A quick browse through our customer database shows at the time of this post that 68 schools (not including colleges and universities) are using Time Clock MTS. It’s safe to assume that some of these, at least, are using Time Clock MTS as school attendance software. I thought it would be useful to look at how you could configure Time Clock MTS to track and record the attendance of students within schools.
Change the Time Clock MTS Display Labels
The Display Settings Screen
Above you can see the Tools->Options->Display Settings screen. You can use the ‘Main Screen Labels’ options to change the text shown on the main screen of Time Clock MTS. We originally designed this to allow users to translate the main screen into other languages but we are aware that some users are using it to make the software more user friendly to their particular business. If you’re using Time Clock MTS as school attendance software then you can easily make it more student friendly by changing these terms. The image below shows what the result can be when making the software more school friendly.
Time Clock MTS configured as school attendance software
Record Student Contact Information
The Manage Employees screens in Time Clock MTS allow you to record the student name, contact information, and alternate contact information. This is immediately useful if a school needs to contact a student, their parents, or notify someone due to an unexplained school absence.
Track Students by Class
Student attendance by class could be easily tracked using the departmental tracking features with Time Clock MTS. Simply create a department for each student class and then assign each student to the correct class using the Manage Employees screens mentioned above. You could then setup your Time Clock MTS clients (clocking stations) to display only the students from appropriate class. Alternatively you could configure the student list to display in folder view and have an expandable list of classes and students that could be looked through very quickly and easily.
Track Daily Attendance
Time Clock MTS can be easily used to track the daily attendance of a student. Simply have them check in when they arrive for home class, or perhaps when they enter the school building.
Period Attendance
Using the Job Tracking features of Time Clock MTS you could easily configure the software to track student attendance by period. Simply create a job code for each subject and have students clock into each subject’s period using the appropriate job code.
Report on Student Attendance
The Employee Status Report gives you a quick and easy way of reporting on student attendance. It’s a simple matter to run this report and see what students are not at school for the day and then make contact with their parents to notify them of their absence. For more comprehensive reporting the Simple Attendance Report could be used to print off attendances by class or period and then distributed to teachers via noticeboard or email.
Conclusions
While Time Clock MTS wasn’t specifically designed as school attendance software many of the features allow it to be used as such. The customizations available will make it easy to use for your students, while configuration options will easily allow you to track student attendance by class or period as well as allowing to store their contact details. Comprehensive and flexible reporting then allows for simple attendance tracking of your student population.
