Setting Up Your Organization
Let's get your church's home base configured in Vitals. This is where you tell us who you are, where you meet, and when your services happen.
Think of your organization settings as the foundation of your Vitals account. Getting these details right means your reports are accurate, your integrations sync at the right times, and your team sees exactly the data they need. The good news? It only takes a few minutes, and you can always come back and adjust things later.
Church Details
Your church details show up on reports, email digests, and anywhere your church name appears in Vitals. Head to Settings → Organization to fill these in or update them anytime.
- Church Name
- This is the name that appears on all your reports, weekly digests, and exports. Use your full official name — for example, "Grace Community Church" rather than just "Grace" or "GCC." Your team and board members will see this on everything Vitals produces.
- Timezone
- This is more important than it sounds. Your timezone controls when weekly reports get generated, when integration syncs happen, and where the "week boundary" falls. If your main campus is in Central Time but you set Eastern by mistake, your Sunday night service might get counted in the wrong week. Set this to match your primary campus location.
- Denomination
- This one's optional, but it's worth setting. Vitals uses your denomination to show you benchmark comparisons with similar churches. A Southern Baptist church of 500 looks different from a nondenominational church of 500 — setting your denomination helps make those comparisons more meaningful.
Why this matters
Say you're Harvest Fellowship in Phoenix, Arizona. You'd enter "Harvest Fellowship" as your church name, set your timezone to US/Mountain (no daylight saving!), and pick your denomination. Now when your executive pastor opens the Monday morning email digest, it says "Harvest Fellowship — Weekly Report" at the top, and all the timestamps match Arizona time.
Adding Campuses
Whether you have one location or ten, Vitals is built to handle it. Each campus tracks its own metrics independently — attendance, giving, groups, all of it — while still rolling up into your organization-wide totals. If you're a single-site church, don't worry: a default campus is created for you automatically.
Here's how to add a new campus:
- 1Go to Settings → Campuses
- 2Click Add Campus
- 3Enter the campus name and city/location (e.g., "Westside Campus — Scottsdale, AZ")
- 4Click Save — the campus is immediately available for data entry and reporting
Good to know
Each campus can have its own service times, team members with campus-specific access, and metric configurations
Campus data rolls up automatically to your organization dashboard — no manual adding required
You can rename or deactivate a campus later without losing any historical data
Configuring Service Times
Service times tell Vitals when your church gathers each week. This isn't just for show — it's what drives your integration syncs. When you connect Planning Center, for example, Vitals knows to pull your attendance data shortly after your last service ends. Get these right and everything happens automatically.
Real-world example
Say your church runs a Saturday evening service at 5pm, and two Sunday morning services at 9am and 11am. You'd add three service times: Saturday 5:00 PM, Sunday 9:00 AM, and Sunday 11:00 AM. After your 11am service wraps up on Sunday, Vitals automatically syncs your Planning Center data so the numbers are waiting for you Monday morning.
Adding a service time:
- 1Go to Settings → Service Times
- 2Click Add Time
- 3Select the day of week and start time
- 4Assign the service to the correct campus (important for multi-site!)
- 5Click Save
Tips
Add every regular service, including Saturday evening, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and midweek gatherings
Saturday and Sunday services are grouped into the same "weekend" for reporting — your Saturday 5pm crowd shows up in the same week as your Sunday 9am crowd
Adding or removing a permanent service? Update it here so your automatic syncs keep working correctly
Special events like Christmas Eve or Easter Sunrise don't need to be added as service times — those are one-off events, not recurring services
Fiscal Year Settings
Most churches run on a calendar year (January through December), and that's what Vitals uses by default. But if your church's budget year starts in a different month — September is common for churches that align with the school year — you'll want to update this.
Head to Settings → Organization → Fiscal Year to change your start month.
What does this affect?
The fiscal year setting changes how year-over-year comparisons work on your dashboard and in exported reports. For example, if your fiscal year starts in September, YoY growth compares September-through-August periods rather than January-through-December. This makes your giving reports match your actual budget cycle.
Don't worry — this setting doesn't change how raw data is stored. It only affects how comparisons are calculated and displayed.
Quick tip
Not sure what your church's fiscal year is? Ask your bookkeeper or finance team. It's usually the same cycle your annual budget follows. If nobody knows, January is a safe default — you can always change it later.
Common Setups
Not sure how to configure things for your situation? Here are three common scenarios we see. Find the one that fits your church and use it as a starting point.
Single-Site Church
Most common
Example: Riverside Bible Church in Austin, TX. One building, two Sunday services (9am and 10:45am), about 400 people total.
- Campuses: Just keep the default campus that was created when you signed up. Rename it to your church name if you like.
- Service times: Add Sunday 9:00 AM and Sunday 10:45 AM
- Team: 2-3 Admins (lead pastor, exec pastor, office manager), 1-2 Viewers (board members)
Multi-Site Church
Growing churches
Example: New Life Church with a Main Campus (3 services), a North Campus (2 services), and an East Campus (1 service). About 2,000 people across all locations.
- Campuses: Add each location as its own campus. Include the city or neighborhood in the name to avoid confusion (e.g., "North Campus — Plano").
- Service times: Add service times for each campus separately. Main Campus might have Sat 5pm, Sun 9am, and Sun 11am, while North Campus just has Sun 9:30am and Sun 11:30am.
- Team: Central staff get Admin or org-wide Editor. Campus pastors get Editor with campus-specific access so they only see their location's data.
Church Plant
Just getting started
Example: The Table Church, a 6-month-old plant meeting in a school cafeteria on Sundays at 10am. About 75 people, one service, tiny team.
- Campuses: One default campus is all you need. You can always add more if you grow into multiple locations.
- Service times: Just add Sunday 10:00 AM. Simple as that.
- Team: The planting pastor is Admin. Maybe one other core team member as Editor. That's it for now.
- Don't forget: If you're under 2 years old, you qualify for a free year of Vitals. Reach out to us!
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Still have questions? Email us at support@vitals.church — we usually reply within a few hours.