How Registration Dates Affect Attendance

Overview

Setup Considerations for District

Step 1: Understand Which Meeting Dates a Student Appears On

Step 2: Registrations with Custom Time Slots

Step 3: Importing Registrations with an Enrollment Status

Step 4: Importing Past Attendance with a Registered Date

Existing Registrations

Troubleshooting

Key Takeaways

Overview

When a student registers for a session that has already started, they should only appear on the meeting dates from the day they registered onward. This document is for district admins, program coordinators and support staff who manage registrations, imports and attendance in ActivityHero.

Setup Considerations for District

Before relying on this behavior, districts should confirm:

• Staff know that a student registered partway through a session won't appear on earlier meeting dates. This applies whether the student registered online, was added by staff, or came in through an import.
  
  
• Staff who import registrations know that a filled-in enrollment status column is used as-is and doesn't change spot counts.
  
  
• Staff who need to record attendance for dates before a student was entered in ActivityHero (for example, from paper sign-in sheets) know to use the registered_date column in the attendance import.

Step 1: Understand Which Meeting Dates a Student Appears On

When a registration is created, ActivityHero adds the student only to meeting dates from today onward. Meeting dates that have already passed are skipped, even if the session started earlier.

Example: A session runs from Aug 1 to Jun 30. A student is registered on Jun 3.

• The student appears on Jun 3 and every meeting date after it.
  
  
• The student doesn't appear on any meeting date from Aug 1 to Jun 2, whether on check-in/check-out, Digital Signatures or attendance reports.
  
  

If a waitlist invite sets a participant start date, the student is added only from the later of that start date and today.

Step 2: Registrations with Custom Time Slots

For sessions where students pick specific dates or time slots:

• Time slots on dates that have already passed aren't created.
  
  
• Editing a student's time slots only replaces today's and future slots. Past slots stay as they are, so editing a registration can't erase attendance that was already recorded.

Step 3: Importing Registrations with an Enrollment Status

When importing registrations through a CSV:

• If the enrollment_status column is filled in, the import uses that status as given, even if the session is full. The session's available spots aren't reduced for these rows.
  
  
• If the enrollment_status column is blank, the import works as before. If the session is full, the student is waitlisted. Otherwise they're enrolled and the available spots go down.
  
  

This prevents a student who was already enrolled in another system from being imported as "Waitlisted" just because the session looks full in ActivityHero.

Step 4: Importing Past Attendance with a Registered Date

The attendance import has an optional column, registered_date. Use it when a student was actually registered on paper (or in another system) before they were entered in ActivityHero, and you need to record attendance for those earlier dates.

1. Add a registered_date column to the attendance CSV.

2. For each row, enter the date the student was really registered.

3. Make sure each row's meeting_date is on or after its registered_date.

When registered_date is provided, the student is added to that meeting date, even if it's in the past, so the attendance can be recorded.

The import rejects a row when:

• registered_date isn't a valid date.
• meeting_date is before registered_date.

Existing Registrations

A cleanup removes past meeting dates that were attached to existing registrations before the registration was created. It only removes a date when all of these are true:

• The meeting date is before the day the registration was created.
• The student wasn't enrolled on that date.
• The student was never checked in on that date.

Dates with recorded attendance are never removed.

Troubleshooting

Key Takeaways

• Students only appear on meeting dates from the day they were registered onward: on check-in/check-out, Digital Signatures and attendance reports.
  
  
• Changing a student's status later doesn't add them to past dates.
  
  
• Registration imports with an enrollment_status use that status as given and don't reduce available spots.
  
  
• Use the optional registered_date column in attendance imports to record paper or backfilled attendance for dates before the student was entered in ActivityHero.
  
  
• Editing custom time slots never removes past attendance.