Planning Center Reviews - Page 6

PCO is a very full-featured church operating system (except no integrated accounting). It makes so much of the work of church management easier and better integrated. Online registrations, meeting materials, giving, and so much more. Their support staff is also amazing. They respond to questions and problems very quickly, and have resolved some technical issues very promptly.

Wish that you could set security at a more micro basis. Users have either full permission to the selected modules, or no permission. It would be nice to select functions within modules for permission, for example in Giving, it would be nice to give the counting team the ability to enter a batch, but not finalize it, or not release a finalized batch for further editing.

Thank you for your review Doug! In regards to permissions, specifically in Giving, we plan to introduce additional levels of access down the road. We don't have an exact ETA, but this is on our roadmap of future updates! You can stay in the loop on new Giving features from our announcements page here: https://bit.ly/2x3Rsyv

We just signed up for planning center a few months ago and it seems like it has everything we need. I love how you can customize what apps/ service you need and not have to purchase things you don't need. Seems fairly easy to use and can integrate paypal.

It has been a little difficult to set it up and transfer all our information from our previous database. But other than that it seems good.

Planning Center makes it so easy to plan schedule and disseminate information to all of my teams. I love being able to set notifications to go to different team leaders and keep track of everything from one place. Integrations with MailChimp and Song Select are invaluable.

Spotify has removed support for integrations and I'd like to see the option to set a default browser in the mobile app.

Hey Wallace, thanks so much for the love and feedback. If you have any suggestions on how we can continue to improve the software for you and your Team, you can reach us at support@planning.center Hope you and your team have a blessed one.

We use it for scheduling teams, and planning services. It is very user friendly for the "viewers", to update their info, put in block-out dates, view their schedule and accept/decline assignments . I like that there are many options for reports and they are even editable. I like that edits occur immediately and can be seen by all schedulers simultaneously, which makes group scheduling useful.

Of course, the cost is always an issue, but the functionality makes up for it.

Planning Center has a fantastic platform for planning, scheduling, and running events. Scheduling teams in the matrix view and auto-schedule function make staffing positions a breeze. It's convenient that they keep a history of deleted plans for about 30 days in case you need to refer to them. The songs section makes keeping any files such as PDF's, MP3's, or links organized with the correct asset.

It can be daunting the learn how to use the software for a new user. I've encountered some issues when trying to print plans such as it not including elements I wished to include. It would be nice if you could see edits a user is making in real-time on the page.

Planning Center has everything a church needs to plan services and organize church attendance. They continue to release more and more options for better functionality.

There is a learning curve in using the interface. The site functions well but sometimes it can be tricky to walk new users through the site until they can learn it well.

Overall features and automated emails/text to volunteers was 100% worth it for anything price or ease-of-use issue that I had. Saving time saves me $$$.

Planning Center was not easy to use initially and took an investment of time to get 'onboarded' to know what to do and how to use it. That said, I'm still sold on how useful this tool is.

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.

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.

Planning Center is easy to set up and use as a basic ChMS. It has everything you need under one roof. They also provide fantastic support articles and videos.

There are nuances throughout the system that make it evident that we will need to switch to another platform once we grow to a particular size. Reporting is not always user friendly and we often find ourselves having to export large amounts of data and sort it ourselves in Excel to get what we want (especially in regards to Giving data). Additionally, the inability to get support personnel on the phone is a pain at times. Having to run support strictly through email can be a huge barrier and waste of time.

Planning Center makes church administration tasks FUN! You feel like you are getting the job done in a way that is satisfying to the admin as well as the user. Lots of features, always updating and adding (without increasing the price).

Some features could really use input from a focus group of actual users. 90% of Planning Center is incredible--but a few odd choices here and there leave me scratching my head why certain decisions were made on the development end. But by in large--excellent!

I love the ability to have all parts of the planning process in one place, with mulitple applications that all connect and work seamlessly together.

I wish there was the ability to connect to third party software. Everything works great as long as you are in the ecosystem but if you prefer another software for one or more functions it gets a bit complicated to use them in tandem.

Hi, Angel! Thank you for the review. We're really glad that using Planning Center has been a solid experience for you overall. As far as addressing the callout you had with connecting to third-party software, we'd love to hear a bit more about what you have in mind. Could you send a ticket to support@planning.center and let us know what type(s) of integration you're looking for between other products? We might be able to offer some suggestions or at least track your ideas as a feature request. Thanks and have a wonderful day!

Planning center integration for many different purposes within the church. When I first use planning center I was a user at a church where I was involved with worship ministry and the planning of services. I would receive an email saying that I had been scheduled for something and it was easy to respond and also give the dates that I wasn’t available in advance. Now I Work for a nonprofit that uses planning center people to organize it’s volunteer base. It easily integrates with mail champ and I love that.

When I originally used it for service planning I didn’t realize how integrated the People section was. The different sections that you can obtain our little confusing but once you figure that out it’s easy to use.

I like the fact that once the system is set up it has a lot of automatic functions and it is fairly easy to use without training.

I feel the directions/training on the initial set up of the system skips over key elements or is not organized in a manor that makes it easy for someone who has never seen their system before to set it up.

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.

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.

I love the ability with the Service portion of Planning Center. With that, we have all the info of our volunteers for each ministry saved in one place and are able to schedule them where needed. The fact the members can mark their availability and accept or decline an invitation to serve has streamlines the whole process and greatly reduced the time it takes to ask people to serve. You can create different teams of people. different events and plan. It is a must have for any church wanting to utilize people in the most efficient way.

The only complaint I have had is sometimes people new to the app have a hard time figuring it out. As soon as I am able to walk them through it they seem to be able to figure it out.

Planning Center really does just about everything you could ask it to do from managing services, to groups management, to people database, to check ins, to registrations, and so much more. It really is one of the best out there for user experience and as a one stop solution for the entire church.

Planning Center isn't cheap, but you get what you pay for. There are a couple of things that you have to learn work arounds for as well. Like sending second invitations. The program is designed to have people sign up for service opportunities and to manage themselves. There are work arounds to have your leaders do this as well, but it takes a little getting use to.

Everything! Planning Center is the best software Ive ever used for helping organize church services! We use it every week and Ive used it for almost the past decade exclusively! It has great ways of contacting the teams and keeping everyone on the same page and prepared for the weekend services!

The only thing Ive ever not loved about Planning Center is planning center resources and that is only because it was a little confusing at first and didn't seem to have a logical system of reserving rooms

Hey David, We just made some big changes to Planning Center Resources, and plan to add some more in the near future. Our reservation page looks and functions like a calendar now. If you'd like to give it another try, contact our support team and they can give you another free trail!

I am a worship leader at our church. With his software I am able to review the week’s song set as well as review lyrics. Oftentimes the songs will be performed in a different key than what team members are familiar with. So an audio file can be uploaded. This is great since I always sing harmonies; I can learn the new notes while driving home from work since the app is available on my phone.

Earlier versions of the app were extremely buggy on the iPhone. It was easier to log into website than deal with the app. However, the current version is a huge improvement. Quite seamless. Not very intuitive with some features. Buttons don’t take you where you figure they would. But the features to listen/view to the files are great. I like the loop/repeat feature on the playback the most.

Hi! Thank you for your kind words and honest review! If you are finding some buttons unintuitive in the web or mobile apps, we'd love to hear from you with the details of what is happening vs. what you are expecting to happen. Contact our support team through the help section of the mobile app. We'd love to help!

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.

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.

Hi Rachel, Thanks for writing an honest review with lots of great ideas! If you haven't done so already, would you mind sending in those ideas to us so that we can track them as a feature request? You can send us an email at support@planning.center. Thanks!

I love the user interface, the price, the support, the multitude of features, and the way they are constantly developing the software to make it better.

This is a very user-friendly tool. To achieve that, they limit options. Sometimes those limitations can be frustrating. We had to find workarounds several times to accomplish necessary tasks.

I like that Planning Center has many different programs available for different things. I specifically use "Services" to organize and arrange our church services, "Check Ins" to log attendance and to add an extra security measure for our children, and "People" which we use as our database or our church roster. The integration between each of their applications is pretty awesome, and each program is very easy to use.

The only negative thing I have to say is that it wouldn't work on my wife's iPhone 6s, but we have a total of 20 something other devices that it has worked fine with.

Auto-volunteer contact and reminder texts/emails Ease of creating assigned roles and positions Drag-and-drop method for assigning volunteers to a specific role Custom email/text templates for communication Rotating schedules can be formed for monthly/weekly/daily volunteers Information on all volunteers in one place Integrations with CCLI, ProPresenter, and other softwares

Can be tricky getting from one area to another for planning Steep initial learning curve

Thanks for the love, and we are glad it is a great asset to you and your ministry. We'd love to hear more about your experience and any suggestions you may have to help with the learning curve. If you'd email your thoughts to support@planning.center, our team would be happy to send any suggestions you have on.

Apple said it first, "There's an app for that!" When it comes to church management, Planning Center has an app for almost everything! I like that we can use ONE system for multiple needs: kids' check-in, event registrations, volunteer scheduling, and more!

Running reports or creating lists using the data collected can be kind of tricky at first. It would be nice if Planning Center offered some basic reports that could be run without having to customize and set them up yourselves for those not naturally gifted in analyzing data.

I love that it’s sort of a one stop for lyrics/chords/mp3. I haven’t used the media feature in yet, but I’m sure it’s neat.

I wish that the default arrangement/other arrangement tab were able to do a sort of preview if you were to hover the mouse over it. Maybe this is more on the user side of things, but I also wish that it were able to decipher when there duplicates of songs being added.

We're glad you enjoy the one stop shop and that you love the features. We'd love to hear more about your experience and any suggestions you may have to improve the user experience. If you'd email your thoughts to support@planning.center, our team would be happy to send any suggestions you have on.

This is by far the best product I have used for managing volunteers. You can communicate directly from the platform. It has the ability to have volunteers sign up manually for open positions. It works great with the app that volunteers can download. Amazing way to schedule and maintain teams! I know who is showing up, when they confirmed, where my open positions and needs are every week. Love this platform! Love that its completely cloud based as well. Can access easily from anywhere.

It can take quite of bit of work to get off the ground depending on the number users you are setting up. Also, can be a little clunky to navigate but once you get the hang of it it works out quite well.