Planning Center

Planning Center for a smooth operation

Pros:

The integration and management of personnel, as well as the workflow of productions. The software also has many options for customization per production which is very useful.

Cons:

At the present time there are no real negatives.

Robust yet specific for church management

Comments: 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!!

Pros:

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!

Cons:

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.

Part of it Works for Us

Comments: At this point, it is used in a minimal way, to lay out our order of service and schedule 2 ministry teams out of the 10+ teams that serve at each of our services.

Pros:

Makes scheduling and organizing our order of service very simple for the administration team. When an item such as teaching changes from 30 minutes to 40 minutes, the modifications are easy to implement without having to recalculate the time of day from one item to the next. When that same item is moved someplace else in the order of service it's a simple drag and drop and all times for the service are automaticallly adjusted.

Cons:

Not a great tool for our volunteers. The scheduling module is a little difficult to train volunteers to use. They all give it a shot but most revert to using excel spreadsheets. Report templates, unless you are an html programmer, aren't flexible enough to give me the layout I am looking for. We tried to use it to check in our children but the unreliability of connecting and printing name tags caused huge delays, aggravated our parents and frustrated the volunteers. I am advised they have resolved that problem, however, due to their prior experience our children's church isn't willing to give it another chance.

The best option for church database management

Comments: Since we switched to entirely managing our church database through Planning Center, we have much better buy in for online sign ups and registrations and all our data is linked and much more accurate and up to date. Young and old learn how to use it quickly.

Pros:

Professionally developed platform with advanced features that are also well thought out and user friendly for both back end and front end users. They are regularly adding features and developing their host of apps.

Cons:

Some of their products are more basic, but they focus on where it counts.

Check it out! It's worth the try!

Comments: Overall my experience has been very positive, as I continue to use Planning Center and get more familiar with the features - I like it even more.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.