Youth Online Attendance Sign-In

Tracking attendance is important. It helps to see who is coming, see who has stopped coming, follow up with visitors, and give an overall view of those coming in and out of your doors. Collecting this information is not always the easiest thing to do.

We used to use just a sign in sheet for visitors. This worked ok but it had several problems.

1. It’s on Paper – A piece of paper  is great, but it can be lost, misplaced, spilled on, torn, or worse. We’re talking about youth. These things will happen. I am a big proponent of using online methods of keeping data. It’s backed up, available anywhere, and won’t get thrown away with the empty pizza box.

2. It’s Legible – Having youth sign in on a sheet of paper is great. Some kids have awesome beautiful, legible handwriting. However, many youth do not. I would end up with a piece of paper where I could read some names, but not all of them. The electronic sign in makes it where they type in their name. I can always read it.

3. It’s Entered For You – When we did paper sign in, someone would have to take the names off the sheet and enter them into the computer. Using the electronic sign in, means that the data is already entered. You may want to format it differently or enter it into another sheet, but it is there.

How We Made Our Own

So instead we made our own electronic sign in for our youth ministry using a computer, our youth website, and google docs.

Step 1. Create a Google Form. Include the information you want to collect on a weekly basis. Ours includes the following:

First Name

Last Name

Grade

Word of the Day (I’ll explain that later)

Visitor/Member (Variable)

If they choose Member it goes to a page saying “Thank You”

If they choose visitor it goes to a page that collects the following:

Address

Phone

Join Text Message List

Questions or Comments

2. Set Up Your Computer

The google form will provide a link at the bottom for you to click, and view the form. Set up a computer in your welcome area, or door entry. Pull up the link to the form and it will appear on your screen. Youth can use it to sign in.

3. Embed The Form in your Website (Extra)

We went a step further and embedded the form in our website. We have a page called “sign in” that contains the form as part of our webpage. This means it has our logo, and color scheme. It also has links, announcements, photos and such in the right hand side bar.

4. Go Mobile (Extra, Extra)

Since I told you about creating our mobile “web app”, I thought I’d share how we are testing a mobile check in. There really is no difference. The plug in that optimizes our site for phones and tablets does a good job of formatting the sign in form as well. This way instead of everyone coming to the computer to sign in, they can sign in once they get to youth, using their cell phone.

This is where the “word of the day” comes in. We’re going to put the “word of the day” somewhere visible. The youth would have to be physically present to see it. That way we know a little better that they were actually here, and not signing in from their swimming pool.

So there it is. How do you get your youth to sign in? Do you? Share…