Planning Center Reviews - Page 5

I used this software as a volunteer coordinator and it was very simple to learn. The software can auto generate new or rotating service weeks to make long term scheduling easier. It also clearly shows who has accepted, declined, or has not responded to their service request.

There are no cons that pertain to the particular part of the software that I use.

Hi Kayla! We're delighted to hear that you've been enjoying your use of Services. Our aim is always to make sure your experience is as good as it can be. Should you encounter any areas of friction or if you have any feature requests you'd like to see us add to the platform, please us know using support@planning.center. Have a great day!

The Planning Center team must be inside my brain. Everything that I have ever needed within my various roles over the years in the church, planning center was able to address. From service planning, to giving, event registration, facility use schedules to and best church database software. It is everything that you need.

Time to time there are various glitches. Which is pretty common, but they are quick to address.

I like that when there is an update to the church service, the choir then knows the order of the service, the songs that we will sing and the capability to learn songs with the audio of each part. I like that I can set my alto part in the song to repeat the recording so that I can listen to it over and over again to learn my part. I like that I can see who has accepted to attend and who hasn't. Some people however, don't accept or decline the request making it harder for the choir director to know how many and who will be in attendance.

I don't like that previous services cannot be accessed once the date has passed. I would like to see an archive section to review previous songs. I wish that sermons could be captured by clicking on the title so that I could revisit past sermons. Some of the recordings aren't quality so it makes it hard to understand the lyrics to learn them correctly. I would also like to see the document viewer be better to view the song lyrics.

It's very simple and intuitive to use, and makes planning and scheduling worship teams and services very simple and organized. In addition, the company is constantly working on improving their products and adding new services that add more and more value.

It's become very deep over the years and some of the more advanced features (that I watched them add) can be overwhelming to new users.

Thanks so much for your honest feedback of the applications and we are glad it is a powerful tool for you and your Organization. If you have any suggestions on how to make the process of the new features less overwhelming we would love to hear them so we can continue to make the software the best that it can be. You can open a ticket with our support at support@planning.center this way we can record your Feature Request and pass on to the Team.

Planning Center keeps everyone involved with any aspect of service planning connected and informed.

I'd like to see the Planning Center team extend their offerings to include Microsoft Windows users. I use an HP tablet, and would love to use Planning Center's Music Stand app in the Windows 10 environment.

Thanks for your review, Andre! We're always keeping track of those customers looking for a Windows version of Music Stand, so I've let our devs know this is something you'd like to see as well. We're grateful to be able to serve you and your congregation!

It's great to be able to load songs, scriptures and announcements into one source and have so many people benefit from it.

Like anything to do with computers, it's Garbage In / Garbage Out. You only get what you put into it. So, it takes some time to input the information each time. But, the results are good, after the effort.

Hey Joe, thanks for the review! If you're willing, we'd love to see if we can make inputting information into Plans easier for you. Shoot us an email at support@planningcenteronline.com and we'll take a look!

So many options! Service planning and structure and scheduling. Small group organization and sign ups. Safe check in for children and students.

Duplication of profiles when someone signs up with a different email or incorrectly types their email (.con instead of .com haha) Not being able to precheck children very early. Would be nice to be able to do it a day or two in advance.

Thank you for your kind words, Elizabeth! If you'd like to, please feel free to send us an email at support@planningcenter.com to share more details about having children precheck prior to the day of the event. We thrive on customer feedback and are glad to pass any details onto the Check-Ins team. Have a great day!

I like the variety of features with this software. You can use Planning Center alone or in conjunction with the various other programs they have. Planning Center is great to use as a central data base and is a full church-management software. It is affordable, easy to use, and they have excellent customer service.

The only issue we have had is that it is easier to use all of the components to this software when it is in "live" mode, which only occurs when an event is happening. However, you can change those parameters and set-up an test event to bypass this.

It integrates almost everything our church needs in into one place. We have giving, serving planning, event registration, directory, etc all in one app/website.

Planning center is still somewhat limited in each of its different services. For example, in the giving app/service you can record all of the giving your church gets, which is awesome. But tracking non tax-deductible money is more difficult, and you still have to run another software program like quickbooks pro for expenses and the non tax deductible items. We are hopeful this will change over time as they keep developing.

Thanks so much for sharing your feedback. I went ahead and have passed on your suggestions as a Feature Request to our Giving Team. If you have any other suggestions you can email our support @support@planning.center and we'd be happy to pass on any feedback for you to our Team.

I love that I can put all of my people and my service files in to one application, create an event, then easily pull them all together in one place. I'm a fan of the automatic reminders that I can program, and how customizable the templates are. Putting services and other events is easy and user friendly.

There are so many functions and tabs that make using Planning Center through an app difficult. I can label people with a "tag" or a "position," and they can't be used interchangeably which makes putting my teams together difficult at times, so I feel like that could be improved. I would also like more library/database record keeping options for music.

Planning Center is super easy to use, very first time user friendly and easy to train new people on!

Transposing the key on new songs was a little more difficult compared to the rest of Planning Center.

This takes the edge off of the Admin work I have to do weekly. The ease of scheduling people is my favorite.

- The new designs, though beautiful, take up too much screen space - As an administrator, I don't like the automatic "Teams" filter applied when I try to view the People page. - I wish it could handle my CCLI reporting for me.

Hey Josh, thanks for sharing the love for the apps and also some great suggestions. As for the "My Teams" filter, you can select the drop-down, and "unpin" that filter. By doing this you will no longer see that defaulted filter the next time you launch the People tab in Services. In regards to CCLI we can pass on as a Feature Request for you. In the meantime, we have some great reports/resources to help you with reporting. If you have any questions on how these features work, feel free to email us at support@planning.center

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!

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.

Hey Jennifer! Thanks so much for the feedback. We lobe that it has helped streamline your communication and made your job easier. As for training, we do have our Planning Center university that gives an in-depth training on each of our products. This is available here: https://planning.center/university As for improved reporting capabilities, we'd love to hear about some of the suggestions you have. Would you be up for sharing with us by emailing us at support@planning.center We are always looking for ways to improve our products so that they continue to support the church and their processes for reaching their community.

I love how easy Planning Center is to use. Everything is very intuitive from Services to Check-Ins to Giving. It is a robust platform but requires very little training to start using.

Each of the applications costs has a monthly subscription charge so it can get a little pricey, but well worth it.

This is an amazing support to the organization of our team. The ability to plan events - schedule people for those events - and to contact them automatically cuts our time down so much. It allows us to put energy elsewhere knowing that Planning Center is doing it's job. It has improved our communication and efficiency greatly.

There are some struggles with the layout of the app. It tends to not be as user friendly as it use to be honestly. The recent changes have cause some frustration - even though change is good.

Thanks for the review, Micah! We're always interested in hearing feedback on new features. If you're willing, send your thoughts on to support@planningcenteronline.com.

I love everything about PCO. For real. I use mostly every feature and have yet to find another product cheaper and better. Do it!

I really don’t have one. Maybe...at times it’s a bit too good. Sometimes it’s so intuitive that it’s easy to overthink features.

Planning Centre is an excellent tool for church organisation. It has a wide range of features that supports all the key aspects of church service/meeting planning: team management, music group and media management, rota scheduling, and many others. The permissions controls are helpfully graded to allow various levels of devolved access. Calendar integrations are helpful too. The layout and user interface is clean and clear and the design is consistent across the web version and mobile versions.

There used to be some limitations but technical developments over the past couple of years have really improved functionality and robustness. There isn't anything significant that can be faulted on this software from my use and requirements of it.

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...

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.

We use Planning Center for absolutely everything in our church. Whether acting as our church member database, service itineraries and scheduler, check-in systems for children’s ministry, or registering for events, Planning Center provides an extremely reliable platform that is user-friendly for all of our staff and volunteers! They have wonderful customer service and are constantly adding new features to their platform.

I don’t know if any cons with using the software. Planning Center does a great job of staying ahead of the game and fixing bugs before they become major problems.

Hey Benjamin - Thanks for the review! So glad to hear Planning Center has been useful in your ministry. Please reach out if you have any questions!

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.

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.

I love that it's user-friendly and that there are so many training resources. If you can't figure it out on your own you can just jump over to a training video or click on the help questions and usually get the info you need. The customer service is also amazing! We've had to reach out a few times with issues we didn't know how to fix and they jumped right on it.

I'd say my biggest hurdle is making sure my leaders know how to use it. Because I started as an Admin I never saw what it's like from a "volunteer" standpoint so sometimes I don't know how to answer volunteer's questions or know how to direct them. I've had others log on for me so I could see their account and then walk them through their questions from their.

The best part of Planning Center is being able to pick and choose which parts of the software you actually need. You don't have to worry about paying exorbitant prices for tons of features you don't need. The pricing is based on what your church needs. And it's so easy to add or remove apps. This may have started as a service scheduling software, but it has become established as a resource, scheduling, and giving database for our church.

The only con I could see with this software is learning. I've been using this software for many years, but for those who are first trying it out could need some extra time getting started and used to it. They provide great training videos but if they built an onboarding process for newbies, it could make the product that much greater for the larger church management software market.

Very user friendly. Volunteers are able to intuitively use it without a need for training. Works together to give more detail about each user. It's mobile friendly and has various apps across platforms. Very affordable.

They do lack some more complex reporting features. We've also had issues with the registration module not being very simple for the end user. We've also had issues with registration lacking some basic functionality you would expect it to have.

Hi Steve, Thanks for your review. Could you please follow up with us and let us know which reporting features are missing for you? We'd also like to hear about which Registrations features were more difficult for people who were signing up. Registrations has just had some significant updates made to it, so it's possible those issues were addressed in the update. You can email support@planning.center with that information. Reagan Helms Support Team Lead

This software covers all the bases for church management. It comes with an app, it covers children's ministry, worship, registrations, check-ins, groups, facility management and giving.

I wish it included more features about guest followup such as texting.

Hey Terri, thanks so much for the feedback, we are so glad that the software has been a blessing to you and your team. Texting is definitely a feature that we do hope to support in the future. In the meantime, we have some great third party texting companies that integrate with us. You can check out that list here: https://pcopeople.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002285534-Third-Party-Integrations If you have any suggestions on how we can continue to improve our apps we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us at support@planning.center Have a blessed one.

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

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.