Scheduling events
How admins create and edit events — dates and times, images, who sees an event (on your website, members only, or admins only), repeating events, changing or cancelling one date or every date, drafts, and cancelling, restoring, or deleting an event.
Read the transcript
Here's how to put your church's events on the calendar, choose who sees each one, and change a single date.
Click Events, then New event. Give it a name, choose when it starts and ends, and say where. Add a photo if you like. Your regular Sunday services don't go here. Those are your service times.
Then choose who sees it. On your website means anyone can see it there, and your members see it in the app. Members only keeps it in the app, like a Bible study in someone's home. Admins only is just for your admins. An event for a group starts as Members only.
If it happens every week, choose Weekly. You make it once, and it repeats until you tell it to stop.
Under How do people attend, Open needs no sign-up. With RSVP, members tap Going, Maybe or Can't go. A registration form asks what you need to know. For either, you can set a capacity, and sign-ups close when it's full. Then click Publish event.
Is one week called off? Click that date on your calendar. On the event's page, click Change this date, turn on Cancel this date, then click Save change. Every other week stays as it is. Edit every date changes them all.
Your members find your events in the app, on a computer or a phone, and on their calendar. Anyone who signs up gets a reminder the day before, and is told if a date is cancelled or moved.
Events are how you tell your congregation when to show up — Sunday services, a youth camp, a women's breakfast, a workday. You'll find them under Events in the admin sidebar.
Calendar and list views
The Events screen has two views, toggled at the top:
- Calendar — a month grid. Each event shows as a colored chip on the days it covers. Click a chip to open the event's page. A repeating event opens on the date you clicked. Click an empty day to start a new event on that date.
- List — upcoming events grouped by date, each row showing its time, place, and sign-up type. Click a row to open the event's page.
Use the month arrows (or Today) to move around. A small repeat glyph marks recurring events.
Creating an event
Click New event (or an empty calendar day) to open the editor. The essentials:
-
Name and an optional description.
-
Starts and Ends — pick a date and time for each. Flip on All-day event for a date-only event with no specific time. To span several days (a weekend retreat, say), set the End date to a later day — the calendar and list will show it across the whole range.
-
Location — free text, e.g. "Fellowship Hall."
-
Event color — choose a swatch or a custom color. It's how members tell events apart at a glance on the calendar.
-
Image — an optional photo. Drag the framing circle onto what matters so cards crop it the way you want, and add a short description of the picture. No photo? Choose or make a graphic under the field opens your church's graphics library to pick one (free), or designs a new one from what you've typed so far. Either way it publishes with the event. See Adding a graphic to an event, announcement, or campaign.
-
On behalf of — optionally attach the event to a group (e.g. Youth Group), church- wide by default.
-
Visibility — who sees the event once it's published:
- On your website — anyone can see it on your website, and your members see it in the app.
- Members only — your members see it in the app, on web and mobile. It stays off your website. A good fit for anything private, like a Bible study at someone's home.
- Admins only — only admins see it. Members won't see it, and it stays off your website.
A new event starts On your website — that's how your website fills itself in. An event you create for a group starts Members only. You can change either before you publish.
Recurrence
If the event repeats, open the Recurrence card and choose how often — daily, weekly, or monthly — and how it ends: never, on a date, or after a set number of times. Psalmly stores this as a rule and lays out each occurrence for you; you don't create them one by one. A plain-language summary ("Every week until Aug 29") confirms what you chose.
How members take part
Every event has one attendance mode — Open, RSVP, or a registration form — set in the How do people attend? card. That's covered in its own guide: Event sign-ups, forms, and capacity.
Drafts and publishing
A brand-new event starts as a draft — only you and other admins can see it.
- Publish event makes it visible to members.
- Save draft keeps a new event hidden while you finish it.
Once an event is published, the editor's buttons change to Save changes (keep it live) and Revert to draft (pull it back out of view). Your members see an event only once it's published and set to On your website or Members only — so a draft, or an Admins only event, is a safe place to prepare something before it goes live.
Editing an event
Open any event to see its page, then Edit to make changes — name, dates, location, color, recurrence, or how people attend. Saving keeps it live.
On a repeating event the page shows one date at a time, with a date picker at the top, and two buttons say which you're changing:
- Change this date — just the date showing in the picker. Cancel it, move it to another day or time, or give it its own title, place, or color. See Changing just one date below.
- Edit every date — the whole series, in the same editor a one-time event uses.
The detail page also has a Make a graphic button (on paid plans, and on the free plan while your 3 free graphics last). It opens Make a graphic with this event already picked and What's the graphic for? filled in from its date, time, and place — handy for a poster, a screen slide, or something to post. See Making a graphic.
Two things to know before you move a date. Changing an event's date or start time notifies everyone who signed up that it's been rescheduled. And if the event repeats with RSVPs set to each occurrence, changing the start date, how often it repeats, or the interval clears all its RSVPs — Psalmly asks you to confirm, with a count, before it does.
Cancelling an event
When a gathering is called off — weather, a scheduling conflict, low turnout — cancel it rather than deleting it. Deleting makes an event simply vanish, which leaves people who were planning to come wondering what happened. Cancelling keeps it in place so the change is clearly communicated.
To cancel, open the event, click Edit, then Cancel event and confirm. On a repeating event the button is Edit every date, then Cancel every date — it calls off every date of the event. To call off just one date, use Change this date instead (below).
From then on the event:
- Stays visible, clearly marked "Cancelled," to members and on your website — so anyone who had it on their calendar sees that it's off, not just gone.
- Closes sign-ups — its RSVP and registration buttons are replaced with a short note that the event was cancelled, so no one newly signs up.
- Tells the people who signed up — everyone who RSVP'd going or maybe, and everyone who registered, gets a notification (and a push on their phone) saying it was cancelled.
- Ages out on its own once its date passes, exactly like any other past event — there's nothing to clean up afterward.
Cancelling never deletes anything and is fully reversible. If plans change again, open the event and click Restore event to bring it back exactly as it was, RSVPs and all. Restoring is quiet, though — nobody who got the cancellation notice is told it's back on, so send an announcement if plans change.
Changing just one date. For a repeating event you can change a single date without touching the rest. Open the event — from the calendar, click that date and it opens on it; from the list, pick the date in the picker at the top of its page. Then click Change this date:
- Turn on Cancel this date to call it off, or
- move it to another day or time, or give it its own title, place, or color,
then click Save change. Members see that one date marked "Cancelled" (or on its new date) while every other date carries on as normal, and anyone signed up for that date is notified. To put a date back the way the others are, open it again and click Undo changes to this date.
Deleting an event
To remove an event for good, open its detail page, use the ⋯ menu, and choose Delete. Deleting is permanent and also removes that event's RSVPs and form registrations, so we ask you to confirm first.
Rule of thumb: Cancel when you want people to know it's off; Delete only when an event was created by mistake and should disappear without a trace.