Contacts vs user accounts
Contacts are people you track; users are contacts who can sign in.
Church Planner separates the people you track from the people who sign in. Understanding the split makes everything else simpler.
Contacts
A contact is anyone in your church list: members, regular attenders, kids in a class, a visiting musician. Contacts can be scheduled to serve, checked off in attendance, and listed in reports. A contact costs one slot against your plan's contact limit. Contacts never sign in and are never emailed automatically.
Users
A user is a contact with a login. Every user is linked to exactly one contact. Users can see their schedule, mark their availability, receive reminders and messages, and do whatever their roles allow. Creating a user does not use an extra contact slot: it upgrades an existing contact.
Which does a person need?
- Only appears in attendance and reports: a contact is enough.
- Serves on a team and should get reminders: a user. Reminders only go to people who confirmed their own account, by design.
- Plans services, manages people, or takes attendance: a user with the right roles. See Roles and permissions.
Moving from one to the other
Invite any contact to become a user with Create User on their contact card, or from Settings, then Users. Deactivating a user (for example when someone steps back) keeps their contact and history intact.