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Mark attendance manually ​

Manual entry is what you reach for when you need precision: a member whose check-in failed, a back-dated correction, a single visitor you forgot about. It's slower than bulk marking but lets you target one row at a time.

Two places to do it ​

From the member profile ​

  1. Open the member.
  2. Switch to the Attendance tab.
  3. Click the create button.
  4. Pick the meeting and date.
  5. Save.

This is the fastest path when you already have the member's profile open.

From the Attendance page ​

  1. Go to Attendance.
  2. Click the create button.
  3. Pick the member from the search dropdown.
  4. Pick the meeting.
  5. Pick the date.
  6. Save.

The dropdown matches as you type, so even a partial name is enough.

Manual attendance dialog

Back-dating ​

The date picker accepts any past date — you can record an attendance from last Sunday, last month, or last year. Future dates are blocked: GCM treats attendance as a historical record, not an RSVP.

TIP

If you're back-filling a series of past services, bulk attendance is usually faster than dozens of manual entries.

Notes ​

Each attendance row supports an optional note field. Useful for things like:

  • "Arrived late"
  • "First time back after surgery"
  • "Came with friend who is now interested"

Notes show on the member's attendance tab and in the per-meeting attendance list. They don't bubble up to dashboard reports.

Removing an attendance ​

Click any attendance row to open it, then delete. The row is hard-deleted (no recycle bin for attendance) — but the action is logged in the activity log, so you can see who removed it and when.

WARNING

Deleting an attendance from a long-ago date can shift historical charts and workflow eligibility. We don't recommend cleaning up old data unless it's truly wrong. If someone genuinely did attend, leave the row alone.

Editing ​

You can change the meeting or date on an existing row. The unique constraint applies after the edit, so if you accidentally land on a duplicate (same member + meeting + new date you're moving to) the save will fail with a friendly error.

Permissions ​

ActionAdminShepherdMember
Add attendanceyesscopedself only
Edit attendanceyesscopedno
Delete attendanceyesscopedno

Shepherds can mark and edit any member in their org unit scope. A self-service member can only add an attendance for themselves.

Common questions ​

Why are some meetings missing from the picker? The picker only shows active meetings whose org-unit scope matches the member's org unit. If you're marking a Downtown member, you'll see Downtown-scoped meetings and any org-wide meetings, but not a West Branch only meeting.

Can I create a meeting from this dialog? No. Meetings are created from Calendar → Meetings. The picker shows what's already there.

What if the same person attended a service twice? The database only allows one attendance row per member + meeting + date. If they attended both a morning and evening service on the same Sunday, those need to be two different meetings (Sunday Morning Worship and Sunday Evening Service) to be tracked separately.

Next steps ​