Sharing your join code
How to bring your whole congregation in with a join code — printing a welcome sheet poster or bulletin insert with a QR code, sharing the link, who to give the code to, and what happens when you change it.
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Right now, what you post in Psalmly reaches only you. Here's how to bring your people in, and how to use your Directory once they're in.
The easiest way is a welcome sheet. On your dashboard, choose Print a welcome sheet, then pick a size: a poster for the wall, or a half-page insert for the bulletin. Black and white is fine.
Share it with your people: on a poster at church, in the bulletin, or by email. Keep it off social media and your website. People point their phone's camera at the square and ask to join. Your members have their own short video for that part.
Anyone who asks to join waits for your approval, and we'll email you. In your Directory, under Waiting for approval, choose Approve. To let people join right away, turn off Approve new members on your Join code page.
You can also invite people by email, and they come straight in. Choose Invite by email, type each address or paste a list, then send.
Everyone who joins appears in your Directory. Your admins, and anyone with a title, are listed first, and you can search by name.
Members manage their own details. You always see their email, but their phone only if they share it. Anyone can hide from the directory. You'll still see them, marked Hidden.
Click someone to open their page. There you can give them a title, like Deacon, change their role if you're a lead admin, or remove them from the church.
For people who don't use the app, choose Add people, then Add to roster. All you need is a name. Add their email, and they'll get your announcements and weekly bulletin by email. Only your admins see them. Like everyone in your Directory, they count toward your plan.
When your first member joins, this step on your dashboard checks itself off, and what you post reaches them, too.
Your join code is the simplest way for a whole congregation to get into Psalmly. It
looks like HILLSIDE-7Q2KMP, it's the same for everyone in your church, and anyone who has it can
request to join. With Approve new members on (it is, unless you've turned it off), they wait until an
admin approves them — see Approving new members. (Codes issued before mid-2026 have a shorter ending; both work the same.) Where an email invitation reaches one person, the join code reaches everyone at
once — on a poster in the foyer, an insert in the bulletin, or a word from the front.
You'll find it on the Directory page in the admin sidebar: the code sits at the top, next to Print welcome sheet, which opens the full page.
Its Copy link button copies your church's join link, ready to paste into an email or a text: one tap opens your church's join page, where they request to join. You approve them from your Directory, or they're in right away if you've turned off Approve new members. The screen you see right after creating your church has the same button.
The welcome sheet
The welcome sheet is the thing to print. It carries your church's name, logo and color, a big QR code, your code and web address, and three short steps — so someone can point their phone's camera at it and ask to join within a minute.
There are two formats:
- Full-page poster — for a bulletin board or the foyer wall. Sized so the church name and code are readable from across a room.
- Half-page insert — two to a sheet, so one page cut in half gives you two handouts for the bulletin.
If your congregation isn't likely to scan anything, the insert has a No QR — code only option that swaps the QR for the code in large type and rewrites the steps to match: go to psalmly.app/join, create an account or sign in, then enter the code.
The sheets are designed to survive a normal office printer: they're readable in black and white, so you don't need color, and there's no light-gray text to disappear on a photocopy.
You can also Download QR on its own if you'd rather put it in your own slides, a newsletter, or the church's Facebook page.
What happens when someone scans it
The QR opens your church's join page, with your church named at the top. Someone new to Psalmly creates an account there first, then taps Ask to join; someone already signed in just taps it. Nobody has to type the code, and nobody has to find your church in a list.
They then wait for an admin to approve them, and that same page offers them the Psalmly app for their phone, which is where your church shows up once they're in. (With Approve new members turned off, the button says Join and they're in right away.)
Who to give it to
Your join code is a key for your people. Anyone who has it can ask to join your church, and members can see your directory, your church-wide prayer requests, your groups and announcements, and your members-only events.
So share it with your people: in the bulletin, on a poster at church, or by email. Keep it off social media and your website, where anyone could find it. Your website's Member sign in is there for people who already belong, and Get in touch is there for newcomers.
A few things worth knowing:
- It works before your website does. Your code, your join link and the QR code on your welcome sheet all work as soon as your church is set up, whether or not your website is published. So you can bring your first people in before you're ready to go public, or use them alongside a website your church already has.
- You'll hear about every join. When someone asks to join with your code or link, every admin of your church gets an email and a note in Updates naming them, and you approve or decline them in your Directory. If you've turned Approve new members off, the email says who joined instead, and its Review in Directory button opens them in your Directory, where Remove from church is if you don't know them. (People who accept an email invitation don't trigger it — you already chose them.)
- Joining doesn't make anyone an admin. People who join with the code come in as members. Admin roles are granted deliberately, by a lead admin, from the Directory — see Managing your church directory.
- Someone you remove stays out. A person you've removed from your church can't come back in with the code — only an invitation from you brings them back. (Someone who left on their own can rejoin with it any time.)
- If the code has gone somewhere you didn't mean it to, change it (below).
If you'd rather bring someone in individually — or grant them an admin role as they join — use Invite by email instead.
Changing your code
If a code has gone somewhere you didn't intend, you can replace it. On the Join code & welcome sheet page, choose Change code. You'll get a new one right away.
Anything already printed with the old code stops working, so it's worth doing deliberately rather than casually. But it isn't a dead end for anyone: someone who scans an old poster months later is told your join code has changed, and your church is named on that page so they know they're in the right place — they just need to ask at the welcome desk for the current code.
After changing it, print a fresh welcome sheet and swap out what's on the wall.
If someone can't get in
- "Couldn't join with that code." Shown where someone types the code. Ask them to check it against what's printed and try again; if it still doesn't work, they can speak with you.
- "That code doesn't match a church." (On the join page.) Almost always a typo. The characters after the hyphen never use the letters I, L or O, or the numbers 0 or 1 — those are the usual mix-ups. Check what they typed against what's printed.
- They're signed in as the wrong account. The join page shows which account they're using, with a Not you? link to switch.
- Nothing happens when they scan. Check that the poster carries your current code. Your website doesn't need to be published for it to work.