Planning Center Giving Export to Fund Accounting

Planning Center Giving handles online donations, batch entry, and giving statements well — but it is not accounting software. When your church needs fund balances, restricted fund enforcement, or board-ready financial statements, you need fund accounting connected to your giving data. This checklist covers exporting from Planning Center and importing into a system that connects gifts to your ledger. For a full platform comparison, see Alignmint vs Planning Center.

For how fund accounting fits into weekly church finance workflows, see the church fund accounting hub.

What You Can Move

• Donation records (amount, date, method, frequency)
• Donor profiles (names, emails, addresses, household links)
• Fund designations (tithes, building fund, missions, benevolence)
• Batch records and deposit summaries
• Recurring giving schedules
• Giving statements and year-end summaries
• Pledge records (if tracked)
• Payment method metadata (card vs. ACH vs. cash/check)

What Needs Review

• Fund designation mapping (Planning Center fund names to accounting fund codes)
• Donor records that exist in Planning Center People but not Giving (decide what to migrate)
• Historical periods where designations changed or were added
• Giving statement templates (rebuild in new system)
• Integration settings (bank connections, payment processor configs)
• Members who give through external platforms (Pushpay, Tithe.ly) alongside Planning Center

Migration Checklist

1. Audit your giving data. In Planning Center Giving, run a donations report for your full history. Note total donation count, total dollar amount, number of active donors, and fund designations in use.

2. Export donations. Download all donations as CSV with donor name, date, amount, fund designation, payment method, and batch reference. Export in manageable date ranges if your history is large.

3. Export donor profiles. Pull donor contact information from Planning Center People or Giving. Include email, address, phone, household links, and any custom fields you track.

4. Map fund designations. List every Planning Center fund designation and match it to a fund code in your fund accounting structure. Decide which funds are restricted, temporarily restricted, or unrestricted.

5. Set up your fund chart. Create your chart of accounts and fund structure in Alignmint before importing. Configure donor management fields to match the data you are bringing over.

6. Import donor records. Upload mapped donor profiles first so giving records have a destination. Verify household links and contact details.

7. Import giving history. Upload donation records with fund designations. Verify total counts and dollar amounts match your Planning Center audit. Spot-check ten to fifteen records for accuracy.

8. Set up online giving. Configure donation pages in Alignmint and update your church website links. Match fund designations so new gifts land in the same funds as historical ones.

9. Connect bank accounts. Set up bank feeds and reconciliation in fund accounting so deposits from new giving pages reconcile automatically.

10. Decide what stays in Planning Center. If you are keeping Planning Center for worship planning, check-ins, or groups, remove the Giving module from your subscription. If consolidating fully, migrate People data and cancel.

Timeline and Support

Most Planning Center Giving migrations complete in one to two weeks. Churches with extensive giving history (five-plus years) or complex designation structures may need an additional week. Alignmint offers a free migration review that maps your designations, validates totals, and confirms what moves cleanly.

Bottom Line

Connecting giving data to fund accounting eliminates the weekly export-reconcile-re-enter cycle. Your gifts post to restricted funds automatically, donor records tie to financial activity, and board reports generate without spreadsheets.

Schedule Your Free Setup | Start Your Free Migration Review.

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Related:

• Church Fund Accounting — How fund accounting fits into weekly church finance
• Fund Accounting — Restricted fund enforcement and Form 990 reporting
• Alignmint vs Planning Center — Full comparison for churches evaluating their stack