Getting Started with the Attendance module

Introduction to the Attendance Module

Welcome to the Attendance module. This module is the core repository for gathering attendance data. In this context, a gathering could be a weekend or midweek service of worship or other special occasions when people gather and attendance is recorded. The functionality allows you to optionally record and track the personal attendance of individuals at your gatherings, but at its simplest level, the module records key attendance metrics. From the data collected, you can produce insightful reports and visualise attendance trends.

Child group attendance

The Children module includes a fantastic Check-in system for recording session attendance for groups for your regular children, visitors and serving team members as they check in and out of their age-based groups. The Children module also supports attendance recording from paper-based group registers. Using the group attendance data automatically collected through the Check-in system and group attendance manually added to the Children module from printed registers, you can produce a wide range of attendance reports for your entire Children and Youth ministry.

While it may be desirable to also maintain child attendance metrics in the Attendance module, there is currently no direct connection between the Attendance module metrics and the age-based gatherings and groups in the Children module. Thus, the data cannot be mapped to auto-populate the Attendance module from the attendance data collected in the Children module. However, Attendance module metrics can be manually populated with Children Ministry group attendance totals. Consider whether duplicating attendance data in two modules is necessary and serves a useful purpose.

We encourage you to read this article in full to familiarise yourself with the module's key features and customisation options, as well as some of the basic concepts and terminology you'll encounter in it, and in our related support articles and training videos.

Attendance module features at a glance

Define metrics of interest for each of your gatherings.
Collect metric data in number and currency values.
Avoid reporting trend distortions by recording when a gathering didn't meet.
Record non-attendance-related metrics of interest and exclude them from attendance reporting totals.
Enable people tracking for a gathering to maintain registers of attendees for each date the gathering meets.
Visualise trends and changes in attendance data over time. Produce graphs and reports to summarise data of interest.
Add pertinent notes against an attendance record for a date.
See quick attendance insights on your user Dashboard and on the Engagement tab of people's profiles.

Next Steps

1: Add Gatherings, Metricsets and Metrics: see Adding and managing gatherings for attendance
2: Begin adding some attendance data: see Adding service attendance data for gatherings

Terminology

The building blocks for collecting data in this module are Gatherings, Metricsets, and Metrics:

Gatherings are the headings under which attendance for each date is grouped, totalled and reportable. You'll typically add a gathering for each occasion where people gather in person or online for a service or event and for which you want to maintain a record of attendance for each date the gathering meets for reporting purposes. Multi-site users will add site-specific gatherings for each distinct site/location. When 'people tracking' is enabled, you can also maintain a register of attendees for each date the gathering meets.
For each gathering, you'll define the Metrics of interest, e.g., "Adults" and "Visitor Cards", and choose whether a metric should be included or excluded from the total for each date. In this way, you can collect metric data for a gathering that doesn't relate to the attendance total for a date. For example, you could count cars in the car park or visitor connection cards and exclude those metric values from the attendance 'total' for the gathering on each date. All metrics are reportable, even if excluded from the attendance total for a gathering.
Metrics are grouped into Metricsets. A gathering can comprise one or more metricsets. In the following example - the setup for a 'hybrid' gathering - there are three metricsets to record the in-person and online elements of the gathering.

Got a question?

You’ll find the answers to most questions in our support articles - they're all available through the Support menu located in the top-right corner of each page in ChurchSuite. Select Get help to search by topic, phrase or keyword. You can also access the Support Article library on our website. And if you still can't find something you're looking for, click to contact one of the ChurchSuite team - we’re happy to help!