How Passport Fits Together
Passport has a lot of parts, and the menu does not tell you which ones relate to which. This page does.
Everything below follows one person, from the moment they first hear about your church to the moment they belong to it. That is the order to learn the product in, and roughly the order to set it up in.
:::tip There is a live version of this Inside Passport, go to Admin → Setup Center → How Passport fits together. It shows the same map, scoped to your church's plan, and every box is clickable. :::
1. Reach — they hear about you
| GoReach | A map of your neighbourhood and a record of every door your team knocked on, so the same street does not get visited twice while the one behind it never gets visited at all. |
| Prospect cards | Printed QR cards your team hands out. Each one is unique, so you know who scanned it and what they asked for. |
2. Capture — they tell you who they are
| Plan a Visit page | A public page where somebody picks a real service time and says they are coming. The page to point ads at. |
| Connection card | A QR code on the seat backs and welcome desk. Guests fill the card in on their own phone instead of on paper you have to type up later. |
The difference between the two: the Visit Page catches people before Sunday. The connection card catches them on Sunday. Most churches want both.
3. Follow up — a human reaches out
| Guests | Everyone who said they are coming, everyone who came, and everyone nobody has spoken to yet. The single most useful screen in Passport. |
| People | Your directory. Every other part of Passport reads from here. |
This stage is where churches actually lose people, and it is the stage most church software is worst at. A guest who is never contacted does not come back, and nobody finds out until it is far too late to fix.
4. Belong — they stop being a guest
| Groups | People who meet. Ongoing, no end date. |
| Classes | Something you finish. Has a beginning and an end. |
| Ministries | A job you do. Serving teams and their rota. |
| Member portal | What your congregation actually sees, on their phone. Where they join, enrol, and volunteer without a staff member in the middle. |
A group is people who meet. A class is something you finish. A ministry is a job you do.
If you remember one sentence from this page, make it that one. It is the question churches ask us most.
4b. Serve — the strongest thing that keeps them
Volunteering is the strongest single predictor that somebody stays at a church. That is why Services belongs on this map rather than off to one side as an operations chore: putting a new person on a team is not admin, it is the last step of the journey the rest of this page describes.
| Service plans | The running order for a Sunday, and the schedule your Visit Page offers guests a real occurrence from. |
| Positions and teams | What each job is and who is allowed to do it. |
| Scheduling | Filling those jobs week to week — including with the people who arrived as guests three months ago. |
5. Operate — the week in between
| Calendar | Services, class sessions and events in one grid. Mostly fills itself from things you have already set up. |
| Attendance | Who was actually here. This is what turns "they said they were coming" into "they came". |
6. Measure — did any of it work
| Analytics | Growth and retention. |
| Guest funnel | Where people drop out between hearing about you and belonging. |
What depends on what
A few things genuinely block other things. If something is not working, it is usually one of these:
| You want… | You first need… |
|---|---|
| To publish a Visit Page | At least one service time, with one marked as your main service |
| Automated guest messages | A texting number (Admin → Settings → Communications) |
| Useful groups, classes or ministries | People in your directory — import before you build |
| A ministry schedule | Positions defined on that ministry |
| Guest show-rates and retention | Attendance being recorded |
| Members to sign in to the portal | Phone numbers on their person records |
Where to start
If you have just signed up, open Admin → Setup Center in Passport. It works out what your church has already done from your actual data and tells you the next useful thing — which beats reading this page front to back.
Next steps
- Start setting up — Get set up covers the things you do once.
- Track your progress — The Setup Center knows what is left.
- Something missing? — It may be on the way — see Coming soon.