Planning Center Adoption: 3 Phase Approach

PHASE 1: CRAWL

This phase is designed for churches with little to no experience using Planning Center or any other church management system. It focuses on four foundational tasks:

1. Inputting your members' contact information (People)
2. Setting up online giving (Giving)
3. Migrating your church calendar (Calendar)
4. Migrating your sermon archive (Publishing)

This phase focuses on migrating common functions (sermons, calendar, giving, etc.) from your current website to a more robust platform that can scale as your church's operations mature over time.

Starting here ensures you establish a solid foundation for your Planning Center implementation. If you don't already have a Planning Center account, you can check out pricing and sign up by clicking here.

How can Digital Outreach help with phase 1?  Although each church is responsible for setting up and paying for Planning Center, we are here to offer consulting, share best practices, provide helpful how-to videos, and answer any questions you may have. With extensive experience on this platform, we provide our consulting services free of charge during the onboarding process.   We can also provide hands-on assistance with sermon migration. To help you get started, we offer the migration of six months' worth of sermons (25 sermons) at no additional charge. If you'd like us to migrate additional sermons, we charge $2.00 per sermon.  Talk to us for more details.

Important Note: During Phase 1, we recommend holding off on using the Church Center app. Instead, we will provide links to your calendar, online giving, and sermon archive directly on your guest website.

 

Planning Center "People"

• Description: Planning Center People is the heart of the Planning Center system — functioning as a comprehensive database that stores information on everyone who interacts with your church. At its core, it houses contact details for members, regular attendees, and guests.  
• Why it's important: Having accurate membership contact data is critical for communication and giving at first.  All other Planning Center modules will be reliant upon upon this information in the future.  
• What you need to do: Either manually enter or import your member contact information. At a minimum your church needs to have first name, last name, email address, phone number, and the membership type (member, regular attender, guest, etc.) entered/updated for each person.
• Estimated time (on average): 3 business days
• Cost:  Free
• More Information:  Visit the "People" page to learn more
• Training: Link to detail video tutorials

Planning Center "Giving"

• Description: Giving allows you to accept and process donations, track giving trends, and easily generate tax statements. It also supports manual entry for in-person donations made via cash or check, providing a single, unified platform to manage all contributions.
• Why it's important: While many companies provide online giving, Planning Center is the best option on the market today.  It provides an easy user interface for people to give and intuitive, powerful donation management tools on the backend.  In addition, they offer the lowest credit card and ACH processing fees on the market today.
• What you need to do: Walk through the online giving setup steps which takes 30-60 minutes.
• Estimated time (on average): 2 business days
• Cost: Planning Center offers up to 12 months free while you continue to pay for your current online giving platform.  There are two other common fees to be aware of.  There is a monthly fee for using their giving platform and is dependent on the number of donations you bring in.  It starts small and grows with you as your church grows.  There is also credit card and ACH fees which are ubiquitous in the market.  They are the lowest that we have found in the industry at 2.15% + $0.30/donation for credit card donations and 0% + $0.30 per ACH bank transfer donation. These lower fees can help cover any other costs you might incur by switching to Planning Center.
• More Information:  Visit the "Giving" page to learn more
• Training: Link to detail video tutorials

Planning Center "Calendar"

• Description: Plan, schedule, and share all of your events, manage your facilities, and track resources from a single church calendar.
• Why it's important:  Your church will have a single source of information for events and group meetings through the calendar, offering a reliable, user-friendly, and easily accessible platform for everyone.
• What you need to do:  You can either manually enter your events or import them from your existing calendar.
• Estimated time (on average): 2 business days
• Cost: Free (Note: Any cost for calendar will come later if/when you need to manage rooms in your church building)
• More Information: Visit the "Calendar" page to learn more
  
• Training: Link to detail video tutorials
  
  

Planning Center "Publishing" for Sermon Management

• Description: Publishing enables your church to create a Church Center app/website that will serve as a hub for your members. However, the Church Center app won’t be introduced to your congregation until Phase 2. For now, we’ll focus on using Publishing primarily for sermon management. You can upload audio files, link video sermons from YouTube or Vimeo, publish notes and liturgies, and distribute content to platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It provides a centralized solution to manage and archive your past sermons.
• Why it's important: This gives your church an excellent sermon management solution on a reliable platform.
• What you need to do:  Confirm that Planning Center's sermon management tool is the right choice for your needs moving forward. While we recommend their solution, there are other solutions you can entertain.  To help you decide, read this article that outlines the pros and cons of three different sermon management solutions you can consider.
• Estimated time (on average): 3 business days
• Cost:  $32 / month in order to take advantage of the sermon management features.  Note that this plan also includes Church Center app which will be featured in phase 2.
• More Information: Visit the "Publishing" page to learn more (scroll down to sermons)
• Training: Link to detail video tutorials

 
You can complete Phase 1, from setting up a new Planning Center account to finishing all the steps, in 10 days or less.  If you're finding that completing each step is taking longer than expected, please talk to us.  We'd be happy to help!

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PHASE 2: WALK

After completing the foundational tasks in Phase 1, we shift focus to expanding your use of Planning Center and introducing the Church Center mobile app to your congregation. This phase is all about providing your congregation with a single platform where they can take their next steps to engage with your church. This could include registering for events, listening to past messages, giving online, reading announcements, and more.  We also recommend implementing the "Registrations" feature during this phase.

 

Church Center mobile app and website

• Description:  The Church Center app centralizes everything, streamlining communication and making it easy to access information and take action.
• Why it's important: The Church Center app serves as the central hub for your congregation, providing easy access to information, event registration, online giving, group interactions, and more. It simplifies and streamlines your church's operations. With the self-service portal, members are empowered to manage their needs, resulting in fewer questions for church staff.
• What you need to do: We handle much of the heavy lifting for you by designing your homepage and offering personalized consulting during onboarding to help you maximize its potential. The key to success is educating your staff on its importance and following best practices to encourage smooth adoption within your church.
• Cost:  No additional cost.  By completing the "Crawl" steps listed above, you've already enrolled in Publishing, so there are no additional fees.
  
• More Information: Visit the "Publishing" page to learn more
• Training: Link to detail video tutorials

 

Event Registrations

• Description: Registrations simplifies event signups, manages payments, and coordinates event details, whether it's a large-scale VBS or a simple potluck lunch. It also integrates seamlessly with your Planning Center Calendar, allowing people to easily click and register for any event that requires a sign-up directly from the calendar.
• Why it's important: Since Registrations will be central to some of your church’s activities, introducing it alongside the app adds even more value and promotes higher user adoption.
• What you need to do:  Watch the video tutorial, and the evaluate which events coming up on your calendar requires you to get a headcount, have people register to bring something (e.g. a dish to a potluck), or let people make event payments online.  Once you've identified these, begin setting up the events scheduled for the next 6-8 weeks.
• Cost: The cost of registrations is variable depending on the maximum number of people that would be registering for your largest event.  See pricing by clicking here and scrolling down to "Registrations"
  
• More Information: Visit the "Registrations" page to learn more
• Training: Link to detail video tutorials
  
  
  

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PHASE 3: RUN

In this phase, you'll begin fully utilizing all the Planning Center products, and your church operations will start running at full capacity. Our focus here is to empower ministry and small group leaders with a group management solution, implement a technology-based check-in/check-out system to enhance child safety, and manage Sunday services using the Services product.

Group Management

• Description:  Cultivate community in your church by making small groups for people to connect. Organize your groups how you want, like by stage of life or day of the week, and share them on your church app or website for people to easily find the group they want to join.
• Why it's important:  Equip your ministry and small group leaders with the administrative tools they need to excel in their roles. Features like a group calendar, messaging tools, and event attendance tracking make it easier to manage and support their ministry efforts effectively.
• What you need to do:  Create all of the small groups and ministries as a starting point, add the leaders and members for each group, and then setup training for your leaders so they know how to access these tools and use them effectively.
• Cost: Groups is priced by the number of members (including leaders) in an active group. Members are only counted once, even if they belong to many groups.  See pricing by clicking here and scrolling down to "Groups"
• More Information: Visit the "Groups" page to learn more
• Training: Link to detail video tutorial

Kids Check-Ins

• Description: Check children in quickly and safely with Planning Center Check-Ins. Create unlimited check-in stations to get children their name tags, parents their security labels, and get everyone where they need to be.
• Why it's important:  This product allows you to build a safe and flexible check-in/checkout system that works for you.
• What you need to do:  Start by watching the training video, research the hardware you want to use for check-in/check-out, and then training your teachers administrators to use the new system.
• Cost: Check-Ins is priced by the number of check-ins on your busiest day of the week. All plans include full feature access and an unlimited number of check-in stations and administrators.  See pricing by clicking here and scrolling down to "Check-Ins."
• More Information: Visit the "Check-Ins" page to learn more
• Training: Link to detail video tutorials

Services

• Description: Services enables you to plan worship, schedule volunteers, communicate with your teams, and provide the necessary tools to facilitate your Sunday morning service.
• Why it's important:  Create a fully customized order of service and coordinate with everyone involved to ensure a smooth and well-organized worship service for your church.
• What you need to do: Start by watching the video training. Services is the most detailed and time-intensive of all Planning Center products to learn and master. Once you've reviewed the training, follow along with the video to begin building your service.
• Cost: Services is priced by the number of people who access the system in any way. All plans include full feature access and an unlimited number of teams, service types, and plans.  See pricing by clicking here and scrolling down to "Services."
• More Information: Visit the "Services" page to learn more
• Training: Link to detail video tutorial

 

That’s it! Once you've implemented all these Planning Center products, your church operations will run more efficiently, allowing the work of ministry to take center stage while administrative tasks support the work behind the scenes.