Check out some commonly used lists below to gain experience creating lists or find examples that might help optimize your organization! You can also create lists based on information in Check-Ins, Giving, and Groups if you can access those products.
Tip
Email Planning Center Support if you think a list should be added to these examples.
In addition to lists, use Common Workflows to create more processes to make your job easier!
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 since (without year) 1 week ago. Every time you refresh the list, you'll see anyone with a birthday in the last seven calendar days.
Tip
You can also set the list to auto-refresh weekly, and set an automation to create a task for someone to send birthday cards!
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, select the print icon.
Select Birthday Report and print or view it as a webpage.
You could also email them or print mailing labels to send them a birthday card!
If you want to ensure that the email addresses in your database can receive emails, use a list to determine which ones are blocked.
Once you find the blocked ones, you can follow the steps to unblock them.
You can contact parents by sending an email from a list or by creating a report of the parent's information.
Create a list searching for kids in your database.
-
Set the first condition to Child.
-
In case you haven't set that field on everyone yet, add an extra condition to look for people ages 17 or younger.
-
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, select 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 select Generate.
The report will list the child in the first column, and all additional columns are about the primary contact of their household. 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 parents and children.
Caution
Do not set this list to auto-refresh.
When lists depend 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, select 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, followed by the married female. So, for the report to work correctly, please ensure the following:
-
Households only have two adults, the legal guardians of the household.
-
Those two adults are also set to Married.
-
Those two adults have Male or Female assigned.
-
The primary contact for the household is one of the two adults.
-
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 three or more adults are in the household, the report shows "The [Household Name]" instead of individual names.
To show a list of people grouped by their household, create a list and select 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 birthdays listed.
Tip
If you want the Household Report to print out alphabetically, make these changes:
-
From the Rules tab, choose to include the Primary Contact Only.
-
From the Results tab, sort the list by Last Name before printing.
If you want to see everyone who lives 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.
One of the most challenging parts of maintaining a database of people is keeping their information clean and up to date. To see if you need to add data for 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, select a name to go to their profile. Update the missing information on their profile and select Next to go to the next profile on this list.
Put the list in the Profile Cleanup category, and set auto-refresh to update 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.
If you need to follow up with people who have been invited to join the directory, create a list based on access.
Find people who were invited to join but haven't yet shared their information.
Send an email to remind them to share their information or remove their access to the directory with a bulk action. After removing access, send the invitation email again with a separate bulk action.
Search for people who have access to the Directory to email them about new privacy policies.
Use lists to monitor potential security risks in your account. Review recent profile updates, directory invitations, and group membership requests.
View newly created or recently updated profiles that have been invited to join the directory.
Search for profiles with administrator access that have been updated recently.
Find brand new profiles that have requested to join a group.
Set these lists to auto-refresh and add an automation to add the results to a workflow so you can monitor these profile changes. The last updated condition will include profiles with any updates, but pay close attention to email changes since those can affect logging in.
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 products 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 product to find out who has been missing.
Find people who haven't attended, given, or served by setting up the filters and timeframes based on the specific information you want to capture.
Once you run the list, set it to refresh every night and create an automation to send them to a workflow where you can quickly follow up.
If a person attends and starts missing services, you know it's time to follow up with them! Create a list showing who has attended before but missed a couple of weeks in a row.
Send these people an email or add them to a workflow to assign others to follow up with them. Set it to auto-refresh monthly 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 People 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 have access to Check-Ins or Giving, check out their Common Lists.