01
Why attendance records fall apart — and how to stop it
Every attendance system fails the same way. It works for three weeks, then a coach runs late, a queue forms at the desk, and someone decides to catch up on the register afterwards. Afterwards never comes, and the record develops holes exactly where the busy sessions were — the ones you most need to understand.
The fix is to take the desk out of the path. With a tablet at the door, checking in is something members do on the way past, in a couple of seconds, whether or not anyone is at the front counter. A PIN suits adults, a QR code suits members who always have their phone, and tap-your-name suits young children. Each tablet can allow or refuse each method, so a kids' room can keep tap-by-name while the adults' door insists on a PIN.
For the sessions where a tablet isn't practical — a class in the park, a coach who prefers a register, a student who forgot their PIN — roll call puts the whole class on one screen and the coach ticks names off. Both paths write the same record, so it doesn't matter which one caught a student.
02
One check-in, one record
Most studios end up with attendance in three places that never quite agree: the booking system says a member attended, a spreadsheet says they didn't, and the grading list was built from something else again. Reconciling them is the invisible admin that eats Sunday evenings.
In WeeksPro there is one attendance record. A kiosk check-in, a roll-call tick, the Attended button on a class roster and a manual check-in from the dashboard all create the same entry. Checking in to a class a member booked marks the booking attended, and marking a booking as a no-show takes the staff check-in back. Checking in twice to the same class counts once, and a second “just training” check-in within the hour is ignored.
Every entry records how it was made — Kiosk · PIN, Kiosk · QR, Kiosk · name, Roll call, Roster or Staff — so when a number looks odd you can see where it came from. A check-in that should never have happened is deleted, and stops counting everywhere, grading and class passes included.
03
Fixing mistakes without rewriting history
Attendance is recorded by people in a hurry, so some of it will be wrong: a junior taps the adults' class on the tablet, a coach ticks the 6pm roll for someone who came at 4:30, a student trains and forgets to check in at all. The usual fixes — cross it out, delete it and re-enter it, or leave it — either lose the record or leave it wrong, and both surface later as an argument about a grading.
In WeeksPro a check-in in the wrong class is moved, not re-entered. Click Change session on the row, pick the right class (or none, for a general check-in) and save. The original check-in time is kept, the class bookings follow the move, and the row is marked Corrected with a note that says what changed, when and who changed it. Several corrections stack up as a short history, and the CSV export carries a Corrections column for anyone who needs the trail.
Missed check-ins are added from the member's own page. Its Attendance history card lists every check-in that member has made at your gym — filter it by date, venue and session, or export it — and Add missed check-in records the class they trained in, noted as added by the staff member who did it. Grading progress and class passes recount straight away, so the parent at the door sees the right number the next time their child checks in.
04
Class passes, packs and vouchers
Not everyone is on an ongoing membership. Casual members buy ten-class packs, new students start on a five-class trial, and some families pay for a term of junior classes with a sport voucher. Each of those is a promise of a set number of classes, and keeping that promise usually means a tally card or a spreadsheet nobody updates on a busy night.
WeeksPro counts passes from attendance. Give a program a class count and add the people on it from the program's page, with an optional end date and the number of classes already used before you switched. From then on every check-in from the pass's start date uses one — the kiosk, roll call and staff check-ins all count, and two classes in one day count twice. If someone holds two passes, each check-in goes to the earliest one with classes left.
Members see the count on the tablet as they check in, and on the membership card of their home page. When a pass runs out the tablet asks them to see the desk, but it never turns anyone away: classes beyond the limit are shown as over so you can sort it out in person. Staff see every pass — used, left, expired or not yet started — on the program's page and the Class passes tab. A pass counts check-ins, not bookings, so booking a class doesn't use it up.
05
From attendance to grading eligibility
For martial arts schools attendance matters for a second reason: it decides who is ready to grade. Most schools set a minimum number of classes per belt, and most track it with a roll book, a spreadsheet and an instructor's memory.
WeeksPro counts it for you. Set the classes each belt requires, and every check-in since a student's last promotion counts toward the next one — or since the day they joined, for students who haven't been promoted yet. Juniors and adults can run separate ladders. Students who reach the requirement are flagged eligible on the Eligibility tab, which you can filter, sort by who's closest and export to CSV. Award the new belt and the count restarts on its own.
Changing software shouldn't reset anyone to zero, so a student's current belt can carry an opening balance of classes already done. If you want it, WeeksPro will also email eligible students an invitation with your next grading date — automatically, or when you press send — and never invites the same student twice for the same grading. Requirements measured in time rather than classes, such as years at a dan grade, stay with you: the count is classes, not calendar time.
06
Using attendance to keep members
Members rarely cancel out of nowhere. They stop coming first, and cancel weeks later, once paying for something unused outweighs the awkwardness of the email. A member with no check-ins for fourteen days isn't lost yet, and a short personal message at that point is the cheapest retention work a studio can do.
WeeksPro doesn't send automatic at-risk alerts. What it gives you is a record you can trust: filter the log to the last fortnight, search for a regular, or export the range to CSV and compare it with your member list. Make it a weekly five-minute habit rather than a project.
Visible progress works from the other direction. A student who sees “18 of 30 toward Green” every time they check in has a concrete reason to come back on Thursday, and a parent at the door gets an answer to “how close is she?” without having to find an instructor.