Simple Attendance

[williadr]

Is it possible to use Powerchurch to take simple service attendance? I would like to use the counts provided by our church's ushers for Sunday Morning Worship, Sunday School, Kids Church, Youth Services etc. Marking attendance person by person would appear to demand a lot of time and coordination to accomplish.

For example

12/5/2010 - Sunday Morning Worship - 356

thanks
Darren

[NeilZ]

Is it possible to use Powerchurch to take simple service attendance? I would like to use the counts provided by our church's ushers for Sunday Morning Worship, Sunday School, Kids Church, Youth Services etc. Marking attendance person by person would appear to demand a lot of time and coordination to accomplish.

For example

12/5/2010 - Sunday Morning Worship - 356

thanks
Darren

In a word, No. You can use an Excel spreadsheet, even a Word document with an embedded table to track that sort of static information.

The attendance module in Powerchurch was designed to track individual attendance at various activities such as Worship, Sunday School, etc. In this way you can follow up to see if there are visitors who have been attending fairly regularly and see if they would like to become members; locate members who have not been attending for pastoral calls or visits, attendance at Sunday School for awards, and so on.

Frankly, at the church where we first started using Powerchurch, we had Sunday attendance at two services of around 300 to 400. It took one person about 15 minutes on Monday to add the attendance. Using the Fast Data Entry function of the Attendance Module made this very easy.

Finally, since you're new to the Powerchurch forums, you may not have noticed how they are setup. Each area of Powerchurch (Membership, Accounting, Contributions) has its own forum area. Your question would normally fall under the Membership forum. Not a problem that its here, but it could be overlooked easily. Just some friendly advice for in future

[williadr]

Thanks for the direction. I do have a follow-up question, you mentioned the attendance for 600 - 800 could be captured in PowerChurch in around 15 minutes. How were you able to accurately take attendance on Sunday? i keep envisioning ushers scanning the audience with clip boards and checking off names, is there a better way?

What was your process?

[NeilZ]

Thanks for the direction. I do have a follow-up question, you mentioned the attendance for 600 - 800 could be captured in PowerChurch in around 15 minutes. How were you able to accurately take attendance on Sunday? i keep envisioning ushers scanning the audience with clip boards and checking off names, is there a better way?

What was your process?

We used Attendance Pads or Friendship Pads kept in every pew. These can be found in church supply stores, or online at Cokesbury, etc.

Basically the pastor would welcome everyone to worship, and ask that they fill out the pad and pass it down the row. After the service, the ushers would collect the pages, and set them aside for entry on Monday.

You got really good at deciphering handwriting