Planning Center Change Log

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? 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

New: Trigger automations based on form responses

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 17:49:28 GMT

Until now, a form's automations fired the same way for everyone who submitted a response, regardless of how they answered. Workflow fields were the one exception, routing people into a workflow based on their field selection. But the right follow-up usually depends on the answer, and a lot of you asked us for exactly that: a campus-specific welcome email for the campus someone picked, a first-time guest date when they check the box, or sending specific training materials for the team they chose.

With today’s release, when you add an automation to a form, you can choose whether it runs for every submission or only for submissions with a particular response. (If you've used conditional automations in Calendar, this will feel familiar.)

How it works

When you add an automation, you'll see a new option for who it applies to:

All submissions: works just like before.
Submissions with a response: pick a field and the response that triggers it.

You can trigger on the fields where a response is a set choice:

Dropdown and checkbox basic fields
Yes/no, dropdown, and checkbox custom fields
A person's campus selection

From there, every action you already use is available: send an email from a template, add someone to a workflow, update a profile field, add them to a group, or create a task. The difference is that it happens only for the people who answered the way you specified, and it happens the moment they submit, with no waiting on a list to refresh.

Each automation triggers on one response, so to send a different welcome email for each campus, you'd set up one automation per campus. They all can now live on the same form.

We hope this takes some more manual work out of your follow-up. If there are other fields or form responses you'd love to trigger on, or actions you wish you could automate straight from a form, we'd love to hear what's next on your list!

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

New: Submit forms on behalf of household members

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 20:16:02 GMT

Churches collect information about children all the time: permission forms for youth events, medical releases, media waivers, baptism interest forms. However, People forms were designed for the person filling out the form to update their own profile. So when a parent filled out a form for their child while logged in, the child's information ended up on the parent's profile. We've heard from so many of you about this, and the workarounds weren't great: setting up an sign up in Registrations just to get the form attached to the right person, coaching parents to log in as their child, or falling back to paper forms.

Today, People forms can handle this natively. A new form setting, Allow submissions on behalf of household members, lets logged-in congregants pick which household member they're completing the form for before they start filling it out.

How it works for admins

In your form settings, enable Allow submissions on behalf of household members. This automatically requires submitters to be logged in on Church Center, since we need to know who's in their household to present the right options.

One thing to note: this setting and the Household Members field can't be used on the same form. If your form already has a Household Members field, you'll see a message explaining why the setting is disabled. They serve different purposes: the Household Members field is for adding new household members during a form submission, while this new setting is for submitting on behalf of existing household members.

How it works on Church Center

When a congregant opens a form with this setting enabled, they'll see a list of their household members before the form itself. They can choose "Myself" to fill it out for themselves, or select any household member. If they're in more than one household, they'll pick the household first.

If the person they need to submit for isn't in their household yet, they can add a new adult or child right from the selection screen. The form then shows a header confirming who they're completing it for, and the submission gets associated with the correct profile.

After submitting, "Submit another response" takes them back to the household member selection, making it easy to complete the same form for multiple kids in a row.

Works alongside Registrations

If you're already using Registrations with an attached People form (the attendee information form), that flow continues to work exactly as it does today. The household member selection only appears for standalone People forms on Church Center.

If you've been waiting for a simpler way to collect information for kids and other household members, we hope this delivers. We'd love to hear how it works for your church and what you'd like to see next for forms.

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

New: Planning Center is now in the ChatGPT app store

Thu, 28 May 2026 21:28:11 GMT

Planning Center is now available to browse and add directly from the ChatGPT store. You can find it by searching "Planning Center" in the store.

This means connecting is even easier. No need to manually set up the connection. Just add Planning Center from the store, sign in with your Planning Center account, and start asking questions.

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

Once connected, ChatGPT can search across most of People, including profiles, contact information, households, workflows, lists, and forms. 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

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, OpenAI will train their models based on your conversations unless you change your settings. Your conversations could include personal and private information from your Planning Center account, and we strongly recommend that you don't let them train on this data. In ChatGPT, go to Settings > Data Controls, and disable "Improve the model for everyone".

For setup instructions and troubleshooting, check out our help article on connecting AI tools to Planning Center.

What's next

We're actively working on expanding our MCP to support more Planning Center products beyond People. Join this group in our community to share feedback, usage ideas, and tell us what you'd like to see next. We can't wait to hear how you're using it!

The API Team

New: Distinct start pages for guests and members on Church Center

Thu, 28 May 2026 21:07:34 GMT

Until now, you had to pick one start page in Church Center for everyone — either the personalized Me page or your custom homepage. That's a tough tradeoff. Me is the right home for engaged members: it's personal, fast, and full of what they need next. But for first-time guests who haven't connected with your church yet, Me can feel empty and impersonal.

You shouldn't have to choose between putting your best foot forward for newcomers and giving members the most useful experience.

Now you can do both. Guests can land on your custom homepage and members can land on Me — so everyone opens Church Center to their next step, wherever they are in your church.

If you have a custom homepage that you’re using for everyone, you can find this new option in Customize > Navigation. Enable the toggle to Use Me as the start page for logged-in members. That’s it!

If you have a custom homepage but kept Me as your start page, we've automatically moved you to the new “Me for members, homepage for guests” setup. This is the experience many of you have been recreating with workarounds, so it should feel like an upgrade. (If you'd rather go back to having Me as the start page for everyone, simply unpublish your homepage.)

If you don’t have a custom homepage, both members and guests will start on the Me page in Church Center app. Guests will see a prominent logo for your church and the option to log in when they’re ready.

On the web, guests will see a simple homepage with your church logo and navigation.

When you’re ready to build your custom homepage (it’s free!), this option will be enabled by default — so guests see your new homepage while members have the same experience they’re used to.

We hope this change makes Church Center more welcoming for everyone — from your most committed members to the people walking through your doors for the first time.

🩶 The Publishing Team

New: Visualization options for metrics widgets

Thu, 28 May 2026 17:07:37 GMT

Open the settings on any "metrics" widget and you'll find a new Chart type dropdown with four options: Vertical bar (the only option up to this point), Horizontal bar, line, and area. Each one provides a different way to view the same set of data, making it easier to understand at a glance. Not to mention a little visual differentiation goes a long way with making things more interesting and engaging!

Nothing changes by default. Your existing widgets stay on vertical bar. The new options are there when you want them. All you've got to do is click on the icon on any metrics (aka: bar chart) widget to get started.

These new options also look stellar in our new Planning Center mobile app!

A few thoughts on each one to get the creative juices flowing:

Line is great for spotting trends. If you mostly care about whether a number is climbing or dipping over time, lines tell that story faster than bars do.
Area is line, but louder. Helpful when you want the magnitude of a trend to feel weightier on the dashboard, especially when comparing multiple sets of data.
Horizontal Bar is easier to scan when your category labels are long, or when you're focusing more on categories than on time.
Year-over-year still works in every chart type. Prior-years show as dashed lines so it's obvious which is which.

Pick whatever helps the story land best for the people looking at the dashboard.

The Home Team

Improved: Edit your default calendar, plus more color options

Wed, 27 May 2026 20:23:14 GMT

You can now edit your default calendar's name, color, and description, just like you would any other calendar. We've also expanded the color palette so it's easier to tell calendars apart in your month view.

Open your default calendar's settings to update its details. You'll see the additional color options there as well.

Both of these have been highly requested since we shipped multiple calendars, and we're excited that they're available now!

Team Calendar

New: Add donor memos and internal notes during batch entry

Tue, 26 May 2026 19:45:02 GMT

We got the memo. The batch entry form now includes two new fields: memo from donor and donation note.

When we launched the memo line on the donation form, we knew we’d need to add it to batch entry soon after—after all, checks invented the original memo line. Now you can capture those memos and add your own internal notes while you are entering the batch.

The memo field lets you record what a donor wrote on their check or envelope—things like "In memory of Jane Doe." It's available on any fund where memos have been enabled. Reminder: you can enable the memo line in your donation form settings and select which funds are eligible.

The donation note field gives you a place to add internal context to any donation—right as it's entered. No more going back to each donation after the fact to add your notes when you’re working through a stack of Sunday envelopes.

Check it off your wish list.

The Giving Team

New: Volunteer replacements for your teams

Mon, 18 May 2026 16:48:22 GMT

When a volunteer declines a scheduling request, finding a replacement has always fallen on the team leader, even in churches where the expectation may be for the volunteers to find their own replacements.

Until now, volunteers would find their replacement, and then enter in their replacement in the decline reason field, and the team leader would then need to go into Planning Center and manually make those changes, requiring a lot of extra manual work.

Today, all of that changes.

We’re excited to introduce a brand new feature for your teams, volunteer replacements.

How it works

When you enable volunteer replacements from the team settings, declining volunteers will be prompted to choose their own replacement from a list of available volunteers that are eligible to fill that role. Leaders stay informed without having to drive the process.

How to enable

In the team settings, navigate to the rescheduling declines section, turn on volunteer replacements.

What’s the volunteer flow

When a team member declines, instead of the decline completing right away, they're taken to a replacement selection screen:

A filtered list of eligible teammates who share the same position
Tap a teammate to select them as your replacement

Before the decline is finalized, there's one required step: the volunteer must check a confirmation box stating "I've confirmed with [Name] that they can cover this."

This checkbox is required and cannot be skipped. it ensures the conversation has already happened before the replacement is locked in. Once confirmed, the replacement is automatically added to the plan and the original volunteer's decline is finalized.

A note for admins: Since the flow assumes volunteers have already coordinated with their replacement before declining, we recommend communicating that expectation to your team before enabling this setting. The confirmation checkbox enforces it in the app, but a little upfront training goes a long way.

Once confirmed, the replacement is automatically added to the plan as confirmed and the original volunteer's decline is finalized.

What the replacement sees

The person asked to cover receives a push notification and email letting them know they've been confirmed to fill the role and will see the following message:

What if no one is available?

If the team member list comes back empty due to conflicts, the flow falls back to manually reschedule behavior: a needed position is created and the leader is notified.

The volunteer sees: "No available teammates were found. Your team leader has been notified."

Leader experience

Leaders stay in the loop without having to drive the process:

Replacement confirmed: Leaders receive a notification based on their existing notification preferences
No replacement found: Leaders are notified and a needed position is created, same as today

Where is this accessible

Volunteer replacements are available everywhere volunteers already decline: on the web, in the Services mobile app, and in both Church Center App and Church Center web.

Why this matters

Many churches have a culture where volunteers are accountable for their own absence but until now, Planning Center didn’t have a great way to support that. With the volunteer replacements feature, this gives volunteers a path to take ownership before a leader gets pulled in, and keeps the process in the hands of the volunteer instead of within the decline reason field.

Try it out

Head to any team's settings page and look for the updated rescheduling declines section to enable volunteer replacements for your team.

- Team Services