As a ministry leader, you care deeply about ensuring people don’t “fall through the cracks." That's what attendance is all about.
But which absence recording option is best based on your group size, ministry goal, or even who may be taking attendance?
Follow these guidelines to effectively track absences while keeping your data uncluttered.
When Recording Absences is Helpful (and When It's Not)
- Record Absences when it counts.
- For smaller classes or adult small groups, absence records serve as a helpful flag when you expect someone to be present but they aren’t.
- For smaller classes or adult small groups, absence records serve as a helpful flag when you expect someone to be present but they aren’t.
- Don’t record more Absences than you need to.
- For larger groups (especially worship services), recording a large number of people as “absent” adds clutter to your timelines, reports, and your system overall.
- Consider: How often do we ‘clean up’ groups or remove visitors who haven’t returned in a while? Do I need to see both the absences and the people attending, or only those who were present?
- Use Timelines, Reports, Last Attended Date search, and Workflows to your advantage.
- Each of these primary attendance tools leverages the "Present" attendance tag. In other words, marking someone as "Present" is generally more helpful within our system (accessible and valuable) for Attendance data tracking.
Example: The Individual Attendance Report displays the percent attended over a time period and weekly "attended" checkmarks so you can quickly see attendance patterns.
- Each of these primary attendance tools leverages the "Present" attendance tag. In other words, marking someone as "Present" is generally more helpful within our system (accessible and valuable) for Attendance data tracking.
- Recording Attendance: Filter for Recent Attendees to Save Time.
- When recording Attendance, click on the Filter icon.
- Under the Recent Attendees heading, use Show Recent "Group Members" and Show recent visitors to easily view who has attended recently, simplifying attendance tracking for all attendees, not just Group members.
Which "Recording Absences" Option to Choose
- Optional Absences: “Don’t mark 'absent' by default.”
- This is the most flexible option, allowing you to mark only the absences you want to specify.
- This is the most flexible option, allowing you to mark only the absences you want to specify.
- Enforced Absences: “Mark all group members who aren’t present as ‘absent.’”
- Use this when you’re tracking a small group or class and want to take special note of absences. It’s beneficial when group leaders record attendance, and you want to make sure the absences stand out.
- How it works: Check off everyone present. When you click Done, all individuals not marked present will be automatically marked as absent! No manual "absent" selection needed!
- No Absences: “Disable ability to mark absent.”
- This makes the best sense for a large group, event, or service, where you don’t want absence records recorded.
This can be especially helpful when many people are involved in recording attendance, and they may accidentally click on the Absent button.
- Example: When Disable ability to mark absent is selected, notice how the Absent option is removed in the rightmost screenshot.
- This makes the best sense for a large group, event, or service, where you don’t want absence records recorded.
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