What is Planning Center?
Planning Center is a church management software (ChMS) built to help ministry organizations handle the details so they can focus on people. By bringing together your membership data, scheduling, giving, events, and communication in one connected platform, Planning Center helps your staff and volunteers stay organized, and your congregation stay engaged.
How Planning Center works
Planning Center is made up of several connected products and add-ons, each serving a specific purpose across your ministry. Every product includes a free tier, so you can explore what works for your organization and upgrade the ones that fit your organization's needs.
Every product connects back to People, Planning Center's free, unlimited membership database. That means information entered in one place is automatically available across the others. A person who registers for an event, gives a donation, or checks in on Sunday is unified in the same profile everywhere.
Your staff manages everything from within the Planning Center products. Your congregation connects through Church Center, a free mobile app and web experience included with every account.
Planning Center products
Calendar | Schedule events, manage facilities, and coordinate resources across your organization. |
Check-Ins | Check families in and out, track attendance, and manage volunteers at the door. |
Church Center | Mobile app and web experience for your congregation to give, register for events, join groups, update profiles, and stay connected. |
Giving | Collect tithes and offerings, run donation reports, and issue donor statements. |
Groups | Create and manage small groups, send announcements, and connect people through group chat in Church Center. |
Home | Manage notifications, tasks, and metrics across every product from a single dashboard. |
Music Stand | View sheet music and chord charts, take notes, and play attached audio. |
People | Store and manage profiles, track engagement, build lists, run workflows, and follow up with the right people at the right time |
Publishing | Customize the Church Center experience. Build a home page, configure navigation, host audio, video, and sermons, and more. |
Registrations | Create signups for events, collect payments, manage attendees, and gather information through custom questions and forms. |
Services | Build service types and plans, organize your order of service, schedule volunteers and worship teams, and communicate with everyone serving. |
Planning Center mobile apps
Most of Planning Center is accessible from any web browser, but several mobile apps are available for staff, volunteers, and the people in your organization who prefer to work from their phones.
The Planning Center app is the main app for your staff and administrators. It gives you access to every Planning Center product, lets you manage notifications, and complete tasks. In addition to the Planning Center app, there are also dedicated apps for specific products and roles:
Church Center is for your congregation. Congregants can give, register for events, join groups, and more!
Check-Ins allow children's ministry teams and volunteers to check families in and out with a customizable station setup.
Headcounts can be used to record the number of attendees at an event.
People allows staff to access profiles, lists, forms, and workflows on the go.
Services allows worship teams and volunteers to schedule volunteers, plan services, and access rehearsal tools on the go.
Music Stand connects directly to Services to turn your music sets into a digital music stand. Musicians can swipe through PDFs, take personalized or shared notes, play attached audio, and more!
All apps are available on iOS and Android.
Get started with Planning Center
New to Planning Center? Check out the Brand new to Planning Center and ChMS guide to walk through getting started with Planning Center step-by-step.
Switching from another system? Check out the Switching to Planning Center from another ChMS guide.
Ready to keep learning? Explore the help center, video library, and Planning Center community.