Rehearse on the go: Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are here

Jon Aleixo — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:06:27 GMT

Over 600,000 people use the Service mobile app as their rehearsal companion. You're listening to audio tracks on the way to work, running through song arrangements during your commute, and showing up to rehearsal more prepared than ever. We love to see it!

The only problem? There hasn’t been a way for you to safely rehearse in your car without looking at your phone.

So, we’re thrilled to announce that Planning Center Services now supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, bringing your rehearsal playlists right to your car's dashboard, fully hands-free.

What it looks like

Once your phone’s connected, you'll have three simple sections right on your interface:

Now Playing: A familiar view of song title and artwork, playback controls, a repeat option, time stamps/progress bar, and song metadata, like key, meter, and BPM
Current Playlist: Your upcoming plan's playlist, front and center. This is where you'll land by default, because it's usually what you need most.
Upcoming Playlists: A look ahead at your future scheduled plans and their playlists, so you can start preparing early.

No fumbling with your phone or glancing down at a screen. Just easy access to what you need at eye level, right from the driver’s seat.

Getting started with Apple Carplay and Android Auto

As worship leaders and musicians, we believe the tools you use to serve your church should make your life easier—and in cases like this, safer. Supporting CarPlay and Android Auto is one small way we're honoring the time and effort you pour into what you do.

If you're already using the Services mobile app for rehearsal, you're ready to go. Just connect your phone to your car via CarPlay or Android Auto, and you'll find your rehearsal playlists waiting for you.

Happy rehearsing! 🎵

💚The Services Team

Announcing the Planning Center app: All your ministry work, now in your pocket

Jon Aleixo — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:18:51 GMT

We all know that being in ministry doesn’t just happen at a desk.

You’re in a meeting when a scheduling request comes in. You’re greeting on a Sunday morning when you remember to follow up on a workflow. You’re finally on the couch for the evening enjoying your favorite show but need to mark some tasks complete.

In every instance and more, you’re doing the same mental gymnastics: Is this urgent enough to drop everything and find my computer? Or, I can’t forget this before I’m able to open my laptop again.

As a high-capacity staff member, it’s not realistic for you to be tied to your desk/table/wherever you can find a place to work. We see you.

That’s why we’re excited to introduce the Planning Center app! The software you already know, now in your hands—no matter where you are or where you’re going.

What’s inside the Planning Center app

If you’ve been using Planning Center for a while already, either as a staff member or high-capacity volunteer, don’t worry—we’re not asking you to learn a whole new set of features. Instead, you’re getting a better way to access everything you already know and rely on.

Here’s what you can expect from the new app:

All your admin notifications, all in one place.

It’s easy to get lost in email or stay heads-down in one part of Planning Center when you’re knocking out tasks. Maybe you’re finalizing the chair count in Calendar for the youth night when you get added to a last-minute “food prep” task list. But you missed the notification in Home… and now there’s no food.

Now, the Planning Center app has you covered! All of your notifications across your products are front and center. If it matters to your ministry, it shows up here: schedule requests, workflow updates, form submissions, and much more.

Your Home dashboard goes with you.

The first thing you’ll see when you open the Planning Center app is your Home dashboard—a quick, clear overview of everything that needs your attention. From there, you can use widgets to go right to different products.

Browse any product.

Open Registrations, Calendar, Check-Ins, Giving, or any other product directly inside the app, so you can work in the products you need to, exactly when you need to.

Check on an event registration, submit a facilities request for tables, or edit a Sunday school classroom location—all from your phone. Expect the same powerful Planning Center experience, easily accessible from wherever you find yourself.

Check off tasks.

Complete tasks and keep collaborating on tasks lists with your team, whether you’re meeting in a coffee shop, hustling on a Sunday morning, or driving to the store to restock on goldfish for the 5th time this month. (Just kidding, we recommend hands-free driving.)

Ready to take Planning Center with you?

We’ve never been as excited about introducing more ways for you to use Planning Center on the go.

Just visit your app store of choice to download the app now.

Frequently Asked Questions

New customers will now manage payment settings in Planning Center

Emily Jiles — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:09:13 GMT

Starting this spring, new customers will manage everything related to donations and event payments right inside of Planning Center—no need to visit Stripe’s website.

Stripe will still process payments behind the scenes, but new customers won't need to interact with Stripe. Instead, Planning Center will provide everything churches need directly in our product: setup, reporting, support, and the lowest processing fees available.

By bringing the complete payments experience into Planning Center, we can focus on what we do best: building church-focused tools, providing support from people who understand ministry, and keeping the best giving and event rates on the market.

Current customer? Nothing to see here.

This is a technical change for new customers, one that lets them get up and running with Planning Center without a secondary Stripe dashboard. Current customers still have everything needed to process donations and event payments in their existing Stripe and Planning Center accounts.

As we help new customers get set up with giving and event payments in Planning Center, we’ re also working to expand what’s possible for all churches!

Processing fees are still the lowest available.

Our processing fees are 2.15% + $0.30/transaction for credit cards and 0% + $0.30/transaction for ACH bank transfers. (Fees differ for those in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.)

Processing fees are a real cost for churches, and especially impact smaller churches with lower volume. By bringing the payments experience more fully into Planning Center, we're in a better position to continue offering the lowest possible cost for churches.

Questions? Some quick answers.

What we learn from new customers will shape what comes next, and we'll keep you updated every step of the way. Here are some things we can confidently answer today!

Can I switch now if I’m an existing customer? Not yet. We're starting with new customers and will share more about when existing customers can transition.
Are there any new features that we don’t have in Stripe? Not yet, but we want that! With our new technical foundation there is a possibility for us to build new features.
Will processing fees be higher? No. We're committed to keeping fees the lowest available on the market for churches: 2.15% + $0.30 for credit and debit cards, and 0% + $0.30 for ACH bank transfers. (Fees differ for those in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.)
Are there any additional fees? There are always fees associated with international cards, ACH bank transfer failures, and so on—no changes here. These are costs that current customers are already responsible for. For new customers, the only difference is that Planning Center will be applying these fees, not Stripe. (See here for a full list of these one-off fees.)
What happens to my current Stripe setup? Nothing. Existing customers keep their current experience until we're ready to offer the transition, and we'll communicate about that well in advance.
Stripe still processes payments, so what's actually different? The experience around setup, reporting, and support now lives inside Planning Center rather than requiring a separate Stripe dashboard. For churches, that means simpler onboarding, better visibility, and support from a team that can see the full picture.

Why Stripe? Our trusted partner for 11 years.

Planning Center started working with Stripe 11 years ago. Since then, we’ve partnered with them to help tens of thousands of churches across the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia process billions of dollars in donations.

Because of Stripe:

It’s easy for donors to connect their bank to your church thanks to Stripe.
Stripe maintains relationships with banks and financial institutions so that a donor from any bank or credit union with any card can get their donation to your church.
Planning Center, your church, and donors can process and give. International and national law is complex, and Stripe knows how to navigate it. Stripe ensures all organizations (nonprofits and businesses alike) stay compliant with evolving financial regulations.
Your donor’s financial information is protected by Stripe’s fraud detection system. They offer an unmatched level of protection against card scammers in an online world rife with fraud.

That's not work we want to reinvent.

So while Stripe does what they do best, we’ll stay focused on our core purpose: helping churches help people!

We're excited about this next step for our customers and our system, and we're looking forward to sharing more.

💙 Planning Center

Express giving: The fastest way for guests to give to your church

Emily Jiles — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 20:09:42 GMT

No login. No app download. No typing in card details.

With express giving, guests can donate through Church Center using Apple Pay or Google Pay in as little as 10 seconds.

After they arrive at the donation form, all they have to do is:

Enter their gift amount
Select Apple Pay or Google Pay
Confirm the payment (double-click side button, touch ID, passcode, face ID, etc.)

That’s it.

Whether giving from their phone after scanning a QR code, tapping an NFC link, or using the embedded form on your site—the entire experience happens securely through their phone’s wallet!

Express giving is an optional setting with guest donors in mind. It’s only available on the new and improved donation form. If your church hasn't switched yet, now’s a great time to make the move!

One note: Express donations skip donors past regular donation steps to make it as fast as possible to give. So if someone chooses an express donation, they won’t see the "cover the fee” option as it requires another step and we want to keep it fast!

Automatic profile matching for express givers

When someone gives through express giving, we'll match the email and name from their phone wallet and record the donation to their Planning Center profile.

If they're brand new, they'll get a profile!

Either way, our goal is to keep each individual’s information in the right place. If a duplicate does slip through, you can merge the profile.

Works with QR codes and NFC tap-to-pay

Has anyone else skipped checkout because Apple Pay wasn’t available? It’s very rare not to have a quick pay option these days, and donating to a church shouldn’t feel harder than buying a cup of coffee.

So make sure your donation form is easy to find so people can use this express giving option!

You can download a QR code we made for you from your Church Center form and put it everywhere:

Print it in bulletins
Put it on the announcements screen
Set it up on a bulletin board or an easel in the foyer
Print it on stickers and place them on the back of seats

You can also program NFC tags quickly and easily using Links so people can tap a physical tag.

And that’s it! Express giving will make it easier for people to give, with a little less hassle.

💛 The Planning Center Giving team

*Google Pay is only available on the web (mobile and desktop) and through express giving. It is not supported yet in the Church Center app.

Your 2025 in Planning Center

Jon Aleixo — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 20:40:49 GMT

2025 was a year of service, connection, and generosity—and you and your community made it all happen.

Last year, Planning Center churches created millions of service plans, scheduled volunteers in many roles (over 102 million!), rehearsed worship sets, and welcomed countless people through your doors. Week after week, you showed up to make the life of your church run smoothly and give people a place to belong.

You stayed connected, sending emails (more than 600 million) to keep your community informed, managing workflows to keep people from falling through the cracks, completing tasks that kept projects moving forward, and organizing events that brought people together.

For all the time and effort you put in, your community responded. So many people used the Church Center app to stay engaged with your church, gave generously to support your mission, filled out forms to help you organize information, and registered for over 6 million events that deepened the relationships within your community.

Want to see your personal impact? Log in to your Planning Center account to see your 2025 roundup!* There might be an extra surprise in there, too. 😉

Your dedication to serving your community inspires us and drives everything we make. Thanks for trusting us and letting us be on the journey with you. Here’s to a wonderful 2026! 🙌

*Reach out to your church’s Planning Center admin to enable your 2025 roundup if you can’t see it.

Year-end donation statements: 8 essential tips for a smooth tax season

Emily Jiles — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 21:32:27 GMT

Tax season is here, and that means it’s time to prepare donation statements for your church! While this annual task might feel routine, it can be a meaningful touchpoint with the generous people who make your ministry possible. A well-organized statement process shows your donors you value their support and helps them navigate their own tax preparation.

We know this season can feel overwhelming, so here are eight essential tips to make the process smoother and help you finish strong.

1. Check for duplicate profiles

Sometimes donors accidentally create multiple profiles. Take a quick moment to review and merge any duplicate profiles. This ensures each donor receives a complete and accurate statement of their giving history.

2. Watch out for uncommitted cash and check batches

Uncommitted batches can hide donations from showing up on statements. Do a quick sweep to make sure everything’s been properly processed!

3. Include all donations, including nondeductible

All monetary donations through credit/debit card, ACH bank transfer, or cash and check will automatically be included on the statement. You can also choose whether to include qualified charitable donations (QCDs) and donor-advised funds (DAFs).

Your statements will include the donations within your specified date range and can’t be filtered by specific funds, payment sources, payment methods, or membership types.

4. Pay close attention to the received dates

Donation dates matter more than you might think. For a donation to be included in this year’s statement, it must be received on or before December 31, 2025 for churches in the US and Canada.

Bonus tip: You can manually set the received date for batched donations to fall on or before December 31. ACH and card donations, though, are automatically dated when initiated and can't be back-dated.

5. Send joint statements

Donors can receive joint statements if their profiles are linked. Just keep in mind that only two profiles can be joined, so it might not capture every household member.

6. Point donors to Church Center when statement download links expire

It might be a good idea to let your donors know that links to download their statements are only active for 14 days. After that time, donors can still access their statements but the original download link they were sent will redirect them to log into their Church Center profile to get their statement.

7. Edit or delete statements with mistakes

You may want to edit or delete a statement you realize has mistakes on it, like if you accidentally included a pledge progress or chose the wrong date range.

The good news is that you can! It just takes a few clicks. With the Edit Statement button you can change the statement date range, or delete the statement completely. Nothing is set in stone until the statement is sent out.

If only the printed portion of a statement has been generated, you can edit that statement and then regenerate it. You’ll just want to click the Edit & Regenerate button on the print page, and then click Edit Statement in the top right corner.

8. Provide corrected statements easily

Sometimes there can be errors on statements—it happens! Rest assured that when you fix something, the correct statements are easily accessible to your donors. Here’s how, based on the country.

For U.S. churches. Your donors can simply download the most up-to-date statement directly from their Church Center profile!
For Canadian churches. Original statements can be downloaded in Church Center, but corrected statements have to be generated from the admin side of Giving, reference the original statement, and then sent outside of Giving.

We want you to feel supported with everything you need this statement season. Our support team is just a quick email away at support@planningcenter.com or through the ? in the toolbar. They’re ready to help you navigate any challenges that pop up.

We wish you a merry Christmas, a happy New Year, and a smooth statement season!

The Planning Center Tasks app: Take your to-do list with you

Jon Aleixo — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:38:51 GMT

You're blitzing through the church lobby when a volunteer mentions the kids' check-in tablets are acting up again. Mental note: add that to the list.

Then you're grabbing things from the supply closet and remember you need to follow up with the new small group leader. Another mental note.

By the time you're at your desk, you've accumulated five things you don't want to forget—but you've already forgotten two of them.

We built a mobile app for tasks. Now you can note tasks the moment they come to you, get notified when something needs your attention, and check things off your list without returning to your desk and opening your laptop.

Stay connected with notifications, not chained to your computer

Notifications come to your phone now, too. When someone assigns you a task, you'll know. When a deadline is approaching, you'll get reminded. You don't have to stay logged with your eyes peeled to your computer to stay informed.

The big change? You can finally write down tasks as they happen, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Walking to your car? Create a task. Sitting in the waiting room at your kid's orthodontist appointment? Assign a task to your worship coordinator. Lying in bed and remember something important? Add it to your list before you forget for the next day.

Your tasks, in ministry context

You might be wondering: Why use Planning Center Tasks instead of another task management app, including the native one on your phone? Because your church work doesn't live in isolation.

With the Planning Center Tasks app, your to-do list lives where your church data lives. When you open a task, you can see who assigned it—if it’s related to a person in your database, a specific event you’re planning, a person you’re discipling, or a volunteer you’re scheduling—what event or service plan it's connected to, and so on.

Your personal task app doesn't know that "confirm sound check" is tied to this Sunday's Service plan. Planning Center does.

Simple by design

This app is straightforward: Create tasks, complete tasks, get notified, keep going.

We didn't build a complex project management system for your phone, and we’re not going to try to cram every Planning Center feature into a mobile interface. We built this app to do one thing really well: keep you on top of your tasks from wherever you are.

The simplicity is also intentional because it lays the foundation for what’s to come: more productivity tools across the entire Planning Center ecosystem, right to mobile, all in one app.

What you can expect from Planning Center Tasks

The tasks mobile app works exactly as you’d hope:

You’ll see all the tasks assigned to you

You can create new tasks and assign them to anyone on your team
You can mark things complete
You'll get push notifications when tasks are assigned to you or due

Planning Center Tasks is available now on iOS and Android. Download it now to stay on top of things wherever you go!

Give every team their own calendar

Jon Aleixo — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 18:08:03 GMT

It's December. Which means you're not just coordinating this year's candlelight Christmas Eve services—you're already sketching plans for early 2026. Youth lock-ins. Easter services. Summer camps. VBS. All-staff retreats. The list goes on.

You’ve probably been doing this work with one big calendar and a lot of tags. It works…sort of. But finding your team's events means filtering through everyone else's. And when you need to see how your events fit into the bigger church rhythm? You're toggling tags on and off, trying to remember which combination shows what you need.

What if each team just had their own calendar?

A Christmas miracle: Multiple calendars are here

Calendar now supports multiple calendars, giving every team a clear home for the events they own! Create dedicated calendars for ministries, campuses, or facilities. Color-code them for fast scanning, and switch views without losing the big picture.

Your Google, Apple, or Outlook calendar has worked this way for a while, and we thought your Planning Center calendar should work this way too. There's just something different about having multiple calendars in your Planning Center calendar where all of your ministry planning is happening. Because this isn't just your personal schedule, it's your church's entire rhythm. And now every team can see their part in it more clearly.

Calendars vs. tags: What’s the difference?

First, let's clarify how calendars and tags work together, because they serve different purposes.

Calendars give ministry teams a single, central, and shared view of events their ministry is responsible for. Those ministry-specific events belong to their corresponding ministry. You might create calendars like:

Children's Ministry
Youth Ministry
Staff
Facilities/Maintenance

Tags let you organize events by their common characteristics. An event can have as many tags as you need, and you can even use multiple tags from the same group. Tag groups can be marked as required. You can use tags for things like:

Event type, like worship service, community activity, service opportunity, or meeting
Event needs, like HVAC required, AV equipment, or specific paperwork
Language, like English, Spanish, Korean, or bilingual
Campus

Here’s an example of what that could look like practically: Your youth ministry summer camp would belong to the Youth Ministry calendar, and might be tagged as an overnight event, registration required, and parental forms required. The calendar marks ownership, while the tags mark attributes.

What this means for your ministry team

If you equip ministry leaders

Give each ministry team their own calendar and watch what happens. Youth leaders can pull up their calendar and see only their events without having to sift through stuff that doesn’t apply to them. They can plan their quarter, spot gaps in programming, and know at a glance what's coming.

And when someone asks, "Who's in charge of that event?" the calendar answers the question. Ownership becomes clear.

If you manage multiple campuses

Create a calendar for each location and have your multi-site coordination get much simpler. Need to see what's happening at your downtown campus next month? Just switch to that calendar view. Curious if any campuses are scheduling conflicting events? Toggle between campus calendars to compare them.

It’s kind of the planning dream, right?

If you oversee facilities

Make a central calendar for facilities-specific events, like building maintenance, arranging the sanctuary, or landscaping needs. You can visualize space utilization and allocate resources more strategically.

Getting started with multiple calendars

When you open Calendar, you'll see that we've already created a new calendar using your organization name. All of your existing events live there, and you can reassign them to new calendars whenever you're ready.

And if you've spent months (or years) building a thoughtful tagging system, don’t worry! That work isn’t lost. You can bulk-transfer events from specific tags into new calendars. Your Children's Ministry tag can become a Children's Ministry calendar in just a few clicks.

Your events will still appear in the same products they did before, and your room reservations and permissions still work too. The only difference now is how you organize and view everything in Calendar.

It’s still one system—just easier to navigate.

Multiple calendars are available now in… Calendar. So log in now and give every team their own home!

New preschool grade options for more accurate grouping

Savannah Frye — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:23:15 GMT

Picture this: It's promotion season, and you're responsible for getting every kid into the right classroom. With Planning Center, promoting grades K–12 is easy. But preschool? Not so simple, with only one Pre-K grade to group all kids under 5.

Today, we're releasing the ability to add more preschool options to your grade list: Infant, Preschool 1, Preschool 2, Preschool 3, and Pre-K.

Plus, a special Christmas gift for our international churches (region-specific grade naming for Australia, the UK, and Canada) and churches in California (Transitional Kindergarten).

Replacing workarounds with settings that just work

Santa's gotten over 800 letters asking for more preschool grade options (800 feature requests from churches like you). So before our team started building, we reviewed the requests to determine how to build a solution that would solve the most problems for most churches.

Here’s what we were hearing:

Churches need more "buckets" to organize preschool-aged kids
Age-based filters are helpful, but they don't always reflect each child's developmental needs
Customers want to batch promote preschool kids by grade, like you can with K-12

We chatted with dozens of churches to find grade names that would be clear and make the most sense as you organize your kid’s ministry.

Add more preschool options to your grades lists across Planning Center

Until today, the only grade option before Kindergarten was Pre-K, making it a catch-all for ages 0-5. Now, you can choose to add 4 additional grades to group younger children: Infant, Preschool 1, Preschool 2, and Preschool 3. For churches in California, we’ve also included a Transitional Kindergarten (TK) grade option.

This means you can now have 5 different grades for those years before students enter Kindergarten!

Note: Nothing will change in your account until your Organization Admin updates your localized account settings.

Bonus: International naming option (For Australia, Canada, and the UK)

One of the most delightful parts of this new release is that we were able to add the ability to update the grade naming conventions to match local regions in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

No more “12th grade” when it should be Year 12. Somewhere in Australia, a kid’s pastor is having a very g’day mate. 😉

Here’s where it shows up throughout the system

Once you update your grades settings, you’ll see this change applied everywhere your grade’s list lives. Here’s a few examples.

First, you can now base your locations in Check-Ins on multiple preschool grades.

People will now hold the correct information on each child, which makes it easier for you to pull reports and communicate with parents.
You can include preschool ages on your event signups and then auto-assign children based on their grades in Registrations.

Plus, parents and guardians can feel confident they are signing up for an event or filling out a form on Church Center.

See it in action

We’re so excited to get this into your hands. If you don't have access to these settings, reach out to one of your organization admins for help.

You can also walk through this demo to see how easy it is to update this setting across your account.

Introducing dark mode in Planning Center

Emily Jiles — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 17:01:46 GMT

Starting today, you can switch your entire Planning Center experience to dark mode! All your tools are in the same place, and everything works as it did before—now just a little easier on the eyes.

Good…gooood.

A New Hope for tech booth volunteers

Dark mode is for anyone. But it’s especially for the people who live in order of service every Sunday.

Now, as you run the slides, sound board, or camera controls, hopping over to Services won’t feel like staring into the face of an exploding Death Star. No more squinting or fumbling with brightness settings.

The Force is strong with our new design

Dark mode is the first system-wide update under our new, unified design. Before now, creating a consistent dark mode across all Planning Center products was impossible. Each product had its own approach to color, navigation, and styling—beautiful in their own way, but not built to work together.

By standardizing certain components and creating consistent styling across the system, our design and engineering teams could build dark mode and implement it everywhere in one swoop.

And dark mode is just one example of the types of projects we can do now that we have a shared design foundation across our entire system.

Power! Unlimited power!

Choose your path, and do or do not (either way there are cookies)

Dark mode is available right now as a beta feature while we’re still testing things out and finding bugs. It’s a personal setting just for your account, so you can use dark mode while the rest of your team uses light mode—or vice versa.

You can enable it from your profile settings and switch between light mode, dark mode, or "follow system setting" (which automatically matches your appearance settings on your phone or computer).

So come on over to the dark ~~side~~ mode. Try it out and tell us what you think!

🖤Planning Center