If you're switching from a church management software like FellowshipOne, CCB, Elexio, or The City, follow the link to your specific transition guide.
If you're transitioning from a different church management software than those listed above, this article is for you! Let's get started by walking you through creating an account and adding people.
Like other church management software (ChMS), Planning Center's pricing is set by number of people; however, unlike other ChMS, there's no need to sign up (and pay) for features you won't use.
When you sign up to create a Planning Center account, start with the People product. People is the central hub for Planning Center products and the place to add and access information for your entire congregation. Plus, it's always free!
To subscribe to People, go to the signup page, remove the other products (you'll add in what you need later), and select Sign up.
Tip
The email address and password you enter on this page is for you. Each person you give access to your organization will receive their own login information.
You should have received an email welcoming you to Planning Center right after you sign up. If you set up your account at that time, great! If you didn’t finish the account setup or haven’t started, this is the time to do it.
Account settings is the place for you to set up your account information. You will also go here to manage your Planning Center billing and subscriptions and add Organization Administrators.
The Setting Up a New Account article will help you through the setup process, which includes:
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Adding your organization information
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Setting up billing information
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Adding organization administrators and billing managers
After you’ve finished setting up your account, it’s time to get your people added to the Planning Center database!
Planning Center People allows you to import your list of people without paying any setup fee. If you need help migrating your data, check out these services.
If you're ready to import your data, you can follow these three steps.
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Many systems will generate CSV files with some unnecessary data in them, so make sure everything is entered correctly before starting your import.
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Verify the fields.
Look over Planning Center's default fields and create custom fields, such as schools and membership statuses, based on the information you want to import.
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Use the data importer to import the file into Planning Center.
Important
Only people information can be imported into Planning Center. If you want other data to exist in your Planning Center database, you can use the following options:
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For giving history, use a third-party integration.
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For attendance history, you can add previous sessions and enter attendance manually.
After you've added people to your database, you can start subscribing to additional products.
Go to the article on Rolling Out Planning Center Products to see the order in which we recommend that you subscribe to products and view the initial set up tasks to get you started with each product.
You have plenty of support available to assist you along the way.
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For step-by-step instructions on setting up and using each product, access help articles from the support site or the ? in the toolbar of any product.
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Once you've started diving into a product and want more in-depth training, check out Planning Center University, which has videos on best practices for each product.
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If you have any questions that can’t be answered in our docs or videos, feel free to contact the friendly Planning Center Support team, who are happy to help!
. Additional resources
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Use the 30-day free trial to save money when adding a new product.
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To get your team on board, follow this guide: Preparing to Use Planning Center with Your Staff.