Planning Center

Vorteile

The organized convenience of having almost every form of information about church members using features like groups, checkin, registrations, services, etc. is highly valuable. I do enjoy the customization opportunities to use specific church language, as well as the ability to use other supported platforms in combination.

Nachteile

I don't enjoy the updated group chat feature as much as I did the functionality of it before.

Vorteile

The name tags that we use for church each week when people check in makes it easier to greet and get to know others.

Nachteile

The cost is a little high. And the worship planning platform is really confusing and cumbersome. Integration with constant contact would be great!

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Vorteile

It makes communicating with my volunteers so much easier.

Nachteile

The price is too much for what it offers in my opinion.

Vorteile

The things that Planning Center does well, it does very well. It always delivers notifications and I feel that it is reliable. Every single time that one of the people on my team have had an issue with the software, it was incredibly simple to resolve, and usually was a case of user preferences that needed adjustments. For the majority of the people that benefit from the software, the experience is seamless and professional. Due to the fact that most of the people who use Planning Center are not directly paying for the software, it has set itself apart as the crown of church planning resources. It is certainly my first suggestion to new worship pastors or churches that are trying to become organized.
The fact that it can take care of so many different church needs from one platform is also worth mentioning. My church uses another system for online giving, but it is comparable to what Planning Center offers. We are in the process of transitioning all of our check-in systems to Planning Center and it is significantly cheaper and easier to use than ANYTHING else on the market right now.

Nachteile

My experience with Planning Center is not limited to, but mostly within the realm of "Services" so that is where I will spend most of my time. Before that, however, I will mention that while I know of a number of people who enjoy the "Music Stand" app, Planning Center does not offer the best deal for the service. Apps like Onsong, while expensive up-front, are not a monthly expense and allow for many file types and importing formats, including the ability to download the music straight from "Services." This allows for some freedom in set design and application as many of my musicians are playing during the week and not at the church. If they could pay once for "Music Stand" and also import the secular music into their setlists, they would use the app outside of a Sunday morning context.
Now for the interface. One of the best tools in "Services" is the REPORTS section. And while I love the way it looks now, it has lost a lot of versatility. It is difficult to select the date for the reports, not to mention, hard to find the reports to begin with. Now, if I want to find songs from last Christmas, I really have to hunt to find the reports, find the right drop-down bar, and select "custom" on the display. Why not keep the custom option in the bar to begin with, and have the presets in the drop down bar? There is just a lot of unused real estate on that particular page, and I have spent too much time trying to relearn something that wasn't much easier in the last edition.

Vorteile

The extent of features when it comes to organizing and scheduling teams is fantastic. I find it very helpful that Planning Center tells me how long it has been since a particular volunteer has been scheduled, regardless of what role they were serving. Additionally, the level of functionality on the side of the volunteer is great. They can add blackout dates and respond to serving requests directly within an email.

Nachteile

At times, the menus can be a little clunky, and I find myself having to hunt for specific features. Planning Center's help section is fairly comprehensive though, so this usually fixes the issue for me.

Vorteile

It's a great place to keep track of and keep in contact with the individuals in our church. Many capabilities

Nachteile

There can be a bit of a learning curve if you're new to the program or teaching others how to use it.

Vorteile

I like how easy it is to set up music for each service!

Nachteile

I don’t like that I have to pay more to have 2 services set up.

Vorteile

There are some many features that I did not find in other applications, and I can easily access it through the phone and do everything I want

Nachteile

It is somewhat difficult to use and needs time to understand and deal with it

Vorteile

What I liked most about this software is its ability to manage religious groups.

Nachteile

What I liked least is that it is not easily usable by new religious organizations.

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Vorteile

When making the switch to PCO as our full ChMS I was concerned at first because there is no dedicated implementation process. However, I was amazed by how smoothly the implementation went. It is extremely intuitive and the support team is amazing. The online help is very useful, the support team responds quickly (I think their target is within 2 hours), and the Slack channel helps glean ideas from other users.

We saved about $3,000 per year compared to our previous solution and have a better product.

Nachteile

PCO is not perfect. There is not a perfect solution. I don't think we've found any issues that we can't work around so far and I've really been impressed by the development team and the rolling out of improved features.

Vorteile

There is so much that Planning Center can do. I love that there is a way to get pretty much anything I want to do done. It's also the major giant when it comes to church systems and platforms.

Nachteile

The reason I chose this software to speak to is because of a major issue I've had with planning center which is, duplicating what I'm able to do with other people. It's quite difficult replicating ALL that Planning Center can do. In my line of work, getting multiple people to do what I do is GOLD...with Planning Center, I spend a lot of my time looking at tutorial videos and in the help menu trying to figure out how to do something that I'm almost positive it can do. So, when raising up other leaders to use Planning Center, they are often left frustrated and decide to just not. Not to mention, when I have somebody in charge of Planning Center for our ministry, they usually last no longer than a year, before they burn out. The reality is, planning and working directly with volunteers is an ANIMAL in itself. Dealing with people cancelling, forgetting, double booking, or complaining is no fun job for any scheduler...so dealing with certain frustrations with Planning Center is the last thing that individual wants. So what's the solution? Perhaps share the work-load with multiple people doing the scheduling...however, we never get to that point because of the difficulty of the program to the average volunteer. It's not impossible...but it's also not easy. I consider myself pretty computer savvy and every now and again during big events I assist the scheduler for that specific event and even though I've used Planning Center off and on for years...I'm always left frustrated.

Vorteile

1. Parts Storage - I can store my keyboard parts, lead sheets, chord sheets all in one place
2. Templates for services is very handy - saves a couple minutes each week allowing me to just add in my songs and any special things happening in the service.
3. Matrix view of plans and people - I do my people planning every 2 months, so it's nice to see 2 months worth of services all on one screen and fill in the blanks.
4. Black out dates - each team member can block out dates that they are not available, so I don't even need to bother asking them
5. Music Stand app - allows all of my musicians to be totally paperless (using an ipad), even my piano player (since I can import her music right into planning center along with my lead sheets from SongSelect). In WorshipTeam, I first have to create a PDF, and I can only create the PDF with Chord charts. I can actually turn pages for all of my musicians simultaneously using a session.
6. Notifications - I love the automatic notifications of members for upcoming services they are assigned to
7. Church Management - great tool for planning nursery workers, sunday school workers, ushers, greeters, etc. And they all get email/text reminders too!
8. Auto import of chord charts from SongSelect is great (too bad it won't also import my lead sheets)
9. I have heard of the ability to automatically create my projection slides from my weekly plan including proper sequence for each song - no mismatch of words between slides and chord charts.

Nachteile

1. Transposing songs is PAINFUL! In WorshipTeam, I can transpose with one click. I don't have to manually transpose the MP3 for the song and the chord chart is automatically transposed too. In our church, we have a lot of altos and basses. Rarely do we ever do a song in the original key.
2. Library is self populated. In WorshipTeam, I have the songs I have added to the library, but also all the songs that everyone else has added. So, for contemporary songs, they are usually already in the library for my use all ready to go. When I have a substitute worship leader, they are extremely daunted by the task of adding a song to the library in Planning Center. I don't know if they will ever do it even though I wrote out a procedure for them.
3. Not sure, but I think the storage area is limited in Planning Center. So, if I have created to many alternate keys of songs, I will eventually run out of space?
4. CCLI reporting is more complicated. With WorshipTeam, a report is easily created with one click and I don't have to keep track of anything on a weekly basis.

Vorteile

Planning Center is a great all in one suite for a church database. Their customer support is really good. They will respond to your email within an hour. They've had a slack channel that is also helpful for you to learn from others how they are using the software. The majority of their products are great. People, Services, Check-In are best in class in my opinion. Resources and Registrations are good they get the job done.

One of Planning Centers best features is that they are constantly making quality improvements. Their updates keep them at the top of the ChMS game. I've witnessed others get the lead and they play it safe or drop the ball. Or they just built such a large product that its too big to update.

People
-Easy to import and export (this is a must feature in my opinion for any database)
-Customizable (again another dealbreaker for me if a database doesnt have that)
-F R E E

Service
- The best volunteer management software in any industry

Check-In
-Simple to use and straightforward
-Beautiful UI

Nachteile

Groups and Giving are what I like least about Planning Center. We had to move on from PC Giving because after 2 years of using it they never added the ability to mass import donations or work with outside vendors. I would have loved to have been able to integrate PushPay with Planning Center. It would have saved us H O U R S. I would have loved to have our members see their entire history of giving. Unfortunately, the only way to do that is to manually re-enter every gift. That would take months to complete and we are only 10 years old as a church! Reporting could be much improved too. You can really only search by one category at a time. So if you want to look at everyone who has given to a certain fund by check you'd have to export the info to get that.

Groups is still in beta in my opinion and have been since they launched in June of 2016. It's not complete or usable in my opinion. All it does is take attendance. Our groups are more than just taking attendance. Every group's system has a span of care (coaching structure) but groups don't have anything to assist you with that. It also doesn't receive many updates. The team that works on giving also works on groups so giving naturally gets all the priority.

Finally, one thing that scares me about Planning Center is that some of the staff can be really arrogant. I don't know if it's because of how many users they have and managing all the requests but they don't listen well enough.

Vorteile

The ease in scheduling volunteers and sending reminders through Planning Center. Additionally, the email notifications for volunteers and ease for them sending accept/deny instantly keeps things on track.

Nachteile

The difficulty using the mobile app has proven challenging. Not being able to sign in and schedule volunteers, and not being able to accept/decline a service time when scheduled through the mobile app can be very frustrating. I don't always have time to pull out a laptop to manage my scheduling. Many times, I have to schedule for my church activities while at sporting activities for my 3 children.

Vorteile

The worship planning software (Services) is unmatched as far as I can tell. It pretty much contains everything we would want in a database solution, the Giving portion is fairly easy to use, Groups and Registrations both work pretty well and our congregation doesn't seem to have a lot of trouble with signups through those. Scheduling volunteers is very simple through Services. Their customer support seems to be pretty consistent and helpful.

Nachteile

2 things: 1. The individual modules for Planning Center, though I like that you can select which ones you need and don't need, don't seem to integrate super well with each other. The fact that you need to re-import people from the database portion into the other modules can be annoying, and the navigation among them as a whole doesn't seem to be totally cohesive.
2. (My biggest pet peeve) It is ENTIRELY too easy for people to add themselves as a duplicate. We've had 5-6 profiles with the exact same email and name, and people can just create a new profile over and over again. If this could be solved, I would honestly be a lot happier with Planning Center.

Vorteile

listed in my review

Nachteile

also listed in my review

Vorteile

I like that we can send our team members invites for weekend services and they can respond via the downloadable app. We continually use this software to see who will be showing up to services/events by who's accepted and who has declined the invites we send out. We enjoy using the service flow capability that allows us to communicate how the services will be run for each weekend. This not only allows us to communicate with those who volunteer on our teams, but they have great features like music stand to help communicate which songs will be played that need to be practiced. Every feature created is to the benefit of the participants and the administrators using it.

Nachteile

I think the only thing I really don't like about this software is the time it takes to get used to where all the functionality is and what can be used for different situations. It's sometimes a challenge to get newer users on their feet when jumping into this program. Particularly in understanding the structure of how data is recorded within the program.

Vorteile

I love that the functionality is well integrated with other aspects of the programs needed in our church. I love that we can schedule all departments and needs for the entire church. The ability to auto schedule is a huge plus.
I love that there's a phone app so I'm able to see everything needed on the go or make changes.

Nachteile

I do not like that there are not more specific perimeters for schedules. Such as choosing how often people serve in specific roles vs. how many times a month as an over all blanket. I also would have liked a more personal introduction and hands on help when learning the software. A call desk for immediate help would be wonderful. I wish there was better integrated systems for audio files included with membership. Finding the right song, key etc. is tedious and time consuming and really other less expensive programs offer this service so I feel that should be included. So when you add a song from CCLI the audio file should be included.

Vorteile

Planning Center Online (PCO) has been amazing for our church over these last several years. PCO Services gives us what we need to schedule and plan our Sunday services without any trouble. We love the templates that PCO allows us to set up in order to duplicate a service style easily. Easter and Christmas every year are a breeze with PCO Services. We also use PCO Giving, Check-In, People, and Groups as our foundation of running the behind the scenes of our ministry. The user interface (UI) of each module is similar and easy to use, understand, and follow. I tell pastors about PCO all the time. Especially the People account, which is Free!

Nachteile

I do wish that PCO would create an app for each of its modules, such as groups. It would be a little easier for a Small Group Leader to access all that PCO Groups has to offer without having to open a computer. Also, the cost of each module seems to be adding up quickly. A "small church" with a tight budget may be put off by the cost. However, I can say that it is worth every penny if that church is a planning church.

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Vorteile

I've been using Planning Center for many years with multiple worship teams, and it keeps evolving and getting better. I'm an admin with Planning Center for my current church, so I use it quite often. It stores a data base of team members that can be grouped into multiple categories (worship team, audio/lighting tech, sunday school/nursery volunteers, etc). I think PC really shines for scheduling worship services. It stores audio files, video links, and documents which can easily be linked to any new service so your team has the information (music, audio files, videos) they need to be prepared in advance. Your worship team (or for any other aspect of church functions) can be alerted when they are scheduled to serve, and they can accept or reject the invite to serve which will alert the admin so they can make sure that a person for each required position of a service or event has been filled. It can save tons of time for an administrator to put together a team and get them the resources they need. It even links to online calendars so when you accept a position for an event, it can automatically be added to your calendar (in my case Google). Overall, if your church isn't using this, you need to try it - it's a huge time saver!

Nachteile

It can be a little confusing sometimes, and there is way more to it than we use that I wish we could turn off until we need it, but honestly it's still probably the best options out there that we've found.

Vorteile

We can literally keep all our church info under one umbrella. We schedule all of our volunteers for worship, coffee ministry, early childhood, sound, kid's wing... everything with Planning Center. We would be lost without Planning Center. We are able to see when our volunteers are scheduled in other departments. We use the kid's check-in app. We have even recently used the "Registrations" app for some of our sign-ups, it's a little pricey but pretty efficient. We run so much of our church with Planning Center.

Nachteile

It definitely sometimes has weird glitches where some volunteers will not receive emails sent to them all time, or worship team members getting unscheduled. We are not entirely sure if it's Planning Center's fault or some weird planning center fairy messing with us.

Vorteile

It is easy to use for scheduling team members for their events and shifts but it has some visual limitations in terms of how much info/data you can see on the screen. It has a great feature of drag-and-drop of team members into slots for teams/events. It also has a great feature for sending out messages and alerts, including reminders for upcoming events that team members are scheduled.

Nachteile

It has some limitations for what can be displayed on a screen and moving across multiple events is somewhat limited.

Vorteile

Databse use, services and team scheduling and planning, resource usage, kids checkin

Nachteile

The giving platform is really lacking in reporting features, time to give via ACH, year end statements and payment bank deposit tracking

Vorteile

Planning Center is industry standard for events for a reason. I thought we could do without it, but I was so wrong! As a team, we use Planning Center every other week for our staff events, and we managed a conference of 1,000+ people using it as well. Even though the event was literally halfway around the world in another country, the team on the other end was just as familiar with the platform and used it weekly for their events. Our mutual familiarity with the program saved the day! The timer helped us keep organized and on-time as we managed 56 speakers over the course of three days. This software is a powerhouse! There's still so much more functionality to get into that I haven't even explored.

Nachteile

Planning Center isn't necessarily the most intuitively designed platform, so there's definitely a learning curve as you get started. Be sure to do the training, or have someone familiar with it show you the ropes. The only thing that nearly tanked our event was the remote connection between the app and the countdown timer for the stage, but I think that was a Wifi issue more so than with the software itself. Overall, it has way more pro's than con's.

Vorteile

It was very easy to create a calendar with available dates and blocked dates for church volunteering abilities. It was easy for church leaders then to create volunteer teams based on these calendars.

Nachteile

Though it was nice to be able to note how many times a month I was willing to serve, I wish there was a greater ability to make this unique for each team I was serving on. For instance, instead of saying that I was only willing to serve every 6 weeks overall, I would prefer to have been able to say on Team A, I was willing to serve 2 times a month, on Team B, I was willing to serve weekly, and on Team C, I was able to serve 1 time a month. Also, it would have been nice to be able to specify serving with different people depending on the team. For Team A for instance, I'd like to serve with my husband, but on Team B, I needed to actually serve opposite weeks as my husband.

Vorteile

Great ease of use. Excellent for planning services and scheduling volunteers. Makes it easy for volunteers to respond to schedules without having to remember account details. Solid people management.

Nachteile

Everything outside of the core (service planning & scheduling) functionality seems half-baked. Very difficult to pull reports, group scheduling & attendance don't work well.

Vorteile

This app helps me keep track of all my commitments at church. I love that I can see who else is serving across various roles on a Sunday I'm also working -- I can see which appropriate people to look for when needed. It also helps me learn peoples' names -- my church is big so sometimes I might recognize someone's face but never have the chance to ask what their name was, or I might forget.

Nachteile

The experience of the interface isn't always smooth. At one point I was involved in multiple churches and wish there was a way to access all the churches at the same time. Currently I'm required to sign out and sign back in, in order to switch to another church.

Vorteile

One of my favorite aspects to Planning Center is being able to email/communicate with multiple volunteers from one screen. The email/communication screens are very simple, maybe too simple at times, but they let you send basic messages. I never had any issues with messages not going through, and it was easy to find which people I needed to communicate with. As the application for Mobile has been updated, the software has become easier to use.

Nachteile

I had a little bit of a hard time accessing administrator settings from the mobile application. I wanted to edit volunteer information (i.e. their email and phone number). It was tricky to find where I needed to go, and eventually deferred to someone with the desktop version.
Another thing I came across was the learning-curve. The application tends to require someone to walk you through how to setup teams if you have never used it. Once you know how to run things, it makes life very easy.

Vorteile

Planning Center incorporates a lot of different group management functionality under one software umbrella.

Nachteile

You often have to pay for the additional add-ons and because of church on right on the "larger" tier, it can become expensive. Also, some of the functionality isn't easy to use and creates frustration for less knowledgeable users.

Vorteile

When you are able to figure out how to use the various features, Planning Center is an incredible software for church use. For check ins, volunteer scheduling, church membership databases, and all things relating to music/band planning, it is an excellent software. I schedule volunteers for our church's kids ministry, manage check-ins, and played in the church band. Though it is sometimes complicated to use, the actual options available in Planning Center are great. Most of what you would ever need to do can be found in this software.

Nachteile

Though it has a wide range of functionality, it is not user friendly at all. As someone who managed around 100 kids ministry volunteers, I saw this first hand. Not only did it take me a long time to gain any kind of real proficiency in it and even after years of using it, I still occasionally learned new things about it. I was also met with many questions from volunteers about checking schedules and seeing attachments on schedules. If it was easy to use, it would have been a near perfect church software but, unfortunately, it was quite complicated.

Vorteile

Planning Center Online -- or, PCO as we call it! -- has allowed us to integrate multiple aspects of church leadership into one, easy-to-use platform. WE can plan our worship services, schedule our volunteers, and manage the use of our facilities -- all for a very reasonable price.

Nachteile

There were some features that took some time to learn, and weren't always so intuitive. Getting other leaders to learn how to manage their "area" wasn't always easy, and sometiems required more "teaching" them than I would have liked.

Vorteile

Planning Center does a lot of things. From planning services to keeping track of church members, Planning Center helps organize multiple parts of your ministry. If you're looking for an all-in-one solution, this platform is your best option.

Nachteile

While Planning Center does a lot, it doesn't stand out in any of its features. There are 4 main applications that manage church members, church service, event registrations, and event check-ins. For the most part, they're intuitive until you switch from one app to the other. The design and flow don't really match in each area so it's a ding in Planning Center's best aspect of being all-in-one. You'll be hard-pressed to find a better all-in-one solution but, you may want to look at other options if you're more focused on a single area of what Planning Center tackles.

Vorteile

No paper! I don’t have to keep file cabinets full of paper music and whatever notes someone makes on their app are saved for future use.

Nachteile

It’s still a bit clunky in navigation and searching. I’d like it if it started suggesting songs as I’m typing in the search box. But I appreciate not having to click in the search box after each search. Adding songs is still a guessing game. I wish there was a preview of the song so I didn’t have to go thru the entire adding process just to see if it’s the right one.

Vorteile

- Schedules are clear.
- I can blockout dates and times
- All schedules and materials for services are easily found within the app.
- I can easily print items from the app.
- Team members are visible and all statuses (confirmed, declined, etc.).
- Personalized to my liking and functionality.

Nachteile

- Cannot change my choice on confirmations or declining.
- Not super smooth in blocking out dates or finding services.
- Sometimes when I go into messages or a specific service date, I cannot easily go back to the main list of my WHOLE schedule.
- Could get better at recommending to Administrators to fill everything out and keep it up to date for users.

Vorteile

I am a volunteer at my church that uses Planning Center. I get an email and app notification when I am scheduled to play guitar for my church. I then have the option to "accept" or "decline" the request. You can also add "blockout dates" ahead of time so you cannot even be scheduled for specific dates that you know don't work for your schedule.

Nachteile

Nothing. I don't like how I can't see every weekend plan and only the ones I am scheduled on. However, that is not a software issue but a limitation by the church allowing what users like myself have access to. So, overall, this software is amazing and doesn't lack anything that you would want.

Vorteile

PC is a very robust system. I love that it incorporates multiple applications into one suite.

Nachteile

I don't like that when I create an event I cannot give someone else access to edit the event. This is actually a big problem when it comes to having events approved and having an assistant make any changes. I wish they allowed you the ability to co-edit.

Vorteile

I've used Planning center for about a year now though I've known of it for years. I don't know how other churches get by without it! It has so many different uses from checking in children, to organizing rooms and supplies for events, to keeping track of attendance for groups, and of course scheduling volunteers for services. It's very versatile and brings order to the chaos of being a volunteer based work space.

Nachteile

It does have some software bugs with their mobile apps. Often, I've scheduled people on the computer, but when I go to the app it will have other people "pending" under the wrong date and when I try to remove them, I get the "oops, something went wrong" message over and over again. It would also be nice if Planning Center Groups had their own separate phone application to make things more versatile for group leaders, that would be amazing!

Vorteile

It has a lot of features for the money - a value product for the price. I wish we were a large enough organization to make better use of it.

Nachteile

There is a decent-sized "learning curve" to effectively use this product. While there are a lot of products within the larger product, it gets cumbersome at times to use it effectively.

Vorteile

It is a great tool for centrally managing an event where you need to coordinate among individuals with various roles & responsibilities. Has a good communication engine.

Nachteile

I found it difficult to do some tasks. Neither the web interface, nor the mobile app are very intuitive to operate. I've wasted a lot of time trying to lookup information, or make simple changes. When I finally figured out how, I thought to myself, "Well that was a dumb way to design that!" I would like their developers to spend a little more time in usability testing.

Vorteile

Planning Center has been used and implemented at most churches I've been involved with. I like how you can schedule people for specific jobs, and add all your song notes, uploaded pdfs or recordings. It makes communicating and organizing with different volunteers and leaders easy. I also like how everything is located in a central place. I think Planning Center is best when there are more people involved. If you have a smaller group for your worship team, it becomes unnecessary.

Nachteile

Planning Center gets weird when you have the same email address associated with multiple churches. I've had issues logging into one because of an association with a different church. I've had to contact church administrators and ask them to remove me from their system in order to get it to work with the correct account.

Vorteile

Great database for all the people & schedules we have to keep organized. Easy to schedule for your ministry area & avoid conflicts in others.

Nachteile

Services can be hard to setup initially but began to work really well for us once we got it straightened out. Also, its easy to get several duplicate profiles created for the same person during signup processes if info has changed.

Vorteile

There are many great aspects of Planning Center. We don't use every piece, but the Check-Ins are HUGE. This is THE way to allow kids to be checked in during our Sunday services. Having a barcode scanner makes the process much quicker and easier. The update allowed past registration issues to be fixed (users were listed twice - once as an "employee" and second as "customer"). The second biggest piece we use is the Services portal. Allowing every member of the worship/media team to see the flow of service is great! Everyone can be on the same page while allowing service to flow smoothly - almost without the congregation even knowing there's an order to things...

Nachteile

Have to jump through hoops to get any type of technical support. The answers aren't always online in the FAQ or Help pages. On top of that, not "anyone" can create a ticket, it must come from the contact person. That's normally fine, but what if they're on vacation, or just happen to be the person who pays the bill? On a Sunday morning when kids are going crazy and parents are looking at you like you did something wrong - it doesn't help.

Vorteile

I am able to keep my staff and pastors in the loop and in the know at all times. Makes my job so much easier!

Nachteile

I wish there was better reporting capabilities. I would also like to have training able, as I had to learn how to use PC mostly on my own.

Vorteile

There are several apps Planning Center offers that are excellent. For instance, the services app is second-to-none and the registration app is great as well. You can keep things easy or really get down into the weeds with each and your users will have a fairly easy time adapting to its use.

Nachteile

The price tiers leave a little to be desired. It can get pricey the bigger your church is (a number size doesn't fit all in terms of financial resources available). Suing Planning Center as a database has taken quite a bit of adjustment, but has worked, overall.

Vorteile

Our church has three campuses and streams online, we have over 400 volunteers and we use Planning Center to manage all of it. Between the desktop platform and mobile app, we can schedule team members for about 20 different teams. We also use it for our kids' ministry check-in and check-out.

Nachteile

As a user and team lead, I don't have to many cons. It would be nice to be able to add a person to an existing team via the app instead of having to use the desktop site. But maybe this is possible and I just haven't learned it yet.

Vorteile

We've used Planning Center for the management of our church worship team for seven years, so I've seen many iterations and improvements over the years. Every change they've made has been for the better. They've really listened to their users as far as features that have been added. My favorite is the ability to transpose songs. I'm also a HUGE fan of the accompanying Music Stand app.

Nachteile

After every upgrade, I've had to "reteach" myself how to use it. Buttons move, features changs. Most of the changes are for the better, but I have put off app upgrades, so I don't have to go through that process immediately.

Vorteile

The thing I like most about Planning Center is how the Services app within its suite of apps works to allow me to see everyone who is volunteering on any given Sunday for the service.

Nachteile

The thing I like least about the software is that it seems impossible to back out or cancel once I've accepted to serve at X event. I would have to directly contact the organizer and maybe they could cancel me.

Vorteile

-Service details page intuitively shows people/notes/attachments/order all in one place
-Great iOS app with feature parity with web version, push notifications in addition to SMS alerts are a nice bonus
-Integration with Google Calendar and iCloud Calendar automatically puts services in your calendar
-It is easy to communicate with team leaders about blackouts and reminders

Nachteile

-It is difficult to create recurring blockouts as it's unclear what info (reason/times for blockout) is repeated
-Message delivery can be flaky (particularly with custom non-automated messages), requiring the users to manually check the web dashboard

Vorteile

The People Module is the best. I love the ability to update the people/family information on the fly is great. The list feature within the People Module gives you the ability to create lists of all sorts by age, address, interests, service or ministry. It updates automatically ever evening to insure the most accurate data.

Nachteile

Using the Custom Fields within the People Module was a bit challenging, because it is a custom field it is a bit broad but because the natural of the software you would have a a better solution to record the service or ministry dates & positions a little more easily. The Planning Center help center just tells you to use the custom fields but doesn't give you much help from there.

Vorteile

Planning Center is a solution that really provides church an "all-in-one" solution to various aspects of church management - from volunteers, to donations, to events.

Nachteile

Unfortunately, while Planning Center provides a one stop shop with many features, there are competitors with specialized software tools that does a better job at some of those features. We were most interested in donations forms, but found Planning Center's to be lacking in customizability as well as integration with other software API's or something like Zapier.