Staff attendance and HR software for schools and colleges
PeopleMuster is staff attendance and HR software for schools and colleges. Term dates and closures go into one holiday calendar that attendance, leave and capacity all respect. Teachers, support staff and the site team check in at a fingerprint terminal or in the browser, each measured against their own start time. It costs $3 per person per month, with every module included.
The working year, not the working week
Teaching days look much the same. One window covers most staff, and support and site teams, who often start earlier and finish later, get two more named windows.
The year is the hard part. Term, break, term, long closure. A day off in July isn't the same event as a day off in October, and a flat calendar reads them as one thing.
So the holiday calendar carries the weight here. Every closure day goes in once, and attendance respects it. Capacity planning takes those days out before it shows a total, so a half-term never looks like a week of absence.
How staff attendance is taken
Two paths for staff. A ZKTeco fingerprint terminal on the site network, or browser check-in that an admin switches on, open inside each person's shift window.
PeopleMuster covers the people a school employs: teachers, support staff and the site team.
Late minutes are measured against each person's own window. A site manager on an early start and a teacher on a standard one are judged against their own times, not one bell.
Cover changes reach the record through leave requests and manual punch requests. That's how a day someone stepped in for a colleague gets written down at all.
Staff who teach at two sites get a device user on each terminal, both mapped to the same person. Where browser check-in is on, it's the simpler route for them.
The number schools argue about
Cover. How many lessons were taught by someone other than the person named on the timetable.
PeopleMuster holds the inputs that decide it: leave requests by type and date, today's on-leave list, pending requests, the next seven days and a month-on-month comparison.
Absence shows up early, and early is the half that lets somebody plan. A run of Fridays in one department is visible long before it becomes a staffing problem.
The second number is the leave quota. You set the types, each with an annual allocation and a paid or unpaid flag. A per-person grid shows used against allocated for every type at once, so a question about who has days left takes one screen.
The price is the same for every member of staff: $3 per person per month, with leave, attendance, policies and the device register included.
Which modules run here
Switched on
- Holidays
- Term dates and closures, which attendance and capacity both respect.
- Leave
- Quotas per type, approvals, and a seven-day forward view.
- Attendance
- Staff punches against an assigned window.
- Shifts
- A teaching window plus early and late windows for site teams.
- Policies
- A published policy library staff can search.
- Checklists
- Start-of-term and exit routines as tracked processes.
- Devices
- Laptops and equipment tracked by serial and holder.
Left off
- Projects
- Client project structure does not describe teaching work.
- Daily recap
- Hours per project are the wrong unit for a timetabled day.
- Meetings
- Built for recorded client calls, which a staffroom rarely has.
Questions people ask
How do term dates reach the attendance data?
Through the holiday calendar. Every closure day goes in once, and attendance and capacity both read it, so a half-term never shows as absence.
Can teachers check in without a fingerprint terminal?
Yes, once an admin switches on browser check-in. By default the card opens an hour before a person's shift starts and closes two hours after. The admin can move all four edges of the window.
Are staff on early starts judged fairly?
Yes. Late minutes are measured against each person's own shift. A site manager on an early start and a teacher on a standard day each read against their own time.
How far ahead can absence be seen?
The leave view shows who is out today, what is pending and who is away in the next seven days. It also gives a month-on-month comparison.
What does staff attendance software cost for a school?
$3 per person per month, from the first member of staff, with every module included. There's no setup fee, and every new customer gets 14 days free with no card.