Planning Center

Very useful for all Departments!

Vorteile:

The design, the backend ease of accessibility, the layout. The ease of use for both users and administrators, the amount of features that could be used each week, and also the ability to store files and songs into it.

Nachteile:

It was a bit pricey, and also the financial organizing side wasn't ideal. When it came to service flow layout, it seemed a bit awkward looking, like the agenda needed to be updated to streamline and match the rest of the platform.

Trae Bremer

Vorteile:

Planning center provides a foundation to manage your church. Its a go to platform that allows to approach and manage every aspect all from one software. That's my favorite part, the fact our whole church can be managed from one program.

Nachteile:

I do think planning center can continue to update it's email system. Though Mailchimp is a great integration, the lack of customizing email templates and list can be updated.

The best for Hispanic Church

Kommentare: I love using it and found it easy for a new church planter like myself. As I travel through the us planting other prophetic and apostolic churches I will use this in the future

Vorteile:

I like that I can customize things into Spanish

Nachteile:

The cost. It was expensive for a new church plant that had no funding

Covers all the bases

Kommentare: Overall we enjoy using Planning Center. The few downfalls are highly outweighed by all of the benefits.

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.

Planning Center: A Must do for Any Ministry

Kommentare: My experience with Planning Center has always been good. The Services platform is amazing and I love using it to plan worship and create service orders. Their customer service reps are always so nice. There was even a time of financial struggle in one of the churches. I reduced our system down to the free level and the reps were so nice and even credited back money we had prepaid. Planning Center is customizable, affordable, and a great resource for any ministry, church or nonprofit.

Vorteile:

I love Planning Center. I have worked in several churches and have started planning center from the ground up on several occasions. Every feature is very intuitive. It was so easy to learn and set-up. I have been an administrator as well and love the ability to view what others in the system do. It is great at sending email reminders. There are so many features you can customize for your own ministry situation. It transposes chord charts for you. What I am describing is just Planning Center's Services platform because I am the most familiar with that part. There other applications are useful and helpful as well.

Nachteile:

It is truly had to think of a con. The smallest complaint I have is minor. I download the chord charts I make in Planning Center chord chart maker as pdfs. When I have gone to a new system, I can only upload the pdf...I cannot change the song's key or arrangement in the chord chart maker as I could before in the prior system. But again, that's minor.

Industry Standard for a reason

Kommentare: Planning Center is great, don't get me wrong. If your church has the funds to invest in Planning Center, or if you are already using their other software, it is likely the best solution out there for you. HOWEVER, (and that is a big however) if your church has a ChMS that already offers worship planning, it is likely just fine! I am with a different church now, and we just switched to Pushpay. Their worship planning is very simple and offers SongSelect integration. If you are a small to medium-sized church, looking for worship planning software, I would HIGHLY encourage you to make sure you do not already have access to this in your ChMS, and if you do not, consider switching to a solution like Pushpay where it is integrated. I know ShelbySystems offers this too. But if your budget and situation allows you will be thrilled with the functionality and user interface you find in Planning Center. It is simple enough for volunteers to use and the optional Music Stand app is great for getting music into the hands of your musicians early in the week, and allowing them to have their music on their phone or more preferably iPad/tablet. But if your current system offers an alternative, it is probably not worth the extra to have Planning Center as well.

Vorteile:

The simplicity to plan services and schedule volunteers help make it the best!

Nachteile:

Planning Center is the leader in worship planning software and they know it! Planning center is expensive an may not be worth it for your church. Especially if you have another ChMS that already offers worship planning.

BEST Software For Churches!

Vorteile:

By far the best and most comprehensive church software out there, simply for the fact that everything is integrated together! I can give my volunteers everything they need, and plan out months of music at a time, work with all our other volunteers, sync our app for small groups, sync our calendar, sync our online giving, and more. I wouldn't recommend any other worship planning software!

Nachteile:

The only con I have is that I wish, like some other church software, you could make your own app that's fully branded for you, including the name. To download our app, you have to search Church Center and then find your church. Not that big of a deal, but it's the only con I have.

Church Service Planning

Vorteile:

I have been using Planning Center for many years now and I have enjoyed using it. It is easy to use, and I get all information needed for when I am scheduled to serve in worship.

Nachteile:

In the past I had issues with blocking my schedule but it's been fixed since then

Simple and intuitive

Kommentare: I am mainly an administrator for the People module and an end user as a group leader.

Vorteile:

I have worked with a church management system that was very complex, so it's been nice to work with something more intuitive and simple for the staff to use.

Nachteile:

It appears an integration with our donation platform is not available, so we may have to switch providers.

Great software for church

Vorteile:

I think it's most amazing to make church-related work easy because all the functions are gathered in one place. I'm satisfied with being able to communicate with the songs and lyrics, all the other volunteers, and plan church-related work without difficulty. Also, I was able to easily manage the relevant information of the people.

Nachteile:

There is no cons, everything is good so far.

The MUST USE platform for Worship Planning!

Kommentare: I love using Planning Center and do not plan on switching anytime soon. It has blessed our church and helped me do my job so much more effectively!

Vorteile:

Planning Center is a wonderful platform to create services, organize your volunteers, and create/edit songs! You are able to add lyrics and chords AND transpose both chord sheets AND .mp3's that you can upload (if you have the right copyright)! Users can easily see their schedules and decline/block out dates they know they will be out of town. You can integrate this with ProPresenter for easy service creation and lead your teams to success!

Nachteile:

The only thing I wish Planning Center could do is replace the current membership and online giving platform we currently use. It's getting close but for church management it falls just shy.

Planning Center for Churches

Kommentare: Overall, we enjoy using Planning Center and the apps work extremely well. Everything is customizable and extremely flexible with any kind of organizational system that you may have. They have a great Slack community as well where you can ask for help with any questions you may have.

Vorteile:

We really enjoy using Planning Center. It is easy to use, fast, and very intuitive. The different apps help to keep the data separate and they work together really well. We use like how the apps are quick and easy to find the information that we need.

Nachteile:

The only downside that I find is the cost. I feel that it is slightly overpriced. Everything works great but they charge you for for each app separately. In some ways it could keep costs down but it would be nice if there was an option to save when you are using every app they offer. They also charge to track donations which many companies do not.

Exactly what we needed to take our organization to the next level

Kommentare: Planning Center has been a dream for our church. Before we made the move we had a different system for everything and none of them talked to each other in any way. We were scheduling 200+ volunteers 8 weeks out in an Excel spreadsheet. Our previous database software did almost nothing useful and we avoided even using it. Now with Planning Center we're more organized, automated, and streamlined than ever. I know we're not yet using it to it's full potential, there's so much more we can do still and we're excited to see how Planning Center will continue to change, grow, and get better.

Vorteile:

Planning Center apps more than make up for their cost by the time, headache, and agony they save us. They are well designed and regularly adding new features. Planning Center listens to user feedback and is very friendly. They want to see churches empowered and so they listen to users for direction as they're implementing new features. Their help docs are great. The apps themselves are powerful. They may not always do what you want in the way you want it, but there's always a way to get it done. The integrations – Lists, Automations, Workflows, Forms – transform People from a database app into a powerhouse of tracking and automation.

Nachteile:

Some more complicated tasks are not alway simple for PC novices to figure out; they do require some problem solving and hoop-jumping at times but it's still better than going without. Better training docs for getting users or volunteers up to speed for the first time are currently missing. I find myself having to create these based on existing help docs and my own material.

Saves so much time!

Kommentare: I love this app and will continue to keep using it to its fullest potential. It makes our life at our church so much better using this!

Vorteile:

We utilize the services app for managing peoples schedules and Sunday morning flow of service. It makes it a breeze and is such a huge help with saving time for scheduling and also planning ahead to know how to properly plan!

Nachteile:

I love everything about planning center. It was such a breeze setting up all of the volunteers at our church. And now they love using the app as well!

Planning Center ... makes ChMS easy

Vorteile:

They listen to their users! They love feature requests and actual implement many of them!

Nachteile:

The only "CON" is getting every staff member to buy in and actually use it.

Great Product

Kommentare: Overall, I’ve been very happy with planning center especially when it comes to reporting for CCLI!

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.

The best of the best

Vorteile:

I use Planning Center weekly and would not want to use anything else

Nachteile:

Never had any issues with it, it is always getting better and better

Was helpful but expensive

Vorteile:

Really like how helpful it was in scheduling volunteers.

Nachteile:

We didn’t use it to its full capacity, so wish there was a “lite” version for cheaper.

great App

Kommentare: My experience is wonderful, I advise everyone to go through it .

Vorteile:

The application is very practical and fast .

Nachteile:

The application helps in completing tasks .

Customizable packages - value for money

Kommentare: Overall this is a great program, a great way to keep everything in one place and keep all databases accurate. It helps keep our small groups organized, our calendar organized, and is great for registrations.We track giving and use it for receipts and it has worked nicely for that as well, and takes into account CDN giving rules/laws.

Vorteile:

I love that you can customize which modules you need. You can try a module for 30 days, you don't pay for large usage unless you need it. They give a grace period, where you can get the small package but if you use it more for one month, you don't have to upgrade. It keeps donor management and people database in the same place, so if someone changes their address, it is changed across all modules.

Nachteile:

Reports seem to be difficult to generate accurate results. For example, if you want to generate a report that includes everyone who gave any amount in the past year and attended an event or volunteered. We have tried this report and didn't get back proper results when run by someone other than the giving users. They don't need to know specifics on giving but should be able to add that as a criteria. Also, if someone accidentally deletes a user then there is no way to get them back even if they had giving. There should be a safeguard in place so that only giving users can delete a profile that has giving.I don't like that you cannot use VISA/MC debit for paying,

Planning Genius

Kommentare: It has made my life much easier and I love the automated notifications/notices to remind me of the services I would have signed up for.

Vorteile:

We use it to sign up for teams for weekly church services and for team leaders to plan and allocate roles within the teams. I love those features of the software and it seamlessly syncs between mobile devices and PCs.

Nachteile:

Its all thumbs up from me. I love every bit of it

Robust yet specific for church management

Kommentare: Without Planning Center, churches wouldn't be even 10% as effective at communicating and organizing themselves. This software is invaluable, and as far as I know, the only one of its caliber and kind. I'm so thankful for what the team has done and continues to do to make this software robust and simple for both the mega church and church plant. Thank you Planning Center team!!

Vorteile:

This product seems to think of everything. From making email lists, sign-up sheets, events for the website, volunteer coordination, and giving, Planning Center takes care of all our admin needs for church, as long as we leverage the tools correctly. There is a learning curve for those who are technologically challenged, but there is a big focus on good documentation, so if you wanted to know how to do things right, you can learn. Planning Center does a good job of simplifying as much as possible very complex admin activities that need to be customizable. Coming from someone who knows about databases and information integration, I can be nothing less than highly impressed at what Planning Center has done. Truly, you won't have anything you need to do manually outside of this software for your church which is so good for quality assurance and integrity of records. Invaluable invention!

Nachteile:

Walking the line of customizable and simple is very difficult. Sometimes, I find a limitation of the system that gets in the way of what I want to do, especially in list queries. But in most cases, the option is built in somewhere; I just need to find the way to do it. This can be challenging if you don't know how to search for the help. A college course in this software would honestly be so useful.

This is the software you want

Kommentare: I can't reccomend planning center enough. It's easy to use. It looks good when integrated with our website and digital signage. It encourages collaboration between teams. While it doesn't have an accounting module that kind of thing is best left up to the experts; intuit's products handle accounting much better than any church management software anyway. If you're not already using planning center services, you really should it makes planning worship so much easier and once you see how great that is you'll want to get groups, resources, and everything else and by that time most of your database is already populated and the people module is free. You'll be swapped over to it as your main church management software before you even realize it.

Vorteile:

It is the most user-friendly software. They have more features than you'll ever need and it makes collaboration a breeze. The system always functions as it should and most of the time the development team is several steps ahead, putting out new features that are actually helpful. The fact that they work with groups like renewed vision to integrate with propresenter is incredibly valuable. Everything being cloud based also makes it easy to collaborate between departments on events. Their groups search is easy to use, resolution-responsive and looks great integrated into any website. The kiosk option in their events module makes dynamic calendar-based digital signage really simple. Everyone who has ever resisted adopting planning center at our church has eventually come around to really like it.

Nachteile:

If you have a need for a feature the development team is going to tell you that they may add it one day and never commit to a release. Also they don't offer any training other than videos online - for savvy people this isn't much of a problem because their interface is so user friendly, but if you have staff who refuse to learn things on their own this will deter them from wanting to adopt planning center - though it shouldn't because it is really easy to learn. The pricing model can be somewhat confusing at times and I wish there was more of a discount for people using multiple modules; a large church can get close to spending a thousand dollars a month without much trouble, though I know this is comparable to some other platforms and honestly you get what you pay for.

A game-changer for any church to spice up their worship planning!

Kommentare: Overall, Planning Center has been a game changer for our church. It has allowed us to be more prepared, planned and efficient when practicing and performing our worship services. There are a lot of features that we don't use simply because we are a small church but there are a lot of features.

Vorteile:

The music database has never not had a song we were performing. If it ever doesn't, not worries because you can add custom songs and lyrics that are automatically converted to a viewable PDF. The worship planning feature is pretty great as well. I love the drag and drop arrangement. I also love how you can add times to each song and item so you can estimate a total duration of your set. The member planning is pretty great as well. I love that you can see in real time which members invited have accepted, declined or have not responded to invitations. You can also add audio files (pads, backing tracks) that you can play on the child application Worship Stand.

Nachteile:

The learning curve for this software is pretty high. After a year of using it, I still find it difficult to add songs on the iPad version. I also find that the program crashes frequently when trying to add music. Battery optimization could be worked on as well as it drains battery pretty quickly.

It's core programs are stellar

Kommentare: All in one stop shop for Church Database Management

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.