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Blog

Mar 01, 2018

Cover The Processing Fee

Payment processing fees. You don’t like them. We don’t like them. But the only way to fully avoid them is to go back to a world where every donor has to bring cash or a checkbook to church, which they probably wouldn’t like. One Big Feature, One Tiny Checkbox Planning Center Giving now gives you a way to subtly communicate two things to your donors: First, there’s a processing fee associated with this payment. Second, the payment method they select impacts how much the church pays in proc

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

Feb 20, 2018

The New Duplicate Detector

Just over a year ago we launched the Duplicate Detector to help you find and merge those pesky duplicate profiles cluttering your database, and it’s already been used to merge over 500,000 profiles! This week we launched a new detection algorithm to improve the results of the Duplicate Detector. Our tests have shown the new algorithm to be significantly better at finding duplicates and ignoring similar, but not actually duplicate, profiles. It will save you time by providing better suggestion

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

3 min read

Feb 07, 2018

Bulk Updates Come to Workflows

People are the heart of your church, and the purpose of every feature in Planning Center People is to eliminate the administrative obstacles in the way of the church’s ability to build relationships with people. Workflows is a feature designed to streamline the often disjointed process of following-up with people in your church to make sure no one slips through the cracks. A few weeks ago we improved Workflows to increase the speed of the process to create more time and space for you to focus

Jeff Berg

2 min read

Jan 30, 2018

Introducing Music Stand 4

Planning Center Music Stand was one of the first digital music reading apps. It was released in 2010 shortly after the original iPad was released. Over the years we not only added support for iPhone and Android devices, but we gave it lots of minor updates, and 3 major ones. Music Stand 4 is a huge update for Android and iOS with quite a few big new features, and lots of smaller improvements that make rehearsing and playing your music better than ever. Feature Summary 1. Zoo

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

5 min read

Jan 25, 2018

The New Team Pages

Managing and Communicating with Teams is one of the primary uses of Planning Center Services. Today we’re excited to unveil a completely new and streamlined way to manage your Teams and their members. The Team Pages The most visible change is that instead of three separate popup modals, Teams are now managed from one single page. The tabs at the top allow you to switch from the Settings tab, where you change Team settings, to the Members tab, where you manage the people on yo

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

7 min read

Jan 23, 2018

New People Dashboard

Every house has a junk drawer where we put those random things we don’t quite have a place for. Mine is in my kitchen. Inside it are a few pens, a jar of marbles, some coupons, and hardware for that broken door I keep telling my wife I’ll fix. Why am I talking about junk drawers? Because most apps have them too. In Planning Center People, our junk drawer can be opened by clicking on the gear icon on the list of People. It looks like this: Some of these items are right at home under a g

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Jan 22, 2018

Two Handy Updates to Lists

Sometimes the small changes can make a big impact, and the new updates we made to Lists will save you a lot of time! Duplicating a List, Rule, or Condition If you find yourself tediously creating similar lists with just small differences between them, you’ll love this! From the list of Lists, click a list’s new new duplicate icon to create a brand new list with all the rules of the original. You can also duplicate the list from a link in the list’s Actions dropdown. While you’re in

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

1 min read

Jan 03, 2018

Registrations Event Page Organization

Calling all Registration users! We are delivering on one of the main, recurring feature requests showing up in our support queue—event page organization using campus and ministry categories. You can now organize your events so church attendees and visitors can quickly and easily find events relevant to them at the campus they attend when navigating your church’s public events page. Administrator View When filling out the details for a specific event, like Snowboarding, you can selec

Benson Lee

Product Manager

2 min read

Nov 27, 2017

Adding Plans Supersized

Adding new plans is one of the most important parts of Planning Center Services, but it hasn't always been clear what dates and times would automatically be added to those plans. With the new Add Plans popup, not only is there more clarity, there are additional options for which times and templates will be added, making it easier than ever to add your normal plans or special event plans like Christmas and Easter. Date Preview The first thing you might notice is that you can actually get a

Aaron Stewart

Co-Founder / Product Manager

3 min read

Nov 22, 2017

Fall Product Update 2017

You are entering one of the craziest times of the year for your church, and we want to make sure you know about all the tools you have at your fingertips as you serve and love the many people coming through your doors this holiday season. To catch up on all of the biggest and newest features from the last few months, check out our Fall Product Update video below! * People: Notes * Giving: Embeddable Giving Form for your Website * Check-Ins: Desktop App + Ignoring Age and Gra

Planning Center

1 min read

Nov 14, 2017

Introducing the API Explorer

This week, we released something very near and dear to my heart: the Planning Center API Explorer! Another Feature From Free Weeks As a developer, I love working at Planning Center. Nothing is more exciting and fulfilling than utilizing my God-given gifts and interests; but to do that while also supporting other ministry-minded people is a very special opportunity. We are passionate about creating tools that allow you to manage your ministry as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Geoffrey Lessel

Developer

5 min read

Nov 08, 2017

Handling Special Cases & Event Notes

Within the last week we released two highly requested features to Check-Ins: an option to ignore age and grade filters and the ability to create notes on each of your events. Handling Special Cases Every child is unique and has his or her own way of learning—not all children can fit inside the box of their age or grade. To help you ensure the children at your church are in the best classrooms for them we added an option to Ignore age and grade filters. If you have a child who needs to

Scott Myers

Product Manager

3 min read

Nov 02, 2017

Expected Response Times in Workflows

You are busy, your team is busy, so sometimes even in the most organized of Workflows, tasks can still be overlooked. Today we released Expected Response Times, a new Workflows feature designed to help you communicate to assignees when you expect specific tasks completed, and to send reminders if something's been overlooked. Now you can set a deadline for a step in a workflow by checking the box next to Expected Response Time at the bottom of the step's settings screen. Once you’ve

Jeff Berg

1 min read

Nov 02, 2017

Experience the Embeddable Giving Form

You put a lot of time and effort into your church website, so it's a bummer to send visitors somewhere else when they're donating. No more! Now you can put the entire donor experience right on your own website. Here's what it looks like: Give it a Try Give Online* * Don't actually donate to our fake church. We'll probably just spend it on toys and LaCroix. Details and Installation The button is just a regular old html link, so you can style it any way you like. Most comm

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

2 min read

Oct 31, 2017

Keeping Track of Notes and Prayer Requests

Deep, fruitful connection with the people in your church is a result of your ability to meet them where they are — serving their needs, rejoicing in their victories, and loving them in a way they can receive. Oftentimes the people in your church have already communicated to someone in the church the joys and challenges in their life, but now where is the information? Maybe on a prayer request card, or a staff member’s Post-It note? Introducing the newest feature in People: Notes! Notes

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

3 min read

Oct 09, 2017

Check-Ins for Mac and Windows

We’re excited to announce a new way to use Check-Ins on your laptop or desktop: an installable app made for each platform! Whether you use a Mac, Windows, iOS, or Android device, you can now download and install Check-Ins, built specifically for that device. No. More. Browsers. One of the greatest pain points over the last few years has been when a browser, such as Google Chrome, has updated itself over the weekend. This sometimes has broken the needed ties between your pr

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Oct 06, 2017

Mobile Password Management

In the past few weeks, Planning Center People's mobile app for iOS and Android has been updated not once, but twice! First the navigation menu was re-jiggered to match the main navigation on the desktop site. That made some room for the new People tab, where you can browse all of the people in your database from a single spot, and has some great options for filtering and sorting. Then the app got something we've been wanting for a long time... password management! Now the People app can't be

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Sep 19, 2017

Introducing Webhooks

This one is for the programmers and the teams who build on top of the Planning Center API. We're excited to introduce webhooks! Webhooks give your website or application a way to receive updates from Planning Center in real time, without having to continuously poll the API and hunt for changes. Read the documentation. Starting With Planning Center People In this initial release, we're starting small and focusing on Planning Center People. Besides, that's where most people's integratio

Jeremy Ricketts

Product Manager

3 min read

Sep 11, 2017

Get Your Workflows Organized

For a lot of churches, your list of workflows has gotten out of hand! When several ministries start using workflows to keep track of their processes, it can get difficult to cut through the clutter and find the workflow you’re looking for. And the problem tends to multiply if your church has multiple campuses. But now you can keep your list of workflows nice and tidy by assigning each workflow to a category, campus, or both! After you’ve assigned workflows to some categories, you can use the

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

1 min read

Jul 31, 2017

Automatically Open & Close Registrations

There's a time for everything in life - including when your event registration should be open and closed! With today's release, you can schedule exactly when your event is open for registrations as well as when your event will no longer accept registrations. Let's take a look! By default, events will remain open for registrations unless they are manually scheduled to close. If you have a registration deadline, specify the date and time (relative to your time zone) of when the registration wil

Benson Lee

Product Manager

2 min read