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

Welcome to the new Planning Center Community!

Jon Aleixo — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 16:26:15 GMT

Planning Center is about helping churches help people. Beyond making software tools, one of the best ways we can do that is by connecting you all to each other in a central place!

We're thrilled to announce the Planning Center Community, a dedicated space where church leaders and administrators can connect, share ideas, and learn from each other's experiences.

Why we started this new community

We love our churches, and we've seen how you all support each other—whether troubleshooting a tricky workflow, sharing creative ideas, or just encouraging one another through the ups and downs of ministry.

This collaboration has always happened in various places—Facebook or Slack or Reddit—but we wanted to create a centralized home where these conversations can take place and everyone can benefit from them. A place where the collective wisdom of so many churches using Planning Center could be easily accessible, searchable, and organized.

The Planning Center Community is our answer to that need—a space built specifically for you to connect, learn, and grow together.

It’s not Planning Center’s place to tell you how you should “do church.” However, we want to facilitate a way to connect churches that are using Planning Center successfully, and that’s what this community is! - Reagan Helms, VP of Customer Experience

What you’ll find inside the Planning Center Community

Let's get practical. Here's what the Planning Center Community actually looks like and how you can use it:

Product spaces

The Community is organized into dedicated spaces for each Planning Center product. This means you can jump straight into conversations about Services, Check-Ins, Groups, or whichever tool you're working with at the moment.

No more sifting through unrelated posts—just relevant discussions, product announcements, and tips tailored to what you need.

Exclusive resources

In the Resources section, you can see how other churches are actually using Planning Center! Browse real examples of service plans from different churches. Explore various Church Center home pages to see what might resonate with your congregation. Get quick access to bite-sized Planning Center University clips to keep learning how to use features.

Join the Community!

When you connect with other people who are navigating the same challenges you are, something powerful happens. You get fresh ideas, encouragement, and help from people who have been (and are!) in your shoes. What could be better?!

The Planning Center Community is designed to make connections with other people easy and meaningful.

Whether you're wondering how to organize your volunteer scheduling, looking for inspiration on how to set up custom signups, or needing tips on setting up your check-in stations, there's someone in the community who can help.

This is just the beginning. As more of you join and contribute to the Community, it will grow into an even richer resource. We're excited to see the conversations that emerge, the solutions you find together, and the ways you help push each other forward.

Join the Community here

See you there!

We’re back: Planning Center is online after AWS outage

Emily Jiles — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 20:40:49 GMT

You may have noticed that half the internet was down yesterday—social media apps, email providers, and thousands of websites were all unavailable during the largest internet disruption in over a year.

Now for the good news: All Planning Center products and systems are fully operational, and any tasks or automations that were delayed by the outage are caught up—including recurring donations.

To all the churches who cheered us on and made a tough day better… thank you.

If you’re still getting up to speed, here’s an overview of what happened and what measures we’ve taken to get our tools back up and running for your ministry.

You can also skip to frequently asked questions below.

Here’s what happened—and when

You can see the full breakdown of what was happening in our products on our status page, but here are the highlights from yesterday, October 20,2025:

12 a.m. PT: Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage begins, impacting Planning Center products and causing scheduled tasks to fail.

12–5 a.m. PT: Our system was fully offline and inaccessible to churches. After 5:07 a.m., systems begin gradually recovering.

6:41–10:40 p.m. PT: All Planning Center systems were fully operational and all delayed tasks ran successfully—including recurring donations.

If you keep seeing unexpected behavior in your account from the outage, please clear your browser’s cache and cookies: Chrome / Safari.

What was impacted during the AWS outage

During this outage, Planning Center organizations may have experienced one or more of the following disruptions:

New (one-time) donations could not be submitted
Unsuccessful logins to all Planning Center products
Edits to People profiles could not be made
The Church Center mobile app was inaccessible to congregants

All accounts are fully operational, and automated tasks are completed

Your account is now fully operational, and all scheduled actions that were impacted during the AWS incident are now complete. This includes:

Scheduled recurring donations in Giving have been processed
Scheduled list refreshes in People are completed
Scheduled emails in Services have been sent
New recurring event sessions are completed
Reminders for taking group event attendance
Other queued automations and background tasks

No automated action in your account will be lost; all recurring donations have been processed, and all scheduled background tasks have been completed as expected.

As these systems have come back online, you may see a backlog of emails now being delivered to your staff and/or congregation. We understand this can be confusing, and we apologize for any additional confusion this may have caused.

Frequently asked questions

These have been the most commonly asked questions during this outage, and what we’ve heard from our customers so far.

What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)? The world’s largest cloud server platform.

AWS is the most trusted provider of cloud storage and computer serving in the world. While yesterday’s outage was a global disruption to the internet, AWS is a trusted resource. They have 99% historical reliability and incidents like this are very rare.

AWS still provides us with the best and fastest solution to provide overall reliable software week-to-week.

Will this ever happen again? Planning Center is committed to keeping our system operational.

During a server outage, our goal is to keep as many of our products and operations as functional as possible.

We did everything we could to keep as many of our products online and operational (even if at a slower pace) throughout the outage and get everything back online as soon as we could.

Was my congregation impacted? Possibly yes, since most Planning Center features and systems were affected.

The AWS outage impacted the Church Center mobile app and web, Services mobile app, Check-Ins mobile app, and others.

Your congregation may not have been able to donate, see songs and plans in Services, sign up for events, or use Check-ins during the outage. However, all of these operations are now fully online.

Is my account working now? Yes, all products and mobile apps are fully online.

By 10:15 p.m. PT on October 20, 2025, all Planning Center systems were fully operational, and all paused automations were run and refreshed.

This means all of our products and mobile apps are fully online and available, and your automated operations scheduled during the outage are complete, including:

Scheduled recurring donations in Giving have been processed
Scheduled list refreshes in People are completed
Scheduled emails in Services have been sent
New recurring event sessions are completed
Reminders for taking group event attendance
Other queued automations and background tasks

Still having issues? You may need to clear your browser cache to see the changes.

If you continue to see unexpected behavior in your account from the outage, please clear your browser’s cache and cookies: Chrome / Safari. If you are still having issues after taking these steps, reach out to our support team at support@planningcenter.com.

Where can I learn about future irregularities? Our status page!

We update this status page whenever something impacts our system. It’s the most accurate reflection of what’s going on in our products at any given time. You can also check out our community to see if any other customers are experiencing what you are!

Additionally, you can always contact our Support team by clicking the question mark in the top right-hand corner of any product or emailing us at support@planningcenter.com.

Reliability is a top priority for us, and we apologize for the disruption that this caused for your church and staff.

💙 The Planning Center Team

Get every volunteer role filled with gap alerts in Services

Jon Aleixo — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 14:42:31 GMT

You’ve probably been there. It's Saturday night, and you're finally sitting down to relax when the thought creeps in: Did everyone confirm for tomorrow? You grab your phone, open the Services app, and scroll through the volunteer schedule. Sure enough, there’s a gap.

Time to start texting.

With new gap alerts, you can be notified when you’re missing volunteers and proactively fill those slots.

Say goodbye to the Sunday Scramble

Your children’s ministry director has to close the 4-year-old classroom because there aren’t enough volunteers.

Your worship leader is trying to find a drummer at 8:45 p.m.; otherwise, they have to go full-on acoustic.

Tech Tim is running the livestream, operating the camera, and advancing the lyrics, which has everyone singing “You call me out upon the waters” for…a while.

You can help prevent scenarios like these, which is why we built gap alerts.

Stay ahead without daily check-ins

Every week in ministry is different and jam-packed. With everything you’ve already got going on, you shouldn't have to manually check your volunteer schedule every single day to make sure everything's covered.

Gap alerts becomes your proactive partner so you can fill all of your volunteer needs without the extra effort.

All you have to do is turn on scheduling gap alerts, send out your volunteer requests, and then give people a few days to respond.

Then, instead of having to remember to follow up with people, we’ll send you a reminder, calling out which specific volunteer roles still need to be filled. From there, you can send out reminder emails to anyone who hasn’t confirmed and give them a little nudge.

No more triple-checking the schedule, and no more scrambling. From here on out, just an intentional reminder so you can have the volunteers you need.

Start getting alerts

Planning Center Services is the place for volunteer teams to be managed and resourced. And now with gap alerts, you can take your volunteer management a step further.

So no matter what kind of team you’re leading, this feature was made for you. Because when every volunteer position is confirmed, everything runs smoother: classrooms stay open, newcomers are greeted with kindness, and services have fewer hiccups.

Turn on gap alerts now and wave goodbye to the volunteer scramble. We have a feeling you won’t miss it one bit.