Replacing Planning Center Without Losing a Sunday

Planning Center is good software, and plenty of churches run well on it. This guide is for the ones that have decided to move to a single platform, usually because they’re paying for several Planning Center products plus the tools around them, and none of it shares one record of each person. If you’re still weighing that decision, start with Socio Connect vs Planning Center and you’re paying for nine platforms.

If you’ve decided, the rest of this is about doing it well, in four steps: know what you’re moving, set it up, bring the data across, go live. It’s the same care we took to move a client off One Church Software, another church management system.

Before you start: know what you’re moving

Planning Center is a family of products, and most churches use some of them rather than all. Start by listing the ones you pay for and what each one holds. Here is the full set, at published prices:

Prices as published by Planning Center, checked September 2026. Ranges run from the smallest to the largest plan.

Step 1: Know what you’re moving

This is where the move is won or lost, and it’s mostly questions.

Map the data. For each product, write down what it holds: profiles and households, group rosters and attendance, check-in history, gifts and pledges, registrations, serving teams and schedules. Note which of it you actually use, and how far back you need it.

Map the journey. Write down the path people take from first visit to serving, and what shows that someone has reached each step. This is what the new platform should show you, so it’s worth doing properly. There’s a guide to it in how to map your member journey.

Decide what stays. Not everything has to move. Accounting usually stays in your accounting system. Some churches keep an archive of old Planning Center exports for history they rarely need, rather than migrating every record.

Step 2: Set it up

Set up households. On Socio Connect every person has one record, linked into households. Decide how you want families to look before you import, because it shapes how you match people. We wrote about why one record matters in one member record.

Set roles. Who sees what: group leaders, campus staff, the care team, finance. Planning Center has its own permission model per product; this is the moment to decide what yours should be across everything.

Walk through a Sunday. Go through a real Sunday screen by screen: a family arriving, kids checking in, labels printing, a first-time guest filling in a card, a gift given online. If any step is slower than today, fix it before launch.

Step 3: Bring the data across

Getting the data out. Planning Center lets a church export People and Check-Ins data as CSV files, and its API, which a church can use with a personal access token, covers People, Groups, Check-Ins, Giving, Services and Calendar. For anything the exports don’t cover, plan an archive rather than a migration.

Getting it in. Today you bring people into Socio Connect by spreadsheet import, and givers set up their recurring gifts again on your giving page. A direct import from Planning Center is on the way, and a donor move kit that tracks who has moved comes with it.

Matching people. The same person may appear in Planning Center and in your email and other tools with different spellings and addresses. Matching them into one record is careful work. Expect some manual review, and budget time for it. During import, the Assistant suggests how your spreadsheet columns map and finds likely duplicates, and nothing is merged until a person says so.

Test imports, more than once. Import your real data early, check it with the people who know it best, fix what’s wrong, and do it again. By launch, the import should be boring. The more duplicates you find, the more you’ll want a plan for matching them.

Step 4: Go live

Run both side by side. Keep Planning Center running while the new platform goes live, for as long as your team needs to be confident.

Switch in an order that protects Sundays. A sensible order is people and groups first, then events and serving teams, then check-in, and giving last. Each step is live and trusted before the next begins.

Pick an ordinary Sunday. Never switch check-in on Easter, Christmas, or the first week of a series. Choose a normal week, with extra volunteers on hand.

Tell people where to go. Your congregation will move from the Church Center app to Socio Connect. Tell them early, from the platform and in person, and make the first login simple.

The best migration is the one your congregation doesn’t notice, apart from finding everything in one place.

Giving needs the most care

Giving is the part of the move to plan most carefully, for three reasons.

Recurring gifts. Stored card details belong to the payment processor, not to Planning Center or to us. On Socio Connect, gifts go to your church’s own Stripe account, and givers set up their recurring gifts again on your giving page. How much moves without donors setting gifts up again depends on the processor you’re leaving, so ask it, in writing, before you set a date. If donors do need to set them up again, plan the communication as carefully as the launch.

Giving statements. Donors need one accurate year-end statement. Either switch giving at the turn of the year, or decide up front how that year’s gifts from both systems will be combined into one statement.

Processing fees. Every gift pays a card processor whatever platform you use, so a move doesn’t remove processing costs. What it can remove is any platform fee charged on top; Socio Connect charges none on gifts. Compare the rates on both sides before counting anything as a saving.

The checklist

1. 1List every Planning Center product you use, and what each one holds
2. 2List the tools around it: texting, email, forms, the app
3. 3Map your member journey, from first visit to serving
4. 4Decide how households look, and who can see what
5. 5Export People and Check-Ins data, and keep an archive copy
6. 6Ask both payment processors how recurring gifts move
7. 7Decide how giving statements work for the year you switch
8. 8Run a test import with your real data, more than once
9. 9Run the new platform alongside Planning Center for several weeks
10. 10Switch on an ordinary Sunday, never a major one
11. 11Tell your congregation where to log in before launch week
12. 12Keep Planning Center until your team is confident nothing is missing

When not to move

If you use one or two Planning Center products, your team isn’t reconciling lists every week, and the questions you need answered already have answers, stay. A move is a real project, and it should solve a real problem.

If you’re paying for most of the list above plus the tools around it, and the people who care for your congregation still can’t see who needs them, it’s worth planning properly. Sign up, and use your trial to run a test import before you commit to a date.

• Socio Connect vs Planning Center, product by product
• Add up what your tools cost today
• Moving platforms? Let the duplicates find you
• The move, step by step
• See plans and pricing

Sources on Planning Center’s API and exports: The Planning Center API and Export data, Planning Center help center.