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.

One-Stop-Shop for Church Management

Kommentare: Our church has used a few different church management tools, and I feel none (at least at the time we had them) have been as comprehensive or easy to use as Planning Center. It is a powerful tool that helps us manage everything we do at our church.

Vorteile:

I love how everything works together, and how all the modules are connected by the people module. I also love the "Church Center" Hub, with everything in one place.

Nachteile:

It's not cheap, but I think you definitely get what you pay for.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Planning Center.. Leaps above Fellowship One.. Still wishing we went with CCB.

Kommentare: It's been really good! The reporting and volunteer management options have really helped us a ton.

Vorteile:

The Services product is incredible. We could not imagine better.. after getting it setup that is. The reporting you can do is incredible.

Nachteile:

The giving isn't great and the integrations leave something to be desired. We really wish they would build an actual robust email software so we could stop paying squarespace for this.

Best service planning software around

Kommentare: Around Services and Check ins, Planning Center has been exceptional with customer service and helping us sort through issues. Their tutorial videos are also great. We didn't have great luck with customer service around the financial module, hence the choice to go another direction with our overall database while continuing to use Services.

Vorteile:

Planning Center Services automates really helpful admin and communication work and allows teams to learn and grow with all of the resources they need. From an administrator's perspective, the ability to schedule and view services in matrix mod and keep track of multiple teams of volunteers with various limitations and requests using the preferences and blackouts is easily worth the monthly cost. Services is the backbone of planning center, and there's good reason that it's the standard in mid-sized and larger churches. The interface is intuitive and easy for volunteer users to figure out, and they do a great job of continuing to innovate features and usability.

Nachteile:

While the other modules across planning center have great integration, our church found that the finances side lacked necessary features, meaning we are now running a separate database/CRM while still running planning center services. We wanted to be able to add financial information (givings) into the database without the person entering the data seeing previous data - essentially the ability to enter data blindly. I suspect many other churches are running different databases as well as planning center services, and the multi-system approach isn't ideal, so it would be nice to have a more responsive development team as planning center's interface is generally well built and user friendly.

Planning center best tool for managing charismatic groups and churches

Kommentare: Planning center allowed me to better know all the members of the organization to which I belong and to know how to enlist them in the work for a common good.

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.

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.

Good app and cool features

Vorteile:

I like how audio can be uploaded and played on the app. Even downloaded. I could listen to songs so I know how to plan using the cameras.

Nachteile:

Sometimes it was hard to find specific things but that could depend on the admins and where they put it and label 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.

Planning Center Will Power You to Victory

Kommentare: It's been great overall.

Vorteile:

I have used Planning Center in the past with my church. It's been a helpful database useful with church information. It's helped me do my job more effectively as a church staff member. I would recommend it.

Nachteile:

Some of the features may be daunting at first if you're not familiar with it. It may take some time to get used to it.

Great Tool

Kommentare: It is easy to use and keeps me up to date on when and where I should be.

Vorteile:

I can easily see when and where I am scheduled to volunteer.

Nachteile:

I haven't run into anything that I don't like as of yet.

A new and unique experience

Kommentare: Overall, a good experience, although it needs some updates to make it easier for any user to use

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

Planning Center is great

Kommentare: Overall, Planning Center is a great and easy software to use.

Vorteile:

One thing I like is how easy it is to donate and use overall.

Nachteile:

I don't have anything I don't like about Planning Center.

Church Managment

Kommentare: Recently added attendance to the mix, and is working great

Vorteile:

Great option for church-wide implementation

Nachteile:

Features for worship planning are a bit slim

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.

Comparison to WorshipTeam software

Kommentare: Overall, I do like Planning Center, but I am really torn, because the "Cons" chew up a ton of my time. In my previous church (5 years ago), I DID use Planning Center and thought it was great. I realize that Planning Center is the "BIG PLAYER", but there are definitely things they could improve to make the experience easier.

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.