April Buske

Planning Center is a suite of web-based church management products. Throughout their lifespan, they’ve grown from being a platform to help churches plan their services to a highly functional, robust church management system (ChMS). I recommend every church use Planning Center for planning worship services, hosting registrations, keeping your database, helping keep your children’s ministry secure, and so much more.

It’s all based on their People platform. Planning Center’s People platform is a robust people database for your church. Here are five reasons your church needs to be using Planning Center People.

1. Planning Center People is a free database. Yes. That’s right, 100% free. At my church, we use People to keep all of our church member information straight. We use it to keep addresses and phone numbers up to date. Organize your families into households and even upload profile photos so you can connect a face to a name. Your church can have a free database by signing up anytime at www.planningcenter.com.  
   
   People is also the backbone database to all of Planning Center’s other products, so information updated in People seamlessly updates across the suite of products—and vice versa.
   
   
2. Access it anywhere. Yep, anywhere you can get on the internet, you can access People. People is designed for church staff and pastors to use, and it’s not tied to your church building like a traditional database.
   
   The People app, which is available on both Andriod and Apple devices, and the website are available anywhere you can connect to the internet. My favorite part of the app is that I can click on an address in the app, and the address will open in my maps app. This feature is a significant value-add when I’m getting ready to do a home visit or need directions to drop off a care package. A single tap on the phone numbers from the app will allow you to call or text your parishioner, too!
   
   
3. Lists. You can track or add countless details to each person’s profile in the People database—data as simple as birthdate or whether a person is an adult or a child. Custom tabs let you create fields to track nearly any piece of information you’d like. We have a custom tab for mailing and inclusion information. In each person’s profile, we have a spot to indicate that that person wants a newsletter or to receive our church-wide emails. We can use those custom tabs to generate lists of people (think reports) and export those list results in myriad ways. Reports can be exported as mailing labels, CSV files, people profiles and so much more.
   
   
4. Emails & Text Messages. This one is piggy-backing on the Lists function from #3 above,  but you’ll understand why. You can use the Lists function to send an email, text, or push notification to everyone on the list using built-in features in Planning Center People. It makes my role on the church staff incredibly easy. I love being able to communicate with my church family with such ease. 
   
   All communication sent through Planning Center is stored in People’s communication section. So you can see who has sent each parishioner an email or notification. A log of those communications provides a snapshot of how engaged someone is in your church.
   
   
5. Notes. Our pastors and staff use the notes function almost every day of the week. Notes is where we log congregational care visits, hospital stays, prayer requests, and other important notes. Notes can trigger emails sent to specific staff members and have permissions-based access.
   
   We love that we can restrict specific prayer requests to pastors only. We love that Notes can send a congregational care summary to our congregational care team. It is a huge benefit in making sure each person in our church community is cared for and loved.   

And so much more. These are my top five reasons to use Planning Center People. Still, there are countless more: Forms, Workflow management, Activity, Dashboards. Does your church use Planning Center People? What do you love about it?