It seems everyone’s schedule changes during the summer months. With kids out of school, family vacations planned, and the random parties and events, summer can be a challenging time for scheduling your ministry teams. Here are a few problems you may have encountered…

  1. You’re trying to schedule your team, but not sure when people are available.
  2. You schedule your team and then people tell you they can’t make it.
  3. Your team members inform you via text message on Saturday night that they are in Florida and won’t be able to make it to service tomorrow.

So you are scrambling to get schedules aligned, make changes and swaps for people, and filling gaps as learn about people being out. At New Life, we have tool available to all of our locations called Planning Center Online (PCO). PCO can help alleviate some of these issues by allowing your team to block out dates. Here’s what you can do…

  1. Send a note to your team now asking them to block out their vacation dates and any other weeks they will be gone.
  2. Make your schedule based on when people are available. PCO will let you know if you are scheduling someone who blocked out a date so you can find someone else who is available.
  3. Have people double check their schedules and let you know if there are any changes. Hopefully there are less emergency text messages because people have already informed you of their schedule.

For step by step instructions on how you can enter your block out dates, share this article from PCO with your team. http://help.planningcenteronline.com/m/planning-center/l/49265-block-out-dates-adding-and-deleting