Step by step

1. Open the Actions menu in the office header

   Look for the Actions button in the top header of your office. Click it to open the dropdown menu. The 'Take attendance' entry appears in this menu for any standard organisation kind.

2. Click 'Take attendance' in the menu

   Find and click the 'Take attendance' item in the Actions dropdown. The office will navigate you to the attendance screen. No page reload is needed — the transition happens instantly.

3. Wait for the meeting roll to load

   The screen fetches your 25 most recent non-cancelled meetings and selects the newest one by default. At the same time it loads all active members sorted by last name and any attendance records already saved for that meeting. Each member's status defaults to absent unless a record already exists for them.

4. Switch to a different meeting if needed

   If you have more than one meeting available, a dropdown lists them all. Choose the one you want and click 'Open that roll'. The page reloads showing the roll for that specific meeting. The meeting you see is always the one that will be saved.

5. Mark the roll for each member

   Each member appears in a table row with a status selector set to present, excused, or absent. Use the search box to find members quickly — filtering only hides rows visually, so every member is still included when you save. Add visitor names and their lodge or organisation in the visitor section, and click 'Another visitor' to add more rows.

6. Click 'Save the roll' to submit

   Press the 'Save the roll' button when you are done marking statuses. The form collects the meeting, every member's status, and any visitor entries with names filled in, then sends them all to be saved.

7. Wait while every row is saved

   For each member and visitor, the system checks whether an attendance record already exists for that person and meeting. If one does, it is updated. If not, a new record is created. This means you can correct and resubmit the roll without creating duplicates. An audit event is written once all rows are processed, noting how many were present out of how many were recorded.

8. Read the confirmation message

   A status message appears on screen reading 'Roll saved: N present of M recorded.' The roll refreshes automatically so the statuses shown match exactly what was just written to the database.

What happens next

After saving, your attendance-records collection holds one row for every member on the roll with their present, excused, or absent status, plus one row for each named visitor you entered. An audit event marked 'meeting.attendance_recorded' is stored alongside these records, showing the present count and the total recorded count for the meeting.

Because the system upserts rather than inserts, returning to this screen later and saving again will correct existing records rather than add duplicates. You can reopen the roll at any time to make changes.

Good to know

Using the search box to filter the member list does not remove anyone from the save. Members whose rows are hidden by the filter are still submitted when you click 'Save the roll', so you cannot accidentally omit someone by searching.

If all meetings for your organisation are cancelled, the attendance screen will prompt you to create a meeting instead of showing a roll. Nothing can be saved until at least one non-cancelled meeting exists.