You’re using this right?
If you haven’t heard of Planning Center Online then you must be living under a rock. Okay, maybe that’s a little too harsh, but if you are involved in ministry, especially worship and arts ministries, you have no excuse not to be using this amazing full featured software.
I use it almost daily for planning songs, worship sets, scheduling, emailing, organizing, and planning. It is at the core of my ministry and I don’t know where I’d be with out it. In fact, when the internet crashes, I find myself a little lost?!
Without going into much detail, I thought I would list my Top 5 Favorite Features of Planning Center Online.
- The Matrix – This is by and far my most favorite feature in Planning Center Online. The matrix allows me to see multiple services spread out and at the same time. I can look at flow, songs used, and other elements all at the same time. Brilliant.
- Song Dates – Unless you manually keep track every time you use a song, you’re likely to forget from week to week. What Planning Center Online has done is keep track of the last date a song is used so you don’t have to worry about it.
- Scheduling & Emailing – Once you add your team to the ‘People’ function in Planning Center Online, all you have to do is click to schedule each person for each week. Next, you can send out an email to everyone to confirm their participation as well as send out notes for the weekend.
- Media Integration – Are you using Worship House Media movies in your weekend services? If so, you can not only search for the videos within Planning Center Online and purchase them, but you can add them to the schedule. Very convenient.
- Drag & Drop – On top of being a ‘cloud’ type of service, meaning it’s not downloaded or hosted on your machine and you can log into your account from any machine, the drag and drop feature within each service is great. If you need to move an item from one position to another… just grab it and drag it. Done.
There are so many other features that make Planning Center Online hands down the best. I have found that it only keeps getting better and these are a few of my favorite features.
If you are not on Planning Center Online, make sure you check it out and see if it will work in your context. Once you start using it, you’ll never look back!
What are some of your favorite features?
Gangai Victor says
The last time I tried using PLO, I found the entire interface and workflow painstaking, maybe I should give it another shot.
Rob Rash says
Definitely check it out. They have a great support staff and keep making it better. Although it might not be for everyone. Have you tried any others?
Venessa Harper says
It is definitely not an easy site to use. My husband and I just started it up with our church and we are having trouble figuring things out. It was supposed to make things easier for us but it’s been challenging.