Households are an important part of managing your church data in Planning Center. You want to make sure household data is reliable while also making it easy for new families to get their whole family connected to the life of your church.
In the Info to Collect settings for your signup, you'll now find updated controls for who you can register.
There are now three options for household additions:
- Always will allow any adult to add a household member
- Only if they don't have a household yet will only allow new people to add household members
- Never will prevent any household additions during registration
For most churches, we recommend option 1 or 2, to make it as smooth as possible for new families to get connected with the life of your church. However, we know that some churches have a specific process around household management, so if that's you, you can ensure that households are never edited through Registrations.
Also, the option to allow people to register others outside their household is now a completely separate setting — so regardless of whether household additions are allowed, people can still sign up to bring friends and guests. (You could also enable this option so family members can still be registered but not added to someone's household until an admin follows up through a separate process.)
Please note that, regardless of this setting, anyone marked as a child in Planning Center can only register themselves on Church Center. This enables teens (age 13+) in your community to sign up for youth events (while ensuring accuracy for their parents' and siblings' profiles).