People, Groups, Services

New: Link-only events

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:37:09 GMT

You can now share a Church Center event with just the people who need it, without listing it for your entire congregation.

When you publish an event in Calendar, you'll see a new Link only checkbox below the Church Center visibility setting. Turn it on, and the event page stays fully viewable for anyone who has the link, but it won't show up in the events list on Church Center.

Why this matters

Promote events to specific groups. Use the Groups connection to share an event with specific groups of people without putting the event on the public events list.
Less clutter on Church Center. Keep your public events list focused on what's actually meant for the whole congregation.

We hope this new option gives you more flexibility when sharing events with your congregation!

Team Calendar

New: Background check add-ons for federal criminal and alias searches

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:11:53 GMT

Did you know you can order background checks in Planning Center?

If you work with children, manage a secure team in Services, and manage volunteers through Check-Ins, please consider adding background checks to your workflow.

It’s an easy, cost-effective way to add an additional layer of protection for your church. And it’s built right into Planning Center People through our partnership with Checkr.

And today, Checkr is releasing two new add-ons for US-based churches:

Federal criminal search to find felonies and misdemeanors not captured by state or county searches.
An “alias” check to find records attached to maiden names and nicknames.

These are optional add-ons, so Checkr’s Basic, Standard, and Pro package pricing hasn't changed.

New Checkr add-ons: Federal criminal search and “alias” search (for maiden names and nicknames)

There are two new add-ons to choose from:

Federal criminal search, in addition to state and county searches ( +$7.50). This will check U.S. federal district court records for felony and misdemeanor convictions. This will help you catch offenses that don't always show up at the state or county level.
Alias search: Adds name variations (+30% of the base package). This searches records under a person’s legal name and any “aliases,” like their maiden name or a nickname. This provides a more complete picture if someone’s name has changed.

Available for all Checkr customers

If you already have the Checkr integration enabled, you can now add Federal Criminal Search and Alias to your packages.

Using default packages? These options will appear automatically; no action is needed.
Using custom packages (including MVR-only)? You can add these screenings to your account manually. Reach out to Checkr here for help.

If you’d like to add Checkr to your account, you can learn how here.

If you’re interested in understanding more about background checks in Planning Center, reach out to us anytime.

Planning Center

New: Three new annotation tools available in Music Stand on iOS

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 23:36:40 GMT

Annotations are how your worship team turns a piece of music into their piece of music. Builds, key changes, drop-out sections, spontaneous section, the fret to start a lead solo on, "do NOT rush here," that little smiley face above the bridge you finally nailed — it all lives in the margins.

Today, we're giving you three new tools to make those margins your own: fountain pen, watercolor, and crayon. Pen-tatonic scales not included.

How it works

Open any chart, tap the annotation toolbar, and you'll see three new friends sitting next to the existing annotation tools.

Fountain pen — for when a regular pen just feels a little too… staccato. Smooth, pressure-sensitive strokes that flow like a well-rehearsed legato.

Watercolor — because some sections deserve a wash, not a highlight. Layer translucent color over a tricky passage to set a mood without burying the notes. Hue knew annotations could look this good?

Crayon — sometimes you just need to color outside the lines. Waxy, textured, and a little chaotic, in the best way. Perfect for any moment that calls for a little less polish and a little more personality.

All three work with Apple Pencil or your finger and play nicely with every annotation tool you already use.

Why this matters

Preparation looks different for every team member and every song. Sometimes it's a quick mark before sound check. Sometimes it's hours with a chart the week before. The right tool shouldn't get in the way of either. Fountain pen, watercolor, and crayon give your team more ways to prep and more room to mark up a chart the way they think, so prep time goes toward what actually matters: knowing the song.

Try it out

Update to Music Stand 4.7.7 from the App Store, open any chart, and tap the annotation toolbar. We can't wait to see what you draw up.

Team Services