Dashboard & Reports

Scheduled Email Reports

Imagine your senior pastor getting a beautiful email every Monday morning with all the weekend numbers — without anyone having to remember to send it. That's what scheduled reports do. Set it up once, and Vitals handles the rest, every single week.

How It Works

Every Monday morning (or whatever day you choose), Vitals compiles the previous week's data and sends a clean, formatted summary email to everyone on your recipient list. The email looks great on phones and desktops, and it contains the same metrics and comparisons as the in-app weekly report.

Your senior pastor can glance at it over breakfast. Your elder board chair can scan it before the meeting. Your campus pastor can check it from their phone in the parking lot. No one needs to log in, pull up a dashboard, or ask someone else for the numbers.

Send time: Emails are sent at 7:00 AM in your organization's timezone. That means leadership has the data before the morning meeting, before the first coffee run, before the day gets away from them.
Data included: Attendance, giving, online viewers, first-time guests, and year-to-date totals — the same as the in-app weekly report. Plus year-over-year comparisons so everyone can see the real trend.
View in browser: Each email includes a “View in browser” link that opens the full interactive report. No login needed. So if your board chair wants to dig deeper or share it with someone else, they can.

If your team hasn't entered data yet when the report runs (say it was a late Saturday night service and no one logged numbers yet), Vitals will note which metrics are still pending so recipients know to expect an update. No blank reports, no confusion.

Setting Up Your First Report

Most churches start with one report for the whole staff team, then add more as they realize how useful they are. Here's how to get started:

1Go to Settings, then Reports, then Scheduled Reports.
2Click New Report.
3Give the report a name to identify it in your list (e.g., "Monday Staff Summary" or "Elder Board Update").
4Add recipients — enter email addresses one at a time. They don't need a Vitals account.
5Choose which metrics to include using the metric toggles (more on this below).
6Select your preferred frequency — Weekly, Monthly, or a Custom day.
7Click Save. The report is now active and will send on the next scheduled date.

That's it — about two minutes of setup, and your team gets the numbers delivered automatically from now on. No more “Hey, can you send me last week's attendance?” texts.

Example Report Setups

You can create as many scheduled reports as you need, each tailored to a different audience. Here are three setups we see working well at churches:

Staff

“Monday Staff Summary” — The full picture

Recipients: All pastoral staff and key ministry leaders.
Metrics: Everything — attendance, giving, online viewers, first-time guests, groups, salvations.
Frequency: Every Monday.
Why it works: Your whole team starts the week on the same page. The worship pastor sees how online engagement is trending. The children's director sees total attendance. Everyone has context for the staff meeting conversation.

Board

“Elder Board Update” — Just the essentials

Recipients: Elder board members and finance committee.
Metrics: Attendance and giving only — clean and focused.
Frequency: Monthly (first Monday of each month).
Why it works: Board members get exactly what they need for governance without being overwhelmed by operational details. The monthly cadence matches their meeting rhythm.

Campus

“North Campus Weekly” — Location-specific

Recipients: North campus pastor and their team.
Metrics: All metrics, filtered to their campus only.
Frequency: Every Monday.
Why it works: Each campus pastor gets their own numbers without sorting through data from other locations. They can celebrate their wins and identify their own areas for growth.

Choosing Your Frequency

Different audiences want data at different rhythms. You can set each report independently.

Who Should Receive Reports?

Recipients don't need a Vitals account. You can send to anyone with an email address — staff members, elders, board members, denominational leaders, or a pastor's personal Gmail. Here's who we typically see on the list:

Senior pastor: Usually on the weekly staff report. Many senior pastors tell us this is the first email they read on Monday morning — it sets the tone for the whole week.
Executive pastor: Often on both the staff report and the board report. They're usually the ones who set up the reports in the first place.
Elder board members: A monthly or quarterly report with just attendance and giving keeps them informed without creating information overload.
Campus pastors: Their own campus-specific weekly report. This gives them ownership of their numbers and helps them lead their location with confidence.
Ministry leaders: Your children's ministry director, youth pastor, or worship leader — anyone who benefits from seeing the big picture of how the church is doing overall.

There's no limit to the number of recipients per report. Add as many addresses as you need.

Recipients can unsubscribe from a specific report using the link at the bottom of each email. This only removes them from that one report — it doesn't affect their access to Vitals or other reports.

Tailoring Each Report

Every scheduled report can be customized independently. This is where it gets powerful — your board gets a concise financial summary while your staff team gets the full picture, and both come from the same system.

Metric toggles: Turn individual metrics on or off for each report. Want a giving-only report for your finance team? Just toggle off everything except giving. Need an attendance-only report for your campus pastor? Done. Each report is independent.
Campus filter: For multi-campus churches, you can filter each report to a specific campus. The north campus team gets north campus numbers, the south campus team gets theirs — no overlap, no confusion.

Adding a Personal Note

One of our favorite features: you can add a custom message that appears at the top of every email in that report. It shows up before the numbers, so it's the first thing people read.

Here's how church leaders are using this:

Weekly encouragement

Some senior pastors write a brief word of encouragement that goes out with the numbers every Monday. Something like: “Great weekend, team. I saw three families visit for the first time after our neighbor invite challenge. Let's keep that momentum going.” It turns a data email into a pastoral moment.

Prayer focus

Other pastors use the note to share a weekly prayer focus. “This week, let's pray specifically for our first-time guests from Sunday — that they felt welcomed and will come back.” It grounds the data in what actually matters.

Context for the numbers

If you know attendance was down because of a holiday weekend or a snowstorm, put that in the note. “Attendance was down 15% — Memorial Day weekend. Compare to Memorial Day last year and we're actually up 8%.” This prevents panic and shows thoughtful leadership.

Series or event updates

“Week 3 of our 'Unshakeable' series. Attendance is holding strong and online viewers are up 20% from the same week in our last series. Great work by the production team.”

The personal note is optional and can be updated anytime. Some churches change it weekly, others set it once and leave it. It's your call.

Managing Your Reports

All your scheduled reports are listed in Settings → Reports. From here you can see each report's name, frequency, recipient count, and when it last went out.

Edit: Update recipients, metrics, frequency, or the personal note at any time. Changes take effect on the next scheduled send. Need to add a new elder to the board report? Takes about 10 seconds.
Pause: Temporarily stop sending a report without deleting it. This is handy during summer break if your board doesn't meet in July and August, or during a holiday season when data entry pauses. When you're ready, just unpause and it picks right back up.
Delete: Permanently remove the scheduled report. Past emails that were already sent are not affected — they're still in your recipients' inboxes.

Quick tip: If an elder rotates off the board, just edit the board report and remove their email. They'll stop receiving it immediately — no awkward “please unsubscribe me” conversations needed.

Getting started? We recommend starting with just one weekly report for your core staff team. Once you see how useful it is, you'll naturally want to set up targeted reports for your board, campus pastors, and ministry leaders.

Weekly Reports

View and share detailed weekly metric summaries in-app.

Dashboard Overview

Understand every element of your main dashboard view.

Still have questions? Email us at support@vitals.church — we usually reply within a few hours.