Planning Center Change Log

New: Connect Planning Center People to Claude or ChatGPT

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:34:50 GMT

You can now connect AI assistants like Claude Desktop and ChatGPT to your Planning Center People account. Getting answers about your data is as easy as asking a simple question.

For example if you need to know "Who's been in the Ready step of the Visitor Follow-up workflow for more than two weeks?”, you can just ask your AI assistant the question instead of opening the workflow, sorting cards, and eyeballing dates.

For setup instructions, check out this getting started guide.

Ask questions about profiles, lists, households, workflows, forms, and more

Once you connect your AI assistant, it can search across most of People, including information about profiles, contact information, households, workflows, lists, and forms.

So you can look someone up by name, check who's assigned to a workflow step, pull up a list, or find form submissions from a specific date range.

Your data is secure

When you ask a question, the AI assistant queries your People account in real time to get the answer, the same way it would if you searched in People yourself.

Only people with a Planning Center login can connect, and they'll only see data their Planning Center permissions allow. This doesn't open up any new access to anyone.

Keeping your private data private

By default, both Anthropic and OpenAI will train their models based on your conversations with them unless you change settings in your AI tool. In this case, your conversations could include personal and private information from your Planning Center account, and we strongly recommend that you don't let these tools train their models on this data. In ChatGPT, look for Settings > Data Controls, and disable "Improve the model for everyone". In Claude you'll head to Settings > Privacy, and disable "Help improve Claude".

Tell us what's next!

Because this is a PicoLabs experiment, please join this group in our community to share feedback, usage ideas, and tell us how you'd like us to see it improved next. We look forward to hearing about how you use this tool!

The API Team

Improved: Skip Stripe setup and start your Giving trial faster

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:54:14 GMT

Getting started with Giving just got a whole lot easier. You can now begin your free trial and explore without setting up payment processing first.

Skip payment setup and start exploring Giving in minutes

Previously, setting up a Stripe account was a required step before you could access Giving at all. That process could take upward of 30 minutes and required bank account details and legal organization information, which is a big ask when you're still deciding if Giving is the right fit for your church.

Now, payment configuration is completely optional during onboarding. You can skip it, finish setup in about five minutes, and start exploring Giving right away. When you're ready to accept online donations, you can set up Stripe at any time.

By removing that barrier upfront, your team can get hands-on with Giving sooner — browsing features, setting up funds, and getting a feel for how it fits into your workflow.

Every feature is still visible, with context on what payments setup unlocks

When you start a new Giving trial, you'll move through a streamlined onboarding flow. If you skip Stripe setup, you'll see helpful context throughout the product showing what becomes available once you’re ready to accept payments — things like online donations, recurring giving forecasts, and payouts.

Nothing changes for churches already using Giving with Stripe configured. This update only affects churches that haven't completed Giving onboarding yet.

Ready to try it out?

If you're new to Planning Center, head over to our website and start your free Giving trial — no payment setup required. If you're already part of our community, visit your subscription settings to get started.

The Giving Team

New: Assign people or positions to songs or items in your plan

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 23:42:32 GMT

Big News! We’re introducing a new feature, Song and Item Leaders, our #1 most requested feature. You can now assign a specific person or position directly to a Song or Item within your plan, eliminating the need to manually type names into notes (unless you still prefer that method!).

This new feature provides clarity, ensuring responsibilities are always current and cutting out the hassle of manual updates.

How this improves your planning

One clear place to assign who is leading any song or item
Position-based assignments update automatically when the schedule changes, no re-typing names.
You will always see the items you are leading directly within the plan. You also have the option to show or hide the names of all other leaders for an item.
Assignments are fully supported in Plan Templates, so rotating teams stay aligned automatically.

How it works

When in a plan, hover over an item and click the new leader icon.

Within the drawer assign any scheduled person within the plan or select a position to add to the item.

If you assign a position, whoever is scheduled to that position will automatically appear as the song or item leader.

If the schedule changes, the assignment updates automatically, no more re-typing names.

See what you're leading (and what others are)

Leader visibility is built right into your order of service:

Items assigned to you always show your avatar right-aligned in the plan.
Toggle the new "Leader" filter to show or hide assignments for others.

Scheduling and reminder emails

Any song or item that you are leading will be included within both your scheduling and reminder emails.

Works with templates

Song/Item Leader assignments are fully supported in Plan Templates. For best results, assign a position in your template. When the template is applied to a plan, the correct scheduled person will automatically be assigned based on that position making templates even more powerful for rotating teams.

Works with plan reports

To include the new Leader feature when printing your weekly order of service, ensure the Leader option is selected in the Plan Report settings. This will display all assigned Leaders next to their associated song or item.

Why this matters

Previously, many churches used the "Person" item note to indicate who was leading something. But since it was just text, names had to be entered manually, schedule updates didn't carry over, it created duplicate work, and leaders weren't reliably visible in reports or in the plan itself. Now, assignments are directly tied to your plan people and positions, so everything stays aligned.

Note: You can still use Person item notes to communicate jobs-to-be-done, mic colors, or any other context that doesn't need a structured assignment.

Try it out

Open any plan in Services, hover over a song or item, and click the new leader icon to make your first assignment. You'll see leader avatars appear right in your order of service, and your team will always know who's responsible for what.

Coming soon to the mobile app!

Team Services

Improved: Filtering on the events page

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:44:58 GMT

We’ve improved the filtering experience on the events page to better match the Groups list page, improve performance, and make filters easier to use on smaller mobile and tablet screens.

The Group type dropdown is now in the Filter sidebar.
Campuses and Status are now separate from Tags. Previously, they lived in the same dropdown. Now they live in two sidebar tabs: General and Tags, matching the Groups list sidebar.
There’s a new Status option: All groups, which matches the Groups list options.
The Manage Tags link has been removed from the tag options. Tag management is still available from the utility dropdown in the top-right of the page header, by clicking Tags.
Filter options no longer narrow based on the selected group type. All tags and campuses are always available in the sidebar, matching the behavior of the Groups list and People page.
There’s now a Clear filters button on the empty state when filtering, to help you reset if you’ve filtered down too far.

Why the change?

We want filtering across Groups to feel consistent and easy to use, so you do not have to learn new patterns as you move between pages. We also wanted the filtering experience to work better on smaller screens, especially phones and tablets.

Team Groups

Improved: Applicants included in event attendance CSV export visitor count

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 21:13:58 GMT

When we launched the multi-group event attendance CSV export we included attendance counts for members and visitors to give you granular insight into what's driving your numbers. However, group applicants — people who have requested to join a group but haven't been approved yet — weren't being counted in the visitor total, which meant your attendance numbers might have looked a little lower than reality.

We've updated the CSV export so that applicants are now included in the visitor count, giving you a more accurate picture of who's actually showing up to your group events.

No changes to your workflow — just more accurate data next time you export!

Team Groups

Improved: Expanded support for Google Pay and Apple Pay (with a related policy update)

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 20:49:07 GMT

We’ve expanded support for Apple Pay and Google Pay to make giving even easier.

Google Pay is now available on Church Center web!

Let’s be honest—no one has the time to manually enter payment details. A digital wallet option isn’t just convenient; it’s expected. Google Pay now works in:

Express giving (for guest donors)
The regular donation flow (for logged-in donors)

Note: Google Pay isn’t supported in the Church Center app just yet.

Both Apple Pay and Google Pay have also been added to the embedded donation form.

We know the embedded form (that popup you can add to your website) can be a common path for first-time or guest donors who aren’t active in Church Center yet, so this should make their experience a little more seamless!

This works for both express giving and regular giving as well.

Expanded wallet support is only available on the new donation form. If you haven’t made the switch yet, you can enable it anytime from your Giving dashboard!

A quick compliance note

We also made a small update to better align with Apple’s guidelines for wallet payments.

When someone gives a one-time donation using Apple Pay, we will no longer save that payment method to their Church Center profile. This is already how our new donation form functions. The legacy donation form previously allowed this, but Apple’s guidelines prohibit saving Apple Wallet payment methods after a one-time transaction.

If you use Apple Pay yourself, you’ve probably noticed that websites don’t save your Apple Pay card details after a purchase. That’s intentional — and now we’re aligned with that standard.

Recurring donations will not be disrupted. If Apple Pay is used for a recurring donation, the payment method will still be saved in Church Center so we can process future occurrences of that gift (Apple does allow this). The saved payment method will only be available for that recurring donation, though — not for other payments like separate donations or event registrations. For other separate payments, your donor would simply pay via Apple Pay again rather than selecting a saved payment method.

The same applies to the newly introduced Google Pay, creating consistency across wallet payments.

This shouldn’t change much for your donors. People who generally prefer Apple Pay or Google Pay select it each time they pay for something, rather than relying on a saved payment method pulled from their Apple or Google wallet.

As always, our wonderful support team is here to help if you have any questions!

The Giving Team

Improved: See payment methods and recurring donations before merging duplicate profiles

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 19:10:27 GMT

When merging duplicate profiles, any saved payment methods on the removed profile are permanently deleted. For security reasons, payment details are never transferred between individuals. However, removing these payment methods can unintentionally interrupt recurring donations, donations pending bank verification, or Text2Give setups.

To help prevent surprises, the duplicate detail screen now shows indicators on each profile highlighting whether they have saved payment methods, active recurring donations, Text2Give enabled, or donations pending bank verification.

If the profile being removed has any of these, you'll see a warning explaining that payment methods won't transfer and that a new payment method will need to be added for recurring or Text2Give donations to continue processing.

The same indicators will be visible if you access the merge action from an individual profile. Here is an example where one person has a donation awaiting bank verification rather than an active recurring donation:

Saved payment method indicators are visible to anyone with a People Manager role. Indicators for recurring donations, Text2Give setups, and donations pending bank verification are visible to those who also have a Giving Administrator or Giving Bookkeeper role.

These indicators make it easier to spot potential issues before completing a merge, helping avoid disruptions that could require donors to re-add their payment method—something that can be especially frustrating when bank accounts are involved. Since saved payment methods can be used in Registrations as well, this is helpful for congregants who pay for events too.

We hope this makes merges a little smoother and keeps giving uninterrupted for your donors.

The Giving Team

New: Fine-tune your chat notifications

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 16:06:07 GMT

Chat can get noisy — especially when you're part of multiple groups and teams. Until now, your options were pretty limited: get notified about everything or mute a conversation entirely. Now we’re giving you more options for chat notifications so you can have real control over what you hear about and when.

From your chat notification settings, you can now see all of your groups and teams in one place, along with the current notification setting for each. This includes Services teams, which didn't have notification controls before.

Choose what you want to hear about

For each group or team, you can pick the level of notifications that makes sense for you:

New messages and reactions — hear about everything (this is the default).
New messages — get notified for messages, but not when someone reacts with a or . If you're in a large conversation, this one's for you.
Only when new conversations are created — great for prayer walls, marketplaces, or any group where you want to know when something new starts without being pinged for every reply.
No message notifications — you won't get push notifications or app badges, but the conversations are still there whenever you're ready to check in.

Whatever you choose becomes the default for all conversations in that group or team. But if there's a specific conversation you want to treat differently, you can override it from the conversation details.

For example, you could set your small group to "only when new conversations are created," but then turn on full notifications for a specific conversation you're actively involved in. It's flexible enough to match how you actually use chat.

The goal is simple: stay connected to what matters, skip the noise, and never feel like you need to turn off all your app notifications just to get some peace.

The Chat Team