PeopleMuster

Attendance register

An attendance register is the roll book: one row per person, one column per date, one mark per cell. Its whole value is that a month fits on a page and an absence pattern shows up as a shape rather than a number.

Good for a site where marking is done by hand at the start of a shift. It is a record of presence, not of hours, so it does not replace a timesheet.

Attendance register — month of ____________

Name | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | … | P | A | L | H
Employee name | P | P | L | P | A | … | __ | __ | __ | __
Employee name | P | H/D | P | P | P | … | __ | __ | __ | __
Employee name | A | P | P | W | W | … | __ | __ | __ | __

Legend — P present · A absent · L on leave · H/D half day · W weekly off · G gazetted holiday. Marked by ______  Countersigned ______

How to fill it in

  1. Mark once, at a fixed moment. Pick the time the roll is called and keep it. A register marked twice grows two versions of the same day.
  2. Put the legend on every page. Registers get photocopied and passed on. A legend left behind on page one makes page two unreadable.
  3. Mark holidays before the month starts. Fill the holiday and weekly-off columns in advance. Then a blank cell means somebody forgot, which is useful.
  4. Total the columns on the last day. Count P, A, L and H per row. Those four totals are what anyone asks for later.
  5. Have it countersigned. A second signature makes a later correction visible instead of invisible.

The same roll is generated in PeopleMuster from device punches, and a status column separates present, absent, partial and leave for each date. How attendance records are built.

Questions people ask about this letter

What mark should a public holiday get?

Give it its own letter, separate from leave. A holiday costs nobody a leave day, and merging the two corrupts every leave balance you calculate from the register.

How should a correction be made on a paper register?

Strike through once, write the new mark beside it, and initial the change. Never overwrite a cell — an overwritten register cannot be trusted on any cell.

Is a register enough on its own?

Only where pay does not depend on hours. It records that somebody came, not how long they stayed, so a shift with variable finishing times needs clock times as well.

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