How-to guide

Attendance

Configure and run attendance — schedule, devices, off days, the absence sweep and exemptions.

A task-focused guide: follow the steps when you need to get something done.

ApexityEdu tracks in-time, out-time and lateness for students and staff. Attendance can be captured by a biometric device, by teachers, or manually by the administrator — and it all lands in one place.

How attendance works

Every day, each person’s attendance is recorded as a roll-up with:

In time — the first arrival of the day.
Out time — the latest departure.
Late minutes — how late the first arrival was (past the start time plus a grace period).
Early-out minutes — how early the departure was.
Time in school — out minus in.

The raw punch events (each in/out) are kept separately so nothing is lost. When a device reports its own verdict (“late”, “present”), that verdict wins; otherwise the school’s schedule decides.

Capturing attendance

Biometric devices

If your school uses a device (e.g. ZKTeco), it pushes punches to ApexityEdu automatically. Manage devices in Devices (Admin → Devices): register each device, assign device PINs to users, and view device status.

Teachers — first-period marking

Teachers mark the classes where they teach the first period of the day. See the Teacher guide.

Administrator — full marking

Open Attendance → Mark attendance (administrator/manager) to mark any class manually.

The “Staff” class

Employee attendance (teachers, staff, managers, librarians and accountants) is grouped in a synthetic Staff class in the attendance roster, so administrators manage teachers, staff, librarians and accountants together. Employees also see their own monthly attendance.

The attendance roster

Open Attendance to see any class’s roster with columns for In, Out, Late, Hours and Source (which device/provider recorded each row), plus KPI strips (checked-in, checked-out, still in school, left early, average lateness). You can export the roster to CSV with every field.

Tap any student’s day for a popover showing late-by, left-early-by, time in school, expected times, and which provider recorded it.

Every student in the class is on the roster and can be marked — a login account is not required. Students without a linked account are marked exactly like everyone else (manually, via Mark day off / Mark all present, and by the automatic absence sweep); their attendance rows are keyed on the student ID alone.

Configuring the schedule

Open Attendance → Off days & absence sweep to set:

Start time, grace period and end time of the school day.
Close time — when the day is considered over (default 14:30).
Weekend days — which days are off (default Friday + Saturday).
Holidays — dated holidays (YYYY-MM-DD) or date ranges.
Per-class exceptions — make a specific class work a weekend day (see below).

Off days, holidays and the absence sweep

Students who never arrive generate no punch — so a scheduled sweep runs every minute to mark un-punched students absent after the school’s close time. This is what fires the “absent” SMS rule (see SMS).

The sweep is safe by design:

It never runs on a weekend, a declared day off or a holiday.
It skips students on approved leave.
It skips users you have exempted from tracking.
It is idempotent — repeated runs can’t double-mark anyone.

Marking a day off

Open Attendance → Mark day as off to declare a non-school day. This also prevents absence SMS on that day.

Per-class weekends (Saturday classes)

By default Saturday is an off day. If a class holds Saturday classes:

Open Attendance → Off days & absence sweep → Per-class exceptions.
Find the class; each weekend day shows a chip.
Tap the chip to flip that day between off and working for that class.

That class then gets attendance marked and its guardians messaged on Saturdays, while the rest of the school stays closed. A declared day off or dated holiday still overrides a working Saturday.

Closing a day manually

Open Attendance → Close day now to run the close-out immediately. If the day is an off day it reports the reason and offers a deliberate Run anyway override.

Tracking exemptions

Open Settings → Attendance tracking exemptions to select exact user accounts to exempt from tracking. Exempt users are skipped by device and manual ingestion and by the absence sweep, and appear as “Not tracked” in the Staff roster.

The student view

Students see an In / Out / Late card: average in-time, average out-time, late days, total lateness and average time in school, plus a per-day log and calendar that shades their class’s weekend.

Tips

Set the schedule (start, grace, end, close) before relying on automatic absence marking.
Declare holidays in advance so the sweep doesn’t message anyone on a holiday.
Check the Source column if a punch looks wrong — it tells you which device/provider recorded it.