Attendance status inconsistancies

[judydowell]

When looking at attendance via "Maintain profiles," sometimes but not always, the current date (today's date)with an "absence" status is automatically entered. Why is this happening? Not all profiles get the date or status entered; they are left blank. Is there something in the profile that is making attendance information be automatically entered? This is annoying because of the inconsistency in looking at the record. There may be a person who hasn't attended for years or is deceased and the record shows absence for every Sunday on the calendar. I would rather not have information automatically entered; I would rather manually input the info. Is there a way to change this or keep it from happening?

[NeilZ]

When looking at attendance via "Maintain profiles," sometimes but not always, the current date (today's date)with an "absence" status is automatically entered. Why is this happening? Not all profiles get the date or status entered; they are left blank. Is there something in the profile that is making attendance information be automatically entered? This is annoying because of the inconsistency in looking at the record. There may be a person who hasn't attended for years or is deceased and the record shows absence for every Sunday on the calendar. I would rather not have information automatically entered; I would rather manually input the info. Is there a way to change this or keep it from happening?

This is the way the system is designed in order to provide the Fast Data Entry Function of the Attendance Module.

When you enter attendance for an activity, say one setup at 100 - Worship, using the Fast Data Entry function, the system will initially add the current date along with the default attendance status to every profile that is registered for that activity. The default status is usually Absent, which is then manually changed by the person doing the data entry. This is so you can track overall attendance for the activity, and also each individual's attendance.

However, as you have seen in your case, this can cause problems when people who have moved, removed from the rolls, or who are deceased are NOT removed from the activities. This is something that must be done whenever you change the status of a person from active to removed/deceased.

You can't just delete the record immediately, as the personal profile is tied to the Contributions data and must be kept in the system for at least 3 years as required by the IRS. So you need to change their Mailing List and Personal Profile status, and remove them from all activities. The easiest way to do this is while updating their personal profile, click on the Activities tab of the personal profile (in version 11), or the Activities button in earlier versions and delete the person from all activities.

Hope this helps.

[Jeff]

If you remove the person from the activity you will no continue to add attendance information for them. It sounds like you are entering attendance for a worship service. If someone moves away, remove them from the worship activity and the fast data entry screen will not continue to add attendance for them.

You might want to change their personal status to something else and then you can use the mass add in activities and skills to only add people who are active to the worship activity.