An attendance register app, for a sports club's coach, replaces the sheet in the kit bag with a register taken on a phone against the section, kept with the date and the session's coach on it, and added up so the attendance rate, the member who stopped coming and the member training without being paid up are visible without anyone counting ticks. Online attendance registers are sold to schools, nurseries and employers as well as to clubs, and most are built for a fixed class with a teacher; a club's register is taken by a volunteer, across sections that change each term, for a welfare officer and a treasurer who read it for different reasons. This page sets out what the app has to do for a club, what the attendance registers it keeps have to feed back, and where the free club treasurer subs sheet on this site fits.
Taken on a phone, against the section, with the coach's name on it
The register is taken at the start of the session from the section's list, in a tap per member, by whoever is running the session, and it is kept with the date, the session and the coach against it. That last field is what a club's safeguarding policy, its governing body and its insurer expect for a junior section: not only who came, but who was responsible. An app that keeps a bare count, or one register for the whole club, is not keeping what the club needs; one that keeps it per section with the coach named is.
Added up: the rate, the unused places and the member who stopped coming
A block of registers is only useful once it is added up. The attendance rate across the block, the average turnout per session and the places that went unused are the coach's figures; the member whose attendance fell away is the welfare officer's; and the member training without being paid up is the treasurer's. The club treasurer subs sheet on this site works the paid-up share and the arrears the register is read against, with no account, and Subsroom Pro keeps the registers against the section so the coach's, the welfare officer's and the treasurer's figures are names rather than counts.
Fed back to the club record, not kept in the app
The register has to read the same paid-up status the treasurer keeps, so the coach can see at the session who has not paid, and it has to feed the club's record so the team sheet is drawn from members who were there. An attendance register app that keeps the section's list of its own, separate from the club's members, is a second list that will disagree with the first by the end of the term. The register is a view of the club's record with ticks against it, and it belongs in the same record as the members and the subs.
Questions people ask about attendance register app
Is an attendance register app the same as a school's online register?
The mechanics are similar and the records are not. A school's register is taken by a teacher against a fixed class for the school's statutory record; a club's is taken by a volunteer against a section that changes each term, for the coach, the welfare officer and the treasurer. The app has to keep the coach's name and the paid-up status, which a school register never does.
Can the register be taken without a signal at the ground?
It should be. A register taken in a field on a wet Tuesday cannot depend on the connection, so the app should take it offline and keep it when the phone reconnects. Ask the vendor before you rely on it.
What should the club do with the attendance registers at the end of the season?
Keep them for as long as the club's retention policy and its governing body require, then delete them. A register of named people, and especially of children, is personal data the club is responsible for, and it should be exportable and deletable on the club's say-so.
Sources
- GOV.UK, Find out which DBS check is right for your employee or volunteer: the check a club's coaches and volunteers working with juniors may need
- ICO, UK GDPR guidance and resources: what a club keeping its members' details has to do as a controller
- FTC, Complying with COPPA: frequently asked questions, the rules a US club collecting details about members under thirteen online has to follow