Planning Center Services

For the most part, PCO works really well. But for the love of everything decent and holy, PLEASE send a notification to all users on a plan when the plan is updated. Too often, keys get changed, arrangements are changed, and there is no way to know unless the person the changing notifies everyone themselves. It makes no sense why all users wouldn’t receive a little Notification saying what changed. I know it’s easy to say the person changing SHOULD send out an update. But people make mistakes and what’s the point of automating some simple tasks if we simply say that other simple tasks are human responsibilities. And while it’s easy to say you don’t do this because e-mails are easily over-looked, that’s kind of a cop-out since the notification could easily have a custom subject line that lets the user know an important change is made. If anything, you could prompt the admin or editor with a notification, “Would you like to notify your team?” after a change is made.

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.

Hey PCO. I love Planning Center and I love your app. Super intuitive and practical!! I use it almost as much as I use PCO on my computer. But I’ve been having a couple of problems lately. When I create a new person on the app and put their info in, it doesn’t save the info. I know this because after I create a new person and schedule them for an audition, I ask them to check their email for a PCO invite and they never get it until I redo creating them on the full-site version. Also, sometimes it crashes and it seems to always be at the worst time. I lead worship for The Point Church out the Raleigh area of NC. One thing we are asked to do is to be praying about things to say at certain points in the service. God will give me things to say at odd times and when I receive them, I like to write them in my notes on PCO immediately. I was doing that tonight and was almost done when the app crashed. This wasn’t the first time this happened, but tonight it was extremely frustrating.

Love PCO. But (you just had to know that was comin’)... I like getting the piano parts right, and getting my fingers used to doing what the guy on the recording is playing. At present, I can take that itsy-bitsy white dot and move it backwards to hear “that part” again. Of course, there’s no real control, and I almost always move it way too far. It would be great to be able to rewind in 10- or 15-second bits, and be able to advance in 30 second bits. That way, I can practice those piano riffs over and over again. Also, would like to see an option to turn on or off sleep mode on the phone or tablet. I never (EVER) remember to turn off sleep mode on my phone. It could be put in as an option that we could set (Disengage Sleep Mode while using Planning Center). Just a couple of thoughts.

I love planning center, but I’ve grown to hate the app. The interface is inconsistent, with different (mismatched) themes across different parts of the app. There are many annoying alerts that the app could go without having, too. User experience is fine, in theory (more in the paragraph below). Straight forward with obvious buttons and menus. The big issue comes with all the bugs in this app. I do not remember a time I scheduled a Sunday Service without the app giving me some pesky bug. I’m convinced the developers or project managers do not test the app, because very common operations are inconsistent or require restarting the app before registering changes. Some operations cause the app to crash all together. None of this is present on the desktop interface. All the small bugs add up to frustration when trying to make even small changes to a schedule. I thought my app was out of date, because I downloaded it so long ago and mostly use the desktop browser version, but it’s the latest version. I hope this app is tested thoroughly, like it should have been in the first place, and all these bugs are fixed.

Hello, I use this app regularly, I even schedule people on this app. Most of the app runs just fine like I’m able to view plans, review the itinerary, times, etc. The thing that I hate the most is that when you make a change to your schedule on the computer it won’t register correctly in the app. For example let’s say I moved myself to another position and filled that position with somebody else, it will show that that person was requested but it will still say that I am confirmed for two positions when in reality I’m only confirmed for the one I moved to. (This glitch only happens on my iPhone because when I view the app on a Samsung device everything works perfectly) This isn’t just a glitch on my end however, my supervisor has the same problem along with many people in my church. You really need to fix this, because it’s confusing a lot of people as to who is and isn’t scheduled! Thank You!

I love this app! It’s easy to use and understand. It’s definitely effective and helpful, particularly in receiving and responding to requests. The only thing that me and the rest of my team would love to see is the ability to view the notes that can only be created on the desktop site. They appear in a blue bubble with the number of comments posted. We prefer to post song info in there, but no one can see it on the app! The other two description or note options on both the app and website either make the plan look excessive and long or they stay with the song every time we use it in a plan, even though the details we put in will need to change every time. I like everything else about the app and will still continue to use it regularly!

Have been using this app for at least 6yrs. It has made great new upgrades and fixes over the years that I greatly appreciate. Keep them updates coming! There is one problem currently that I have been dealing with this app. Definitely not a deal breaker but hoping there will be a fix soon. I don’t know when it started but noticed it about a month ago. The times on the mobile app doesn’t match the time set up using the desktop website. It is always off by 2hrs despite being correct via desktop website. Example: I have service set for 9am but on the app is starts at 11am.

Well, I can definitely see why this app has less than a 4 star review! They could get a lot better. First, after not having the app for a couple of years since my last church we volunteered at, when I downloaded this at my new church it ONLY allowed me to “Sign In”. No option to Create New! I didn’t have the slightest idea which email or phone number I used when first creating the account 5-7 years ago! Second, finally got the email correct then it made me create new password, which was terrible because they asked for a really long and hard password! What is this, a banking or government system with too much personal info?! Haha Lastly, finally created my 50 character password (jk :)), and it literally said, try again in 5 minutes! Wow, issues.

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.

We use Planning Center for our scheduling and check-in for church. It’s a very capable software but can be a little clunky or challenging at times. The services app is helpful for viewing what is going on but not for and diction all scheduling or other more involved activities. You will need a computer to do anything beyond checking your schedule or making minor changes to a current schedule. Not bad overall not great either. When I have run into concerns our internal administrators typically help quickly, but when further help is needed the Planning Center Tech Support has not been the most responsive. They are friendly and helpful but I have waited multiple days when they boast a 24hr response time. A little disappointing from the support side.

This should be called “Planning Center Services Companion” app. If you are simply using it to look at your scheduled plans, it’s passable. Although the UI is a bit perplexing with many dead ends (back buttons anyone?) it does the job more or less if u are needing to a hand in practice, but that’s about it. That’s being said, I don’t think modern people want to use just a portion of a service in an app. I don’t understand why I can’t use this to even ADD a person to a plan. As a leader it’s a real pain if, say I forget to add a person, and then I want to give them access to set on stage and I have to grab my laptop. Of maybe I wanna just review future plans on the fly I haven’t been scheduled on but I MADE BECAUSE I’M THE ADMIN and I can’t do it. Just annoying. I want a uniform experience.

Hey I love this app it’s great but now that I’ve moved to a new church I’m unable to remove myself from my old church worship team. I think it’s the reason I can’t accept requests from my new worship team. Error says “this request is no longer valid”. Otherwise I’d give 5 stars. Update! Tech support was super helpful and the fix was super easy, and I figured out I can have multiple logins under the same email for every church I serve with apparently. Tech support figured it out for me and responded to me within minutes, although they say they’ll respond within an hour during business hours. Thanks God bless.

I have been using this from a scheduler’s side for a couple of months now and it is really professionally done. It makes me look like I spend a lot more time than I do when it comes to scheduling teams. It does lack some features that are in the full website version, but it works really well for most purposes. I’m not going to make major changes to a plan from this app, but it’s great for making the more common plan and scheduling changes (this was the only reason I had for giving it 4 instead of 5). It’s always handy to be able to carry around the weekly service plans in my pocket. Thanks for a great app and platform!

Love this app- so useful, you did a great job with it. But it would be really nice if you could play the music from the chord charts you’re looking at. Music Stand has that feature, where you can play the same music as the lead sheets or chord charts if you touch the screen and push play above, but in Services, you have to start the song in the Media Player, and then quickly exit out of the and go to Files, where the chord charts are attached. I think it would be really great if you could play the music from Files. Other than that, I don’t have any other suggestions or complaints! :)

This app has truly changed our teams for the better and has helped us grow in our organization and planning. Can’t say enough good things about this app if you haven’t tried a tool to get you services organized, this is it! The next few things are just a few suggestions I’d like to see available for the app as they are for the desktop version. I would love to be able to access the matrix view on my iPad when planing services. I would also like to see an improvement for uploading files because I have to try a couple times before it fully uploads. Sometimes it starts to upload and then it will crash.

I’ve been using this app for quite some time now. Maybe like 2 years and I’ve just had one problem. I can’t add a profile picture. I’m fine with not having one but I just keep trying and trying and hoping that maybe it decides to load and actually update. Every time I try to add one it just shows that it’s loading and loading and when I press update it loads a little more and then when I check my account again, I just have my initials as a picture. I’ve went to the advanced settings and checked on errors and it just says “error unidentified” or something like that. Other than that, this app does work very good.

I love this app. We use it in our church constantly and it really helps to keep everyone on track with schedules and songs etc. However, many times it shows people on the services schedule who had been deleted previously from the schedule or it doubles up names, and every single time, the only way I get it fixed is by deleting and redownloading the app because when I hit the name to remove it, the “oops error” message pops up and takes me back to the schedule. Please fix this bug or let me know how to get rid of it without having to delete and redownload. Thank you for this wonderful tool.

I used to be able to see others information they put out, now I can only see who’s in my team. It won’t let me access a file in the right key. We changed one from a G to an A, and we had to completely change our sight and print the new key, which was still the wrong lyrics. I haven’t been able to get in touch with someone on a different team. I am Audio and Visual, They are on Vocals. There have been times I needed to send her a message asking for help, but it won’t let me see. I also can’t use filters, other than my teams. I have all these things I put my information in, so others can see, now, they can’t see it, nor can I.

It’s almost like they’re shaming me for blocking out dates and not being able to serve! But seriously, the last two updates have not resolved this crashing and closing of the app when blockout dates are entered. Which adds more stress to try and find a way to communicate that we will not be available. Please fix this! *** Problem solved! Thank you to Matt, for kindly responding and suggesting to delete the app and re-download it. I can blockout dates for both my husband and I, no issues!! So anyone having the app crash, delete it and re-download it!

Sometimes the volunteer leaders at my church send updates to set lists at hours I’m not in the office so I turn to the app to make changes. Being able to easily add a link in the app would be helpful, because I need to do this in our team’s process. I have to turn to Safari browser which is less than appealing on a mobile device. I also sometimes still have times when a service shows “needs” we don’t have. We’re just not that needy! (Yes, I love your update fixes). Those don’t show up on the web browser. I’d give a high five if imbedding links could work!

By far my favorite app that we use for our worship band because it keeps us organized, sends notifications when I am requested to sing, you can upload the key you were singing or playing in, you can upload the lyrics, and there are spaces for notes for personal preferences. I it’s very easy to log into and you can even email your worship leader on here! it tells you the time and date you are supposed to sing or play, and it pulls up right away. Again, my favorite app that we use for worship!

First off love planning center on the mac not may problems there. This app on the other hand has given me some fits. Randomly changes keys. A lot of the time doesn’t recognize some of my musicians have notifications prepared so I will have to exit the app multiple times or have to click prepare notification on and off multiple times. I also have had issues with it taking a while to add a song in planning center. I get the loading icon for a while and end up having to exit the app. Love the concept just needs bug fixes. Please fix these issues. It hurts the purpose and convenience of the app. Also would love for it to have the option of adding and transposing MP3s on the app. Thanks!

Very buggy. I’ve been using pco for years, in multiple churches. The app has consistently gotten worse. Little things that make me want to scream. Like not being able to add people to a plan. Randomly. I am the ORG ADMIN. I should be able to do anything anytime. Not I’m not sign in incorrectly. When I cycle the power on my phone it fixes itself but not always. When I add a person and then confirm them and cancel their notification because I know they’re coming, it just says “oops”. I close the app and go back in, and it works. Just test everything. And STOP CHANGING THINGS!!! Just add features. Don’t move them around.

As a member of a large statewide choir, this app is very handy for receiving the details of an upcoming concert. Our leaders send the music out for us to listen to, and on major events we even have the music by parts! The last update has made it impossible to download the MP3’s on my computer. I get the loading circle with a note preparing to download that I give up on after several minutes. This is upsetting because I use these to learn my part. I can still listen on my phone, but that’s not always convenient.

Disclaimer: I’m an administrator user for my church, so my experience is based on trying to make full use of the app’s features. This app constantly seems to need its cache cleared in order to correctly show what the website shows, and has repeatedly caused me to lose in-progress work on song lyrics & chords. It frequently misbehaves in unexpected ways, and is generally just unreliable and frustrating to work with. This *isn’t* due to any network connectivity issues on my device. I often started trying to do something in the app, only to run into a bug that prompted me to switch to their website on the same device, which then worked without issue. So it really *is* just the app itself that’s the problem. I’ve also uninstalled & reinstalled the app to see if that would somehow resolve the problems I keep running into. Unfortunately, it didn’t. So until they take the time to fix the app’s problems, I can’t recommend it – not for making updates, not even for just looking at things (since the app’s cached data could be stale).

For the most part, the app works well on both iPad and iPhone but the media player on the iPad is slightly different. Apparently the music player actually is fully functional. In order to see the full player with all the controls, an iPad has to be rotated 90° from the normal way most people use it. That would have been nice to have known for the past year. The new version has the player somewhat buried and it looks like there are two “Player” controls. The one in the top left menu doesn’t seem to do anything.

I love the app and how organized it helps us be with the services and with everything going. What I would suggest, and I know I’m not the only one, is for us who work at two or more different churches have those as tabs that we can cycle through so that we don’t have to create a new profile every time we work at a different church. That would help tremendously!! Right now i use it on my phone but the app only lets me access one church and for the other one i have to login on safari. Please help with this ASAP, it would mean a lot to a lot of us!!

Seems like a great app! I just started serving at my church and it's very helpful to see when and who I'm working with. There are some things that seem to confuse me. The set up of it is a bit confusing but I can get a hold of it. I think you should be able to add friends on here, if you have someone specific to talk to about the plans (if they don't use email) I think that that would be a great addition because there's a person I've been wanting to contact about my schedules. But overall this is a great app (sorry if my English was bad)

This is a useful tool in planning what songs we e will be singing, looking at what songs we have already sung, scheduling volunteers out, striving the liturgy. I would like to see an option added for scheduling songs. In the song tab when you can select a song to view it would be great, once you open the arrangement, if we could hit the scheduling button and pick a date we have coming up rather than just seeing the dates it was last played.

I love this app, and we basically run our entire church service on it. I have one small problem with the iPad app though. When in slide over or split screen mode, the songs tab will only show the filter screen; there's no way to see the list of songs without going into full screen mode. This also only seems to be a problem on the smaller screen iPads, my worship leader has the 12.9 Pro and this isn't a problem for him. I have the 10.9 Air and this problem is present.

This app is the epitome of substandard, disappointing, and unpleasant. First, my pet corgi “Guppie” could’ve come up with a better interface than this joke of an app, great start. Next, I put in my church specific login information, and the app decides to download 3 GB of useless church advertisements from 2017 onto my photos. Took me an afternoon to delete them all. For some reason, that wasn’t my last straw. I decided to keep the app in order to keep up with my church events, and the app decided to download every single event from all churches in the state of Missouri, overloading my storage. I had it with the app, deleted it, and will never support another app by these God-fearing gimps again.

I love planning center and the services app but this most recent update makes the app extremely slow and laggy especially on startup. It can take 5 seconds randomly for a tap to load. I will tap plans, and nothing happens. Then, eventually, it goes to plans. Sometimes when I tap a plan, it takes again 5-10 seconds to load in the data. I wouldn’t be complaining, but the previous version wasn’t this way. It happens on my iPhone 13 Pro Max and another person on staffs iPhone 14 Pro.

We need to be able to sync and see all accounts and upcoming services from the schedule tab. I want to see and access all upcoming services from multiple churches without having to log in and out of each account. I want to sync my account to multiple churches and see everything I have access to, without making new accounts and passwords for each church.

I have to say I love the layout of the new update, but there are a lot of issues with scheduling. None of my templates work and every time I try to create needed positions it says there is an issue. I can only schedule people one at a time. Using the laptop is great, but I do a lot of scheduling on the go with my iPad! Please fix issues!!! ***update*** Since the latest update (4.0.3) I have not been able to use the app on my iPad. Login continues to fail to authenticate and when I try logging in again it just kicks me back to the login page. Please help!

It’s great when it works. I’m playing at multiple churches and have to log out of one and into the other after a password reset under the same email. Why can’t it just stay under my one profile and have the ability to select a service like before. This is incredibly annoying and things like this have been a problem since I started using this app. Other issues include the media player freezing and the app not opening or freezing when opened. I select one date and then go to another and the media player from the other date pops up. This app has proven problematic over and over. Please fix this.

This app works good, however if I want to print our music for the Sunday morning worship service, I cannot do so from my Windows PC. Unless I email myself the files to print. It would be nice to have the app in the Microsoft store so that I could install it on my PC and print directly out of a “Services“ app. Yes, I can print from my iOS device, if I have an AirPrint compatible printer, which is harder to come by.

Ok so this is great! I love it however I’m not a leader so I’m not the one sending out the requests I’m just receiving them. Well I sing at two different church’s but I’m only able to get notifications from one so i don’t know if that’s a me problem like I’m not sure if I did that or if I can’t have two different church’s on planning center. If I can could someone please explain how to do so in detail cause I’m lost😂

As a helpful suggestion, a calendar app within the application it's self would be most helpful to allow one to see what days and dates/times one is signing up for While the option to have it added to your regular phone calendar is somewhat helpful there is no way to view what you have signed up for in a true calendar display Additionally it would be nice to be able to toggle between that and the messages easier such as have email leader visible when making a choice to accept or decline an invitation as well as view calendar Some simple adjusts would be so helpful Thank you so much

I have contacted planning center with no reply so figured I would leave a review of my experience with the app. There’s some basic features needed that are missing. The biggest being operation on iOS devices: - Currently I am unable to roster band members when using an iOS device and have to log in on a computer. This is a huge pain. - there is no way to notify team members if a service setlist is updated or changed - no ability for loading pdf charts from an iOS device. This is necessary for teams who do not rehearse, as song select charts are almost always incorrect and poorly formatted. - the general workflow for adding things like new songs is very clunky and requires too many steps. Overall I would say if we were living in 2005 this would be a great app but for 2021, it’s needs so real updates.

We use this app and the online access everyday of the week. Our main service uses it the most but our children's ministry & and Youth department. It is a huge help getting our services on time and on track, our worship team goes up during the week and has access to the coming weeks worship set. I am sure there is much more that I am not saying here, if I could give it a 10 star rating I would.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with PCO Services over the years. Love because I can schedule on-the-go. Hate because some things have been buggy or hard apart from the web app. Recently, the app updates have really made Services much more useful. Currently, the ability to print a report from directly within the app makes me happy every week. Looking forward to more improvements in mobile usability.

I use this app as a worship team member to rehearse for Sundays. The app is great for the most part, but it would be a huge improvement to be able to jump backward by 10 seconds with a tap while learning the songs. Trying to scrub to go over a part multiple times while holding an instrument is a bit frustrating. Otherwise it’s a great tool for our team! Thanks!

I’ve had some issue logging in, sometimes on Sunday during crucial times. I’ve occasionally been logged out and had to log back in, I believe some of these issues are with AWS and not necessarily the app. Planning Center provides a great service that helps me more than it doesn’t work, but when I can’t log in, it drives me crazy. To the Matt who responded, I’m very sorry to come off so negative in my original review.

Lately, it’s just been buggy as heck. The website is great, and MOST of my work is done there. However, the last 2 versions of the app leave me shaking my head. Many times it tells me my churches main folder is empty (I have worship plans for 3 months in there). Sometimes it just won’t update or clear notifications. And c’mon guys, “delete and reinstall” is not a bug fix. I’ve been using Planning Center since way before there was an app, and will continue to do so. However, you guys have GOT to put more thought and testing into the app. It was buggy but tolerable on my 6S Plus. It’s unusable with my 11 Pro.

I love PCO- it’s super easy to use. My only issue lately (didn’t used to be this way) is that I can no longer enter notes from my iPhone XR. I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t have the “newest and best” phone, but it never used to be an issue. It allows me to enter the notes, and looks like it saves, until I go and click on the notes and they are gone. It’s very frustrating.

App doesn’t even work for me and support is through ZenDesk so absolutely horrendous. The database pulled my information from a different organization who had my email for an unrelated reason yet obviously (hopefully) must use these services. The welcome email I got from my facilitator (generated internally by services) redirected to the wrong website. I created a login. When I finally go to the correct website/app (this one), I continually get the same error when I log in. Which tells me to try to log out and log back in because “something went wrong”. When I login it continues to give me the same error, to which the ZenDesk employee replied. “I’ll send you a new welcome email.” Which he never sent. He has denied my multiple requests to talk to a supervisor, and not listened to the initial issue I shared about the data being incorrect as far as what organization I am using services for. App doesn’t work, and support team seems outsourced, do not recommend.

I’ve been a PCO user for many years and I don’t think it’s overstating it to say it revolutionized my job. It’s made planning and communication so much easier. Can’t say enough positive things about it. The app, however, has always been underwhelming. I really wish I could give it a better rating. As the administrator I simply don’t find it helpful to do the type of things I need - adjusting schedule, adding links/attachments, locating a particular Sunday in the past. Hoping for some streamlining and de-cluttering in the future.

Every time I think that PCO has reached the limit of the goodness that it provides I’m shocked at the next update. As a long Time PCO user I appreciate that feedback and a genuine desire to make the app better is what drives this team. The only thing that could make the app better is if it only worked on iPhones (so I could get my team off of those silly other useless devices they call “smart” phones.

There are some pretty logical features that are missing with this system, like being able to easily duplicate a service schedule from one service time to another. Where is the easy button? The app won’t allow me to upload photos for profiles. It also won’t let me add or edit tags, add or edit positions needed for each services, or remove members who no longer serve. I like the features, but wish I had easier capabilities through mobile access.