Planning Center tells you who's there. Holy Insights tells you what it means.
Planning Center is great at scheduling, check-ins, and people management. What it doesn't do is trend analysis, year-over-year comparisons, AI summaries, or a leadership dashboard. Holy Insights connects directly to PC and adds that layer on top of the data you're already collecting.
What Planning Center Gives You
Planning Center is a genuinely great product, and a lot of what it does it does better than anything else in the church tech space.
- Check-ins and headcounts. PC's check-in system is the standard for church attendance tracking. It handles multi-campus, multi-service, and room-level counts with reliability.
- People profiles and relationships. Household records, contact info, family connections, ministry history. PC's people database is comprehensive and well designed.
- Service scheduling and teams. Volunteer scheduling, song planning, team communication. PC Services is the de facto standard for church production teams.
- Giving via PCO Giving. If you use PCO Giving, you have a complete picture of donations, online giving, and fund allocation within Planning Center.
- Basic headcount reports. PC has built-in attendance reporting for individual events and service types. You can export raw data as CSV when you need it.
Holy Insights requires a Planning Center connection. This page isn't about replacing PC. It's about what you can do with your PC data once it's in a real analytics layer.
What PC Can't Show You
Planning Center's reporting module is built for data entry and record lookup, not for trend analysis or leadership insights. Here's the specific gap:
No week-over-week trend lines
You can pull attendance for a date range, but PC doesn't chart that data automatically or show you whether you're trending up, flat, or declining. You'd need to build that chart yourself.
No year-over-year or semester-over-semester comparison
Comparing this Easter to last Easter, or this fall semester to the prior fall, requires a manual export and a spreadsheet formula. It's not built in.
No volunteer percentage of attendance
PC can tell you how many volunteers served on a Sunday. It doesn't divide that by attendance to give you a ratio, which is the number that actually tells you if you're healthy or understaffed.
No NextGen ratios
PC has your kids and youth headcounts. It doesn't calculate those as a percentage of total weekend attendance, which is how you know if your NextGen ministry is growing or shrinking relative to the whole church.
No percentage in small groups
PC Groups tracks who's in a group. It doesn't surface what percentage of your weekend attendance is connected to a group, which is one of the most useful retention metrics a church has.
No AI weekly digest
PC doesn't read your data and summarize what changed, what to watch, or what to bring up in staff meeting. You have to do that synthesis yourself every Monday.
No leadership team dashboard
PC's reports are designed for administrators, not for board meetings. You can't share a clean, current view of all your key metrics with elders or a leadership team without building it yourself.
Feature Comparison
What you get from Planning Center alone, versus what you get when Holy Insights is added on top.
| Feature | Planning Center | Holy Insights (add-on) |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly attendance trend | Manual export | Automatic chart |
| Year-over-year comparison | ||
| AI weekly digest | Yes (MAX) | |
| NextGen % of attendance | ||
| Volunteer % of attendance | ||
| % in small groups | ||
| Giving per attender | PCO Giving only | Yes |
| Demographic breakdown | ||
| Leadership team dashboard | ||
| Semester-over-semester comparison | Manual formula | One click |
| Board-ready PDF reports | Manual export + format | Auto-generated |
How They Work Together
Holy Insights connects directly to Planning Center. Your data syncs automatically. You keep using PC for scheduling, check-ins, and people management. Holy Insights reads what PC collects and turns it into dashboards, trend lines, and AI analysis.
You stay in Planning Center for:
- Sunday check-ins
- People profiles and households
- Service scheduling and volunteer teams
- Group management and signups
- Giving collection (PCO Giving)
Holy Insights adds on top:
- 13-week trend lines on every metric
- Year-over-year and semester comparisons
- Ratio KPIs (NextGen %, volunteer %, groups %)
- MAX AI weekly digest and Ask MAX
- Leadership team dashboard
- Board-ready PDF reports
There's no double-entry. Once Planning Center is connected, Holy Insights pulls your data on a regular schedule. Your dashboard is always current without anyone on your team doing anything extra.
When You Might Not Need Holy Insights
Honestly: if you're under 100 weekend attendance, have no staff, and aren't preparing regular reports for a board or elder team, PC's built-in reporting is probably enough for where you are right now. The value of a dedicated analytics layer shows up when someone on your team is regularly asking questions about your data and the answers require more than a single headcount.
If you're at the point where you're manually building charts every month, writing reports from scratch before board meetings, or wondering why a metric changed and having no fast way to find out, that's when Holy Insights pays for itself.
See It With Your Own Data
Book a demo and watch it connect to your Planning Center account.
30 minutes. We'll connect Holy Insights to your PC account live, pull in your real data, and show you the dashboard before you decide anything.
Book a free demoFrequently Asked Questions
Does Holy Insights replace Planning Center?
No. Holy Insights requires a Planning Center connection and works alongside PC, not instead of it. You keep using Planning Center for scheduling, check-ins, people management, and giving. Holy Insights reads what PC collects and turns it into dashboards and AI analysis.
How does Holy Insights connect to Planning Center?
Holy Insights connects directly to Planning Center via their API. You authorize the connection during onboarding, and your attendance, giving, and people data syncs automatically. You don't export anything manually.
Does Holy Insights require PCO Giving?
No. Giving data is optional. If you use PCO Giving, Holy Insights can pull that data automatically. If you use a different giving platform, you can import giving data via CSV. And if you don't track giving in Holy Insights at all, the rest of the dashboard works fine without it.
How often does data sync from Planning Center?
Holy Insights syncs with Planning Center on a regular schedule. Most churches see their dashboard update within a few hours of Sunday service check-ins closing.
Will my Planning Center data be safe?
Yes. Holy Insights uses read-only access to Planning Center. We never write data back to PC, and we never store passwords. The connection uses Planning Center's official OAuth integration.