Quick Start Guide
Get Vitals up and running for your church in about 15 minutes. Think of this as a friend walking you through setup over coffee.
Setup walkthrough video coming soon
What You'll Need Before You Start
Grab these things before you sit down to set up Vitals. Having them handy means you can breeze through the whole process in one sitting.
- Your church's official name (as you'd want it on reports)
- A list of your campuses/locations (if multi-site)
- Your weekly service days and times for each location
- Your Planning Center admin login (if you plan to connect it)
- Email addresses for team members you want to invite
- Your church's fiscal year start month (if it's not January)
Create Your Account
Head over to vitals.church and sign up with your email or Google account. Your 30-day free trial kicks in right away — no credit card, no strings attached. You can be up and running before your next staff meeting.
Real-World Example
Say you're Pastor Mike at Grace Community Church. You sign up with mike@gracecommunity.org on a Tuesday afternoon, and by Wednesday morning your whole team is looking at a dashboard together. It really is that fast.
Tips
- Use your church email (like you@yourchurch.org) for the primary account — it keeps things professional and makes it easy for your team to recognize invite emails
- Church plants under 2 years old qualify for a completely free year. If that's you, reach out to us after signing up and we'll get you set up
- Already have a Google Workspace account for your church? Sign up with Google for one-click access going forward
Set Up Your Organization
Tell Vitals about your church — your name, timezone, campuses, and when your services happen. This is how Vitals knows when to pull your data and how to organize your reports.
Real-World Example
If you're Grace Community Church with a Downtown campus and a Westside campus, you'd add both locations here. Each campus can have its own service times, so Downtown's 9am and 11am services stay separate from Westside's single 10:30am gathering.
Tips
- Double-check your timezone — this affects when weekly reports land in your inbox and when integrations sync
- Add all your campuses upfront, even if some are brand new. You can always adjust later
- Don't forget Saturday evening services! Vitals treats Saturday and Sunday as the same weekend for reporting
Connect Your Integrations (Optional)
If your church uses Planning Center, YouTube, or other tools, you can link them up so data flows into Vitals automatically. No more Monday morning spreadsheet wrangling. But if you prefer to enter numbers by hand, that works great too.
Real-World Example
Most churches start by connecting Planning Center. Once linked, your Sunday attendance numbers and giving totals appear in Vitals automatically by Monday morning — no one has to remember to enter them.
Tips
- Planning Center is the most popular integration — it imports attendance and giving with zero effort on your part
- YouTube integration tracks your livestream views and engagement, which is great for understanding your online reach
- You can always add integrations later. Don't feel like you need to connect everything on day one
Configure Your Metrics
Choose which numbers matter most to your church. Vitals comes with sensible defaults — attendance, giving, small groups — but every church is different. Maybe you also want to track first-time guests, baptisms, or volunteer hours.
Real-World Example
A church focused on discipleship might track small group attendance, new group leaders trained, and baptisms alongside the usual attendance and giving. A church in a growth season might add "first-time guests" and "second-time guests" to watch their front door.
Tips
- Start with 4-6 metrics you actually look at every week. You can always add more once you're comfortable
- Hide metrics that don't apply to your church — there's no reason to see a blank "Online Campus" row if you don't stream
- Custom metrics let you track anything unique to your ministry. We've seen churches track everything from parking lot capacity to prayer requests received
Invite Your Team
Vitals is better with your whole team. Add your executive pastor, campus pastors, worship leaders, office staff — anyone who needs to see the numbers or enter data. You control exactly who can see and do what.
Real-World Example
Your executive pastor probably needs Admin access so they can manage settings. Your campus administrators need Editor access to enter weekly numbers. And your board members? Give them Viewer access so they can check the dashboard before meetings without accidentally changing anything.
Tips
- Send invites in batches — start with your core leadership team, then add data entry staff
- Campus-specific access means your North Campus pastor only sees North Campus data (unless you want them to see everything)
- Don't forget your bookkeeper or finance person — they'll love having giving data in one place
Start Tracking!
Enter your first week of data (or let your integrations do it for you) and watch your dashboard come to life. This is the moment it all clicks — seeing your church's story told through real numbers.
Real-World Example
After your first Sunday with Vitals connected, log in Monday morning and you'll see attendance across all your services, giving totals broken down by campus, and trends starting to form. After a few weeks, you'll wonder how you ever led without this view.
Tips
- Have historical data in spreadsheets? You can import past weeks so you get trend lines from day one
- Download the mobile app so campus pastors can enter headcounts right from the auditorium
- Set up weekly email digests so your leadership team gets a snapshot every Monday morning without even logging in
What's Next?
You're all set up! Here are a few things to explore now that the basics are in place.
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Still have questions? Email us at support@vitals.church — we usually reply within a few hours.