Barcodes and Mobile Passes make checking in much quicker. A volunteer can add a barcode or mobile pass while using a Manned Station, so parents can simply scan the barcode or mobile pass the next time they check in their children.
While on a Manned Station, search a person's name and then select Edit.
At the bottom of the profile, select Create mobile pass or Add a barcode.
Check the box next to the correct email address the Mobile Pass should go to, or type in a new email address to send the mobile pass.
Select Prepare Pass to send the mobile pass, and then choose Save Household to save the mobile pass to the person's profile.
You can see a list of all the emails a person has received through Planning Center from the Communication tab on their profile page.
Open an email highlighted in red to see if the email failed or was dropped, and hover over the status to view the reason for the failure.
Tip
To learn more about what specific error codes entail, check out Email Error Codes.
If someone mentions they didn't receive an email, or you see that an email failed to be delivered to them, try these things:
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Check Planning Center People to make sure their email address isn't blocked.
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Ask the person to add no-reply@planningcenter.com, no-reply@churchcenteronline.com, and no-reply@churchcenter.com to their email address book, which allowlists them.
If neither of these help, contact support by clicking the ? in the top right corner of the app.
Allowlisting an email tells your email provider to place emails from certain senders into your inbox rather than marking those emails as spam. Doing this will help you and your congregation avoid going through your spam or junk folder to find emails from Planning Center.
Allowlisting may look a little different in each email provider, but the basic process involves adding these three domains to your address book:
Select your email provider to learn how to allowlist email addresses in your email account:
After allowlisting those email addresses, Planning Center emails will always appear in your inbox, and these important emails won't slip through the cracks!
Watch this video to see how quickly and easily you can set up a mobile pass.
People can save their mobile pass to their phone to easily access it later when they are near the location.
If campuses exist in Accounts, the person with the saved mobile pass will receive a notification on their phone.
Warning
Passes can only be scanned by 2D compatible barcode readers, such as the camera within the Check-Ins app on your Android or iOS device. However, if you're using an external barcode reader, make sure it can read 2D as well as 1D barcodes.
There's two options to get the Mobile Pass saved to your Wallet.
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On your mobile device, open up the iOS mail app and select Download My Pass from the email, which will prompt you to add it to your Wallet.
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Open the email on a Mac and select View Pass from the email. Select save to wallet to add the pass to your iPhone.
We’ve found a few third-party applications that work great with an Apple Pass. Any app that supports the .pkpass file format will work. We suggest Pass2U since it supports location awareness and will pop up just like on iOS.
Using a barcode scanner or mobile device camera, scan a barcode.
Add a different barcode to each parent's profile, which allows either of them to check in their family quickly. When you scan the barcode assigned to one parent's profile, that parent will automatically be assigned as the checked-in by person.
After you scan the code, choose Save Household to add this barcode to the person's profile. If you'd like to add more, select Add a barcode again; you can add as many barcodes as you'd like.
Warning
Barcode scanners act as external keyboards to your computer. In order for a barcode to be accepted on this page, the scanner needs to type the equivalent of "enter" after it scans the numbers. Not all barcode scanners do this by default. If your barcodes aren't scanning, most likely "enter" isn't being pressed. To test this, scan a code and press enter on your keyboard. If that works, set your barcode scanner to always type "enter" (or carriage return) after each scan. Check the manual that came with your device for instructions.
From the person's profile, a Check-Ins Editor can select Barcodes & mobile passes from the Actions dropdown to view a list of barcodes and mobile passes created for that person.
View the barcodes and mobile passes added to the profile, and add or delete barcodes as needed.
When a mobile pass is added from this screen, the person will receive the same type of email that is sent when you create a mobile pass from a station.
Note
When you scan the pass or barcode, the whole household will show on Self and Manned Stations.
Send a mobile pass to several people at once! Follow the steps in this People article, Bulk Actions.