Planning Center Services

We've been using this app in our church for quite a while now, and I have grown to despise it! About the only thing that it's good for is listening to worship music in order to practice ahead of time. Besides that, it is a huge pain! First of all, it is extremely un-user-friendly. It is very difficult to navigate. You practically have to have a college degree in "Planning Center navigation" in order to use it. Secondly, it is a very top heavy approach to ministry. The church is not a dictatorship, and yet this app treats it as if the leaders have all the power, and the volunteers have none. I am involved in multiple ministries, some as a leader, and some as a team member, so I have seen both sides of it. As a leader, you have to do all the work. Because it is so difficult, I don't even waste my time with it. We just stick to Facebook, phone calls, and texts. As a volunteer, you have to have"permission" to do anything. I would love to have the ability to see a calendar, see where help is needed, and volunteer accordingly. But no, it all has to be done through the leader. It eliminates any possibility of working together as a team. If I declined to be put on the schedule, but it was a mistake, can I go back and change it? No! Once again, it has to be done through the leader. This app has a ton of improvement to do before I will ever consider using it on purpose. In fact, I currently discourage everyone I talk to from using it. It is a total waste of time.

The app works well, but the PCO system has a few problems, if you like more collaboration. The app has gained in features & abilities, and works well as designed. The Planning Center Online is set up with team leaders (e.g. a leader for musicians, a leader for audiovisual workers, etc.). When a team leader sends a notification or other communication, there is no way to reply within this app; I'm always looking for ways to keep communications organized, and email decluttered! I can't reply in this app, but must go to email. I'd love to have Ministry chats kept in this app. When a team leader seeks input from team members, that's not possible here; members are limited to Accepting assignments! If an unexpected event causes someone to need to cancel their prior acceptance of an assignment (PCO DOES allow that to be processed), there is no way to swap with someone else and have that swap show up in PCO. Support has recommended that we put the name of our substitute in the Reason for Declining field; the team leader will have to perform the actual swap, but that means Leader is aware of the swap.

For any tech company to promise weekly update releases across their products is ambitious and crazy enough. For a company to actually deliver, and without frustrating customers with unnecessary or ill-communicated changes? That's Planning Center. If you plan any type of service or event, religious or otherwise, that requires the coordination of multiple people, teams, media, notes, and timing, then this is the app you're looking for. Constantly making incremental improvements and listening to users for feedback, this app (and company) should be the standard to strive for. Their Support is second to none, and I've never had an issue they couldn't resolve. I've been using the app since version 1, and it just keeps getting better. I appreciate that it's not just a port of the web app, but that it's device-conscious, and adjusts to fit the screen size it's given to work within. HIGHLY RECOMMEND. Also, who writes the update notes? Seriously? I laugh every time. Thank you for caring about every little detail.