Off-Site Attendance

Off-Site Attendance

TouchPoint has a setting named Off-Site Trip that can be set to true for orgs used for off-campus church-sponsored mission trips, camps, conferences, or other trips. As attendance is recorded for a meeting of any other org during the date range that coincides with the meeting date range for the off-site org, any person who is enrolled in both groups will be given an attendance type of Off-Site for the meeting of the other org.

Before the trip/event occurs, you will set the Off-Site Trip flag on the org and also select a First and a Last Meeting Date. These would be the days that those enrolled in this org will be away. We do not want a person’s attendance percentage to be hurt when they are away for a church-sponsored event.

Important

The Off-Site flag and the First and Last Meetings Dates must be set prior to the date(s) of the event in order for the Off-Site feature to work.

Setup for the Off-Site Org

Step 1

Go to the organization that will be used for the trip and select the Settings > Attendance tab.

Step 2

Click Edit. Then in the Basic Setup section select the First and Last Meeting Date.

Step 3

While still on that same tab, in the Absents Control section check the box beside Off-Site Trip.

Click Save Changes.

Note

You manage this entirely on the org used for the event. You do not need to do anything different on any other orgs the people going on the trip are enrolled in. However, you must not mark them present in the classes they miss. If you do, their attendance will indicate that they were actually present (even though they were not there) and the Off-Site feature will not work.

How Does an Off-Site Attendance Display

All Off-Site attendance will display on the individual’s attendance string as well as in their Attendance History as an Attendance Type of Off-Site and will be represented in the Attendance String with an O. This type of attendance does not help or hurt their attendance percentage in their class, even though they are not counted present. On the meeting page, their Attendance Type will also be Off-Site, and they will have a 1 in the Other Attend column.

Example

John Smith is going on the Mission Trip to Haiti from April 1 – 8, 2016. He is enrolled in the Men’s College Class that meets on Sundays and is in the choir that meets on Wednesdays. So, he will miss 1 meeting of each event.

If there are 10 class members attending his Life Group on Sunday, the attendance for that class will be 10 on the meeting page. If you click Edit on the meeting page, you will see John with an attendance type of Off-site and a 1 in the Other Attend column.

The count for the class will still be 10 on the Week at a Glance report; however, there will be an asterisk beside that meeting indicating that there are Members who are Off-Site / Other Attend. You can drill down to the Meeting to see who has an Other Attend indicator as Off-Site. John would be one of those.

The same scenario will be repeated for the Choir rehearsal on April 6.