If you want to set up some common lists to give you experience in creating a list, or if you want to know which lists you might need, follow the steps to create some of our most commonly requested lists.
If you want to view birthdays for people in your account, create a list looking for birthdays from the Personal tab.
When you set the month to Current, you can view this list at any time and see who has a birthday in the month you're currently in.
If you send birthday cards every Monday, use in the next week. Every time you refresh the list, you'll see anyone that has a birthday in the next seven calendar days.
Follow the same logic to populate the list with people based on when you send birthday cards and add any additional conditions to filter whose birthdays you can see.
Once you run the list, use the Birthday Report to get a printout of their name, birthday, and address sorted by birthday.
From the Results tab, click the print icon.
Select Birthday Report and choose to print a pdf or view it as a webpage.
You could also send them an email or print mailing labels to send them a birthday card!
If you want to make sure the email addresses in your database are able to receive emails, use a list to find out which ones are blocked.
Once you find the ones that are blocked, you can follow the steps to unblock them.
You can contact parents by sending an email right from a list or by creating a report of the parent's information.
Create a list searching for kids in your database.
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Set the first condition to Child.
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In case you haven't set that field on everyone yet, add an extra condition to look for people ages 17 or younger.
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To see people that meet either of these conditions, set the rule to return people matching any condition.
Tip
To gather a list of parents, choose household adults or primary contacts from the My list should include dropdown. Your results will then be adults, and you can send an email to them.
Once you submit the list, click the print icon from the Results tab to create a report with parents and children.
Select the Primary Contact Information list from the dropdown, and then click Generate.
The report will list the child in the first column, and all additional columns are about the primary contact of their household. In order for this report to return data, each child must belong to a household, and the household must have a primary contact with contact details.
If a child is in two households, they will show two rows, each showing the primary contact of the household; children with no households have blank rows.
If you're looking for the parents and children of a specific grade level, you'll need to create a couple of lists.
The first list finds the children of that grade level.
The second list finds the parents of the children in the first list.
The third list is a mixture of both in order to get a list of both parents and children.
Caution
Do not set this list to auto-refresh.
When lists are dependent on each other, they need to be refreshed in the order they were created. You can't refresh the list of lists until the others have been refreshed.
You may want to send a letter to entire households, so set up your list and include household adults.
From the Results tab, click the print icon.
To print labels for the household, select the Avery labels with the Household Name.
Your labels will export with the household name and their addresses.
Tip
If you want to address the two oldest household adults instead of individuals or the whole household, use the Couples option. The report looks for the married male and puts him first, and then the married female. So, in order for the report to work correctly, please ensure the following:
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Make sure households only have two Adults, the legal guardians of the household.
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Make sure those two Adults are also set to Married.
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Make sure those two Adults have Male or Female assigned.
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Make sure the Primary Contact for the household is one of the two adults.
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If you have Adults that are children, separate them into their own household.
If a person can legally sign a document, they should be in their own household.
The report searches through the Adults in the household. If there are three or more Adults in the household, the report will show "The [Household Name]" instead of individual names.
To show a list of people grouped by their household, create a list and click the print icon from the Results tab.
Select the Household Report.
When you run the report, you'll have sections of people based on their household with their contact information and birthday listed.
Tip
If you want the Household Report to print out alphabetically, make these changes:
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From the Rules tab, choose to include the Primary Contact Only
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From the Results tab, sort the list by Last Name before printing.
If you want to see all the people who live on the same street, you can create a list to show anyone who lives on the same street.
Once you have this list of people, you can send them an email or add them to a group.
Once of the most difficult parts of maintaining a database of people is keeping their information clean and up to date. To quickly see if you need to input data on a person, create multiple auto-refresh lists and put them in a Profile Cleanup category.
Set the rule to exclude the information, so the rule searches profiles missing the listed information.
From your list, click a name to go to their profile.
Update the missing information on their profile, and then click Next to be taken to the next profile on this list.
Put the list in the Profile Cleanup category, and set to auto-refresh, so it updates with any people every night.
As you create lists and assign them to the Profile Cleanup category, you can filter to that category and see if you need to take any action on people in those lists.
Many churches want to know the last time someone participated in a part of their church. The type of list you set up depends on which apps you're using and how you're using them.
For example, if you're using Check-Ins but don't physically check in adults because you use Headcounts instead, you'll need to use a different application to find out who has been missing.
Find people who haven't attended, given, or served by setting up your list like this:
Set up the filters and timeframes based on the specific information that you want to capture, based on attendance at events, giving, or serving.
Once you run the list, set the list to refresh every night and create an automation to send them to a workflow where you can quickly follow up with them.
If a person attends and starts missing services, you know it's time to follow up with them! Create a list showing you who has attended before but has missed a couple weeks in a row.
Send these people an email or add them to a workflow to assign others to follow up with them. Be sure to set it to auto-refresh, so you have the most accurate information!
View a list of people in a workflow based on the criteria of their cards in the workflow.
Once you've selected the People app from the first dropdown, choose a workflow from the list of workflows in the second dropdown.
Select the criteria for which cards you'd like to see in the list, and then create an automation, send an email, or export the list.
If you've given access to Planning Center mobile apps or allowed other applications to access the Planning Center API, you can see which people have been using those applications.
You could even change include to exclude if you want to see those who are not using the application.
If you're looking for information about a group of people, and you have access to Check-Ins or Giving, check out their Common Lists.
If you know of a list that should be included among these Common Lists, email us! And if you want to create some more processes to make your job easier, check out our Common Workflows!