Entering Activity Attendance

[Pam]

I have tied individuals to an activity and am entering attendance.
For instance, I have added a Childrens Preschool activity and have assigned the children as members.

I may be doing something wrong, but once I do this and I go in to track their attendance each week, shouldn't all of the children in that activity pull forward to the attendance so that all I have to do is mark them present or absent?

I am having to manually select each child each week for each activity.
This is very tedious and time consuming.
Is there another way to do this?

[Jeff]

How are you entering attendance? Are you using Maintain Attendance Data or the Fast Data Entry screen?

[Pam]

I have used both, but I am referring to the Fast Data Entry Screen.

[Jeff]

Just verifiying that you have added the children to the activity through either the Maintain Activities & Skills or the Maintain List of Attenders screen.

The Fast Data Entry screen really works in 2 different modes. Add Mode and Edit Mode. The screen works in Add Mode when you enter a date and activity number that you have never recorded attendance before. In Add Mode, it pulls all the people that are members of an activity, adds attendance records and then lets you edit the attendance.

It enters Edit Mode when you put in an activity number and date that has previously had attendance entered. What it does in this case it goes to the attendance module and pulls the existing attendance records for that activity on that date and lets you edit them. It works this way because you could pull up the attendance for three years ago, and you wouldn't want the current members of the activity to be automatically added to the attendance from three years ago.

What we usually see is a variation of the following. A customer start editing the attendance in Fast Data Entry and realize that someone else should be added. They exit the Fast Data Entry Screen and add the person in Activity & Skills. They then bring back up the Fast Data Entry Screen and the new person is not listed. This is because when they bring the screen back up it is now in edit mode, not add mode. It found existing attendance data and is now letting you edit the already exisiting attendance data, it is not looking to add more people.

You can use the add attender function on the fast date entry screen to add someone that is not currently a member of the activity. You can add a brand new person or someone who is already in the PowerChurch membership database.

If this is not what is happening in your case, if you can provide us with more details about what is happening we may be able to give more complete information.

[Pam]

Thank you, Jeff! You just made things so much easier! I had entered one person across a range of dates, and it was keeping the existing list of attenders from loading into that activity. I deleted that person from all of the dates so that the list was blank and then went back and pulled up the date that I needed to enter attendance for. It confirmed that I wanted to enter data for that date, and then the list of attenders pulled forward.

Thank you! What a chore I made for myself in not understanding how this worked!

[sherry]

Jeff, we're considering buying PowerChurch and I have a question about how this works. We have a 3-class series that is offered each month. I had thought that we could set up one activity for that class, and then add people by dates. So let's say we have a new crop of students for the class that meets July 1, 8 & 15. I guess I would need to add the new students to the activity and then record attendance. When I go to record attendance, will I see every student who ever took this class? Or will I just see the ones that I've just added for the July class?

Thanks for your help!

Sherry

[NeilZ]

Jeff, we're considering buying PowerChurch and I have a question about how this works. We have a 3-class series that is offered each month. I had thought that we could set up one activity for that class, and then add people by dates. So let's say we have a new crop of students for the class that meets July 1, 8 & 15. I guess I would need to add the new students to the activity and then record attendance. When I go to record attendance, will I see every student who ever took this class? Or will I just see the ones that I've just added for the July class?

Thanks for your help!

Sherry

The way you have it setup is that you would see everyone who took the class. What I would do is setup two activities, one the current class, then one for 'graduates'. Once the current class is over, you could 'graduate' them, and then add new attendees to the class.

It would go like this:

400 - Adult Education - ( I like to have a header)
410 - Current Series Attendees
411 - Series Graduates

I would add new attendees to 410, at the end of the class, I would use the Mass Update module to move everyone from 410 to 411, thus having 410 ready for the new class.

[sherry]

Great! Thanks, Neil