Blog
Volunteer and Serving Reports in Planning Center Services
What Services actually shows you about volunteer health: scheduled vs declined, the matrix, blockouts, and how far you can get on serving frequency.
Michael Visser
Exporting Data from Planning Center: CSV, the API, and When to Stop
What each Planning Center product exports, how the API really behaves under load, and an honest look at what building your own sync costs to maintain.
Michael Visser
Planning Center Data for Data Teams: What Building on the API Actually Costs
The Planning Center API is well documented and free. Here is what building your own warehouse on it really involves: id spaces, incremental sync, history.
Michael Visser
The Church Dashboard: What Belongs on It, and How to Build One from Planning Center
The thirteen metrics worth putting on a church dashboard, which ones lead and which lag, and how to build the whole thing from Planning Center data.
Michael Visser
7 Church Health Metrics Your Board Should See Every Month
The seven church health metrics a board should see monthly: what each measures, where each comes from in Planning Center, and what to do when it moves.
Michael Visser
How to Measure Member Engagement in Planning Center (Without Turning People Into Scores)
Engagement spans several Planning Center products: the manual method, five datasets in one workbook, and how to interpret it responsibly.
Michael Visser
How to Export Planning Center Data to Google Sheets (And What Breaks)
How to export Planning Center data to Google Sheets: which products export CSV, the step-by-step import and person-ID match, and where it goes wrong.
Michael Visser
Multi-Site Reporting in Planning Center: Why Your Campus Numbers Never Line Up
Campus is modelled differently in every Planning Center product. How to get per-campus attendance and giving out of PCO, and where the roll-up breaks.
Michael Visser
First-Time Guest Tracking: The Two Numbers That Prove It Worked
First-time guest tracking in Planning Center: how to record a guest properly, and the two rates that matter. 48-hour follow-up and four-week return.
Michael Visser
Planning Center Lists: A Power User's Guide (With 15 List Rules Worth Copying)
How Lists actually work in Planning Center People: rules, all/any/none logic, refresh behaviour, plus 15 ready-made list recipes and where Lists stop.
Michael Visser
Planning Center Dashboards: What They Show, and Where the Number Stops
Planning Center dashboards put widgets from every product on one screen and share them with your team. What they show, who sees them, where they stop.
Michael Visser
Small Group Metrics: The Five That Tell You If Groups Are Working
Small group metrics worth tracking: participation rate, attendance consistency, group size, time-to-group, and where each lives in Planning Center.
Michael Visser
Who Gave Last Year But Not This Year: Finding Lapsed Givers in Planning Center
Planning Center Giving has no lapsed-givers report. Here's the two-export method for finding lapsed givers in Planning Center and cleaning the list.
Michael Visser
Lists, Reports and Dashboards: What Each One Is Actually For in Planning Center
Planning Center lists vs reports vs dashboards: a list finds people, a report prints them, a dashboard tracks a number. Which one answers which question.
Michael Visser
How to Measure Volunteer Engagement in Six Metrics
How to measure volunteer engagement: six metrics, the formula for each, and where Planning Center Services records the data it won't report back.
Michael Visser
Planning Center Check-Ins Reports: What Your Kids' Check-In Data Knows
Planning Center Check-Ins reports cover one event at a time: rosters, headcounts, first timers. What they show, what they miss, and how to read them.
Michael Visser
Volunteers Don't Quit. They Stop Being Available.
How to measure volunteer engagement at church: Planning Center Services shows declines and blocked dates, not who is quietly on their way out.
Michael Visser
Church Giving Analytics: The Eight Numbers Worth Tracking
Church giving analytics beyond the offering total: participation, concentration, retention, recurring share and fund mix, with formulas and sources.
Michael Visser
Planning Center Giving Reports: Every Report You Can Run, and the Three You Can't
Planning Center Giving reports cover donations, donors, statements, pledges and payouts. Here's how to export them, and the questions they can't answer.
Michael Visser
Planning Center Has Your Data. Parable Turns It Into Answers.
Planning Center analytics without the export marathon: Parable syncs all eight products every night and answers questions in plain English.
Michael Visser
Church Attendance Trends: Telling Seasonality From Decline
Church attendance trends dip every summer. How to separate seasonal church attendance from real decline using same-week-last-year and rolling averages.
Michael Visser
Planning Center Attendance Reports: What Each One Actually Returns
Planning Center attendance reports live in four products. Here's what each one returns, how to export per-person history, and what none of them show.
Michael Visser
How to Track Church Attendance: Five Methods, Ranked
How to track church attendance: clickers, Headcounts, Check-Ins stations, Groups and an analytics layer. What each costs and what each can answer.
Michael Visser
The Reports Planning Center Can't Run (And Why)
Planning Center reports run inside one product at a time, so questions that cross two, like givers who also serve, have no report. Here's why, and what works.
Michael Visser
Planning Center Reports: What Every Product Can and Can't Answer
Planning Center reports live inside one product at a time. What each product answers natively, where the wall is, and the three ways churches get past it.
Michael Visser
Church Metrics That Matter: The Nine Beyond Sunday Headcount
The church metrics that matter count people, not totals. Nine beyond Sunday headcount, how each is computed, and where they live in Planning Center.
Michael Visser
How to Find Out Who Stopped Coming to Your Church
Find out who stopped coming to church by comparing each household's attendance rhythm across two windows, not by watching your weekly total.
Michael Visser
I Know What It Feels Like to Be Invisible at Church
Parable is church analytics for Planning Center, built by people who spent years inside church databases. The founder's story, and why it exists.
Michael Visser
Planning Center Reporting: What You Can't See (And Why It Matters)
Planning Center reporting is scoped to one product and one moment in time. Here are the five limitations that hide drift, and what to do about them.
Michael Visser
Why We Built Parable: Transforming Church Care Through Intentional Insights
Parable is ministry intelligence for churches on Planning Center. Why we built it: to surface the people quietly slipping through the cracks.
Michael Visser