Reports
Reports is one page of plain questions, asked in the order a pastor would ask them. Are first-time guests coming back? Is that getting better? Is anyone reaching them? Do people who give their details come? Where do they come from? Then, depending on your plan: what your outreach led to, who is drifting, how many people are coming, what decisions were made, and how giving is going.
Each question gets a chart and a few numbers, and the numbers that matter open the list of people behind them. You can go from "half of them came back" to the names of the ones who have not, and from there to their profiles, without leaving the page.
What you need
- Staff access in Passport. Attendance is for admins only; giving is for admins and anyone whose role can view giving.
- A plan that includes the sections you want. See which sections you see below.
- Some history. A church in its first few weeks will see "Not enough data yet" more often than a number, and that is the page being honest rather than broken.
Open it
Select Reports in the main navigation.
Older links still land in the right place. The old analytics addresses open Reports, and links to the old visitor journey report, the decisions report and the Guests hub's insights open the matching section.
Pick a period
One control sits at the top: 30 days, 90 days or 12 months. The page opens on 12 months, which is long enough to see who came back and to read a year of attendance. Every section uses the period you pick, so the whole page describes the same stretch of time. The one exception is the return trend, which always shows the last 12 months because its whole point is comparing months.
Thirty days is long enough to see who is waiting for a call. It is rarely long enough to see who came back.
Which sections you see
A church sees only the sections its plan includes. If you are an admin and a higher plan would add more, you will see one quiet line saying what it adds, with a See plans link. Nobody else sees it.
| Section | Plan |
|---|---|
| Are first-time guests coming back? | Companion and up |
| Is retention getting better? | Companion and up |
| Is anyone reaching them? | Companion and up |
| Do people who give their details come? | Companion and up |
| Where do guests come from? | Companion and up |
| What did your outreach lead to? | GoReach and up |
| Who is drifting? | Plus and up |
| How many people are coming? | Plus and up, admins only |
| What decisions were made? | Plus and up, with Service decisions turned on |
| How is giving? | Plus and up, with Giving turned on, for admins and roles that can view giving |
The Church Growth Advisor
Admins may also see a Church Growth Advisor recommendation at the top of the page, above the first section.
Are first-time guests coming back?
This is the question the rest of the page exists to serve.
It follows the people whose first visit fell in the period. That group is the cohort, and every figure in this section counts people from it, each person once. The section draws their path as one chart, a row per step:
| Step | What it counts |
|---|---|
| First visit | Everyone in the cohort |
| Reached by a person within 48 hours | A completed care task, a pastoral visit, or a message a staff member wrote, within 48 hours of the first visit. Judged over the people whose first visit is at least 48 hours old, and the row says how many that is |
| Came back | They came to a service on a second, different day, whether or not anyone had reached them first |
| Came three or more times | Three different service days. Everyone here also came back, so this row also says what share of the people who came back got this far |
| Connected | In a group, in a class, interested in serving, or opened their member portal. The lines under it show each of those; a person can be in more than one, so they can add up to more than Connected |
| Became an attendee or member | Shown when your church moves guests up its membership path |
Every bar is drawn on the same scale, the whole cohort, so their lengths compare directly. The percentage beside each row is its share of the cohort.
Open any row to see the people who have not reached that step yet. Each name opens that person's profile, and the list ends with a link to the queue where you work them: Needs attention or Pipeline in the Guests hub.
The biggest drop-off
Below the chart, the section names the step that loses the largest share of the people who could have taken it, says what to do about it, and lists the people who stalled there. The row itself is marked Biggest drop-off.
It only counts people who have had time to take the step, and it needs at least 5 of them, so a handful of guests never produces a dramatic headline.
Too recent to tell
Somebody who first came last Sunday has not had a chance to come back yet. Counting them as "did not come back" would make every recent period look like a failure, so the section tells you how many of the cohort are too recent to tell: people whose first visit was under 14 days ago. They are left out of the lists of people who have not got there yet and out of the biggest drop-off.
If that number is a large share of the cohort, read the percentages loosely, or switch to a longer period.
Does reaching them make a difference?
Two bars compare how many came back among the guests a person reached within 48 hours and among those nobody reached in time. Guests under 14 days in are left out of both.
It is the most persuasive chart on the page for a team that wonders whether the Monday phone calls are worth it, and it comes from your own guests, not from a study. Each side needs at least 5 people before it shows a percentage.
Not enough data yet
With fewer than 5 people behind a figure, it reads Not enough data yet instead of a percentage. One guest out of three coming back is not 33% of anything, and 0% from two guests would be a misleading thing to put in front of a board.
Is retention getting better?
The single most useful retention view, because it compares like with like.
Each bar is a month: the guests whose first visit fell in that month, and how many came back within 30 days. The 30-day window is fixed, so a month from last spring and a month from the summer are measured the same way. A dashed line marks the rate across all the months that can be judged.
Two kinds of month have no bar:
- Early: its last day is under 30 days ago, so some of its guests have not had their 30 days yet. Its rate would only go up, so it is not shown.
- Few: fewer than 5 guests first came that month.
Hover a month, or read the table under the chart on a screen reader, for its first visits and returns. When no month can be judged yet, the section says Not enough data yet and shows that table instead.
The trend starts at the first month any guest came, so a church that is new to Passport sees its own months rather than a year of empty ones.
Is anyone reaching them?
This is the section you can change this afternoon.
It takes the first-time guests from the period whose first visit is at least 48 hours old and shows when a person first reached them, as one bar:
| Part | What it means |
|---|---|
| Within a day | Reached by a person in the first 24 hours |
| On the second day | Reached between 24 and 48 hours |
| After 48 hours | Reached, but late |
| Not reached yet | Nobody has contacted them |
The first two parts together are the 48-hour step in the journey above.
Beside it, Still waiting to hear from anybody (right now) is not history but a count of people nobody has contacted yet, with a link to work through them.
Why 48 hours
When a first-time visitor is recorded, Passport creates a care assignment for them: Personal follow-up within 48 hours. This section tells you how often that actually happened. A call on Monday afternoon still feels like a welcome; the same call the following Saturday feels like an afterthought.
Automated texts do not count
Only a person counts here. An automated text from a Guest Journey buys you a day or two of goodwill. The conversation is what brings somebody back, and if automated messages counted, a church whose only follow-up was a robot saying hello would look excellent.
The same goes for a care task that has been assigned but not done. Assigning is an intention; the phone call is the thing that works.
What Passport sent
Below the figures, What Passport sent shows the automated side for the period: messages sent and messages held back, sequence by sequence. It sits here, next to the human figures, so the two are never confused. If this list is busy and the bar above is mostly Not reached yet, your automation is doing the talking.
Do people who give their details come?
The part of the journey before anybody walks in, for the people who gave their details in the period (from your Visit Page, an ad, a card, or outreach), counted as people:
- Gave their details
- Planned a visit ahead: told you which service they meant to come to
- Came after planning: of those, how many came to a service
Each step shows its share of the step before. Underneath, a line says how many of everyone who gave their details have come so far, and how many of them came without planning ahead.
When somebody simply turns up, Passport writes a plan for that visit after the fact. That plan is not counted as planning ahead: only a plan made before the visit shows intent.
Where do guests come from?
The same people as the section above, split by the way they came in: your Visit Page, Facebook and Google ads, connection cards, prospect cards, GoReach and so on.
Each channel gets one bar, as long as the number of people who gave their details through it, split into those who came back, those who came once, and those who have not come yet. Under it:
| Figure | What it means |
|---|---|
| Gave details | People who gave their details through that channel, counted once each |
| Came | How many of them came to a service, and what share that is |
| Came back | How many came again, on another day. This is the figure that tells a channel that produces visitors from one that produces regulars |
| Per visitor | What the channel cost for each person who actually came. Only shown when an ad account is connected |
Cost per visitor, not cost per lead
Facebook and Google both show you a cost per lead. That number rewards a cheap form nobody follows up.
If you spend $200 and get four form submissions, your cost per lead is $50. If one of those four actually comes, your cost per visitor is $200. Only the second number tells you whether the money did anything, so it is the one Passport shows. When you spent money and nobody has come yet, the row says so instead of dividing by zero.
Unknown is not free
When Passport does not know what a channel cost, it says No spend data, never $0.
Some channels genuinely are free: inviting a friend costs nothing. Others simply cannot be measured, because no ad account is connected. Showing "$0 per visitor" for the second kind would be the most flattering possible lie, so unknown and free deliberately look different.
Spend is read from your connected ad account every night, and the past week is re-read each time, because ad platforms restate recent days. Your figures settle to match Ads Manager within a day or two.
Why GoReach is a row
Field outreach sits beside your ads, with the same figures. That is on purpose: knocking on doors and buying Instagram ads are two ways of doing the same job, and they deserve to be compared on the same measure rather than in two reports nobody puts side by side.
Community events
Below the channels there is a second block for the community events with registration that you ran in the period, one row per event:
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Registered | People who signed up |
| Came | People you marked in on the day |
| Did not come | Registered, but not marked in |
| Came to a service | People from the event who came to a service within 90 days of it |
That last column is what an outreach event is judged on. A church can fill a park and be no closer to anything.
A community event is not a marketing channel, which is why it is not a row above. It is a night, and it is judged one event at a time. An event held last weekend has had almost no chance to fill its last column, so judge an older one first. When you ran no community events in the period, the block is hidden.
What did your outreach lead to?
The GoReach side of the story, for the period:
| Figure | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Conversations | Interactions your team logged |
| New people met | People you met for the first time |
| Followed up | People someone went back to |
| Still owed a follow-up | People waiting on a follow-up right now. Work them from Outreach care tasks |
| Came to a service | New people you met who have since come to a service |
Read it from the bottom. Conversations are effort; Came to a service is the result.
Who is drifting?
Members who are past your church's attendance inactivity rules right now, with a link to everyone at risk. These are the people to ring this week, before quiet becomes gone. See at-risk alerts for how Passport flags them.
How many people are coming?
The number of different people at a service each week, as a bar per week split into returning and first time, with a line for the four-week average that smooths out a holiday weekend or a snowed-out Sunday. Over 12 months the axis is labelled by month.
Three figures sit above the chart:
- An average week: across the finished weeks that had a service
- Last full week: and how many of them came for the first time
- Highest week: the busiest week in the period
The current week is still happening, so it is drawn but left out of the figures.
Attendance read from Breeze and Planning Center is included, so a church that takes check-in there sees the same picture. See Attendance and Breeze and Planning Center.
Counting people rather than check-ins means somebody who came to two services on the same Sunday is one person, not two. Look at it alongside the first section: steady attendance with first-time guests who come back is a church growing; steady attendance with nobody coming back is a church replacing the people it loses.
What decisions were made?
The service decisions your team recorded in the period:
- The total, and the total for each kind of decision
- A bar per month, split by kind
- Export the months as CSV, for a spreadsheet or a board report
- A link to the Altar Call Log, where every decision is listed with the person and the altar worker
How is giving?
What was given in the period, net of refunds:
- Given: the total, and how many gifts made it up
- Givers: how many people gave, and the average gift
- Through recurring plans: the share of giving that came through recurring plans, and how many plans are active right now
- A bar per month, so a strong December or a quiet August is easy to see
- By fund: the largest funds, when you give to more than one
Open Giving for the detail.
If a number looks wrong
Everything on this page is downstream of things your team records during the week. If a number looks wrong, the fix is almost always upstream: attendance not being taken, so nobody "came back"; guests not being captured, so a channel looks empty; or calls made but not recorded as a completed care task, so nobody looks reached.
Next steps
- Work the names — The Guests hub is where the people in these lists get a phone call.
- Improve your best route in — Your Plan Your Visit page is usually the one worth tuning.
- Make the numbers trustworthy — Attendance, taken every week.