Planning Center as a Church Management System
Equip your team and connect your church with a single system
You can empower your people to care for your congregation and manage church-wide information at the same time.
Empower staff and volunteers to do their best work independently.
Pastors, directors, and volunteers will have everything they need to run their individual ministries smoothly and with autonomy.
You control who has access to what so everyone has what they need and no one is overwhelmed.
Give people access to just the products and features they need to do their work, without overwhelming them with parts of the system they don’t need!
Your finance department might only need access to Giving to track donations and issue statements, but everyone needs access to the central database in People.
Get everyone out of the scheduling panic and burnout cycle.
Eliminate the stress of last-minute texting, calling, begging, for someone to cover a position on Sunday morning.
Leaders can schedule people for services, events, and classes months in advance according to volunteers’ availability.
Volunteer scheduling is one of those pain points that can sink your ship really fast, because when you're constantly worried about keeping your head above water, it’s hard to focus on the mission. Planning Center takes the effort out of the process.
Simplify collaboration by sharing information across ministries.
Instead of everyone siloing off their stuff spreadsheets, you can work together from the same platform.
It’s much easier to work together on whole-church programs— like outreach, family care, discipleship, and event planning—when everyone is coming from the same framework.
And anytime anyone needs help, they can come to us for training and support.
Pastors, directors, volunteers—everybody using Planning Center at your church can access our training materials and our support team.
Make it easy for congregants to connect to the community of your church.
Planning Center is where you, staff, and volunteers do behind-the-scenes work. Church Center is the free mobile app and website where you can circle your congregation into the life of your church.
A single hub for engagement
Share all of your content in Church Center where everyone can find it and keep people in the loop through announcements and updates!
A place to get involved
People can give, join a group, sign up for an event, view their volunteer schedule, chat with their group, and more all from their phone or computer.
A way to participate from afar
Broadcast your livestream to Church Center so people can chat with their group while they watch online, or watch later in the recording library.
Keep people from falling through the cracks by following up.
Create step-by-step workflows to follow up with people, welcome first-time guests, check in on peoples’ prayer requests, train new volunteers, and more!
Find all the important information you need to make decisions
It’s easier to find opportunities to adjust and grow when engagement from across the entire church is in one place.
Track the information you care about.
Use built-in features to track attendance, donation data, rooms, resources, and more. But you can also customize the system to track details unique to your church.
Find what you need when you need it.
Instead of spending hours consolidating data from multiple spreadsheets or clipboards, find everything within the Planning Center database.
Never worry whether information is accurate.
You can trust that your reports reflect the most up-to-date details because your central database is constantly updating with new information added by volunteers or congregants.
The features and accessibility of Planning Center have made this software an essential resource for my career and organization. The ability to organize worship services, schedule and communicate with staff and volunteers, and store and provide resources is quick to learn, easy to train and implement, and has no competition in its effectiveness and efficiency. When it comes to an all-in-one church management software, there is no competition in value and features.
Core features
We have thousands of features across all eight of our products, but this is the core set of features we offer as a complete church management system.
See the big picture through comprehensive reporting
Engagement dashboard
Analyze attendance, donations, and more from a metrics dashboard.
Custom reports (lists)
Filter your database by profile data and activity to create lists of people.
Activity feed
View participation—events, check-in, small group attendance, donations.
Communicate with your congregation
Push notifications
Make announcements with the Church Center mobile app and website.
Send emails out to lists of people, or design full campaigns in MailChimp.
Text
Purchase credits to send out mass texts to lists of people.
Manage events from signup to check-in
Simple signups
Create online event signups, accept payments, and organize details.
Room/resource booking
Track requests/approvals for who is using what in which room, and when!
Fast check-in
Use any internet-connected device to check people in and print labels.
See participation across every ministry
Event attendance
Take attendance, offer self-serve check-in, and track who checked in to which locations.
Group and class attendance
Take group attendance so you can follow up and track church-wide trends.
General attendance
Count people as they arrive at services and larger events to get a headcount.
Protect yourself and volunteers from burnout with balanced scheduling
All-team scheduling
Create positions for your teams and assign them to services and events.
Blockout dates
Ask people to set their availability and so you don’t have to scramble.
Monthly scheduling
Send schedule requests months in advance and set auto-reminders.
Connect your congregation with the life of your church
Events
Let people know about events and give them a way to sign up and pay.
Group chat and directory
Give people ways to keep in touch with each other throughout the week.
Online church
Broadcast services live, create a sermon library, and share links to content.
Equip your worship team to plan and rehearse
Worship planning
Create a comprehensive plan including an order of service, roles, and songs.
Sheet music
Customize sheet music and advance PDFs with a pedal as you play.
Rehearsal tools
Organize your song library, transpose chord charts or audio files, and listen to audio.
Track donations and make it easy for people to give
Flexible donation options
Accept donations online and in the mobile app via ACH bank transfer, credit card, or Apple pay; by text, cash, and check.
Reporting dashboard
View donation reports and filter by campus, fund, and donation type.
Statements
Generate complete giving statements and deliver to people digitally or by mail.
Guard the privacy of your information and the security of your processes
Permissions
Protect your data, and your congregants' privacy, with powerful permissions.
Check-in/check-out
Security labels help verify who is authorized to pick up children.
Background checks
Order detailed background checks through Checkr and schedule renewals.
Use the technology you already have to do the ministry you want to do
Desktop/tablet
Run Planning Center from the web browser on any internet-connected device.
Mobile
Manage your database, plan services, and check people in from an app.
Printers
Print custom name labels from Citizen, Brother, Dymo, and Zebra printers.
Start your free trial
Try all of our products for free for 30 days! All subscriptions include People for database management.
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