About

What is PCO Chef?

PCO Chef is a free hobby project I created to make sharing “Ministry Recipes” easier. I’m a full time Lead Pastor at a church just south of Pittsburgh. I'm not affiliated with Planning Center. I'm just a fan, and a nerd. We use Planning Center Online for all our church management tools. I’m a big fan of Planning Center and I’m also a developer. So some of my hobby projects cross paths with Planning Center.

How does PCO Chef work?

You can login with your Planning Center Online account. The site uses Oauth2 to authenticate you with Planning Center Online. You can revoke access at anytime at: https://api.planningcenteronline.com/access_tokens.
Once you are logged in then you can do two things:

• Post Recipes from your Planning Center Account
• Import recipes from PCO Chef into your Planning Center Account

What is a “Recipe”?

A recipe is not personal data! It is the code to work with data inside your Planning Center. You can share Service Reports, Calendar Reports, People Reports, and People Forms. If you have built something cool inside Planning Center and would like to freely share that with other ministries you can post it here and then you’ll have easily shareable links to share the “Recipe”.

Why Should I Share “Recipes”?

I know how hard it is to write custom reports. It takes a LOT of time. Once I put in all that work I want other Churches to be able to use it. I want those of us who are gifted nerds to be able to share our skills with people who aren’t skilled at writing report code. When you share Planning Center Reports and Forms on pcochef then even non-technical people can easily import your work into their Planning Center with one click. This site wouldn't be possible without our growing list of Master Chefs.

How Much Does This Cost?

Community shared reports are always free. It's our pleasure to serve the Church in this way. We do offer Chef Plus recipes for subscribers.

No Really Why Did You Build this?

I hate administrative tasks. I love coding, creative design, public speaking, building new things and music. I HATE paperwork. This is an elaborate convoluted plan to get other people to do my work for me. Some of you have these amazing lists, and workflows, and I just want to import and use them. So I’m hoping you’ll share so all of us can do ministry not paperwork!

What Other Free Stuff Have You Built?

• PCObot is a Slack Bot integration with Planning Center Online. It lets you get access to data right in slack. It announces birthdays, new check ins, and can even provide a high level giving report.
• PCOBadge is a digital E-Ink badge that automatically updates with the check-in security code and info. It's built on Open Source hardware called Badgy

Can You Build A Custom Report For Me?

Probably! I can contract with your church to write custom code. I have cleaned up databases, built custom data export scripts, and built custom reports. I'm also available to consult with other developers about using the Planning Center API since I have extensive experience building things with the API. Email me your problem ron[at]pcochef.com

Can You Recommend Someone To Help Me Figure Out How to Setup and Train Staff Using Planning Center?

Yep PCO Guru is the team to look to for that exact need!

• PCO Guru can help with training, consulting, and migration services!

Do You Have A Privacy Policy?

Yep you can read all the legal stuff here: PCO Chef Privacy Policy