Attendance - Muin Docs

Every way of taking attendance writes one kind of row against one session, so a child marked on a phone, scanned at the door or corrected by the office all land in the same register and the same reports.

When you’d use this

You are deciding how your school will take the register before term starts.
A teacher marked the wrong child and the 24-hour window has closed.
A parent told you in advance that their child will be away.
A session ran and nobody clocked in, and you need to know which ones.
You send families a letter each month about missed days or late arrivals.

Pick how your school takes the register

How	Who uses it	Where
The register, on the web	The teacher	My Classes, then today’s session
The register, on a phone	The teacher	The Muin app, with an offline queue so it sends when the signal comes back
The live session board	The office or coordinator	The class’s Live session
Scan or tap at the door	Whoever is on the door	A printed QR name badge, or the student’s NFC card, both set up on the class’s QR & badges tab
Kiosk check-in	The family or child, on a tablet	A kiosk device at the entrance

The register itself is default-present with one Save: the teacher corrects the exceptions rather than ticking forty children. A Late button records when the child arrived (see Marking a child late).

Who is scanning decides what happens. A child’s scan marks attendance. A teacher’s scan clocks them in for pay. That is one rule applied everywhere, so a teacher can never accidentally be marked present as a pupil.

One register a day, or one per class

Both are supported, and it is a setting rather than a workaround.

One register per class is the default. Every class has its own teacher and its own marks, and a child attending four classes is marked four times.
One register a day suits a school where a year group stays together all morning. The group is marked once, and the subject timetable reports which lesson they were in. You choose which period owns the register; by default it is the earliest of the day.

Set it for the whole program, and override it on a single class that runs differently.

If somebody tries to mark the wrong period on a daily-register class, Muin says so: “This class takes one register a day, and it is taken in Period 1. Mark attendance there. A mark taken here would not be kept.”

Turning student attendance off

Some schools pay teachers but do not track student attendance. Set the program’s student attendance to not recorded and the student roster, its screens and every student-attendance number are absent rather than sitting there empty. The attendance reports that only make sense for students disappear from your reports too.

Teacher hours are completely unaffected. They are recorded exactly as before and still reach payroll.

Set it per program, or set your organization’s default once in HR settings and let each program inherit it.

The marks

Mark	Meaning
Present	Checked in, or checked out after being present
Late	Arrived after the class started, at a time somebody recorded
Absent	Marked absent, and the guardian notice fires if you enabled it
Excused	An absence somebody told you about, or the office cleared
Unmarked	Nobody took the register. This counts neither way

An excused mark is never overwritten by an absent mark, so a child the office already excused cannot be turned into a no-show by a later register.

Marking a child late

To mark a kid late, tap Late on the web register or the phone roster. It asks when the child arrived. The choices are measured from the class start, not from the moment the teacher taps:

Just now, for a child walking in while the teacher takes the register.
5, 10, 15, 20, 30 or 45 min late, counted from the start of the class or period.
Arrived at, a clock time, for anything else.

A choice that is still in the future is greyed out. If class started at 1:00 PM and it is 1:12 PM, “20 min late” cannot be picked yet. An “Arrived at” time before the class started is refused, because that child was not late.

The row then reads, for example, In 1:20 PM · 20 min late.

Only a recorded arrival counts as late. That means the Late button, a card tap, or a self check-in. A plain present tick never makes a child late, even if the teacher saves the register after the bell.

Absences reported in advance

An absence reported ahead of time is recorded as excused before the session, so a child or teacher who told you is never counted the same as one who simply did not turn up.

A parent reports their child’s absence from the family portal, or from your own absence link, a page you can put on a noticeboard or in a text message, where the parent verifies with a code sent to the email or phone you hold for them.
A teacher reports their own from their classes.
Your office reports one for a teacher who phoned in, and can take it back if plans change.

You can set a same-day cutoff, a number of minutes after the class starts, after which a report no longer excuses the absence. A late report is still filed and still reaches the teacher, and the parent is told plainly that the absence is recorded as unexcused. There is no cutoff unless you set one.

If you track them, reaching your monthly allowance of unexcused absences emails the parent a warning, and going past it can open a discipline record. Both are off until you turn them on.

An absence already missed cannot be taken back. Only future ones can be withdrawn.

Who was late or absent this month

Open Reporting & Analytics, then Education, then Tardiness. It covers the whole school, not one program, and you can narrow it to one program.

Pick a Month. In the first week of a month it starts on the month before.
Set Absent at least a number of days, Late at least a number of minutes in total, or both, and choose whether a student must pass either line or both.
Read the list: days absent, times late, minutes late, and each student’s guardians.
Export it to CSV if you want it outside Muin.

How the two numbers are counted:

A day absent is a day with at least one unexcused absence and no present or late mark. A child absent from three periods is absent one day. A child who missed the first period and was marked for the next is not absent that day. Excused absences never count.
Minutes late adds up the minutes after the start, over every late arrival in the month.

The two lines start from your school’s education policy: 3 unexcused absences a month and 30 minutes late a month unless you changed them. Change them on the Class alerts settings. On the report you can type other numbers for one look.

A guardian marked no email or opted out cannot be emailed. Call those families instead. A student with No guardian on file has nobody to contact yet.

Message the guardians

With the programs manage permission, you can select students and press Message guardians.

The warning text is yours to edit. Muin adds each child’s absent days and minutes late for the month.
You see a preview of the email a guardian will actually receive.
You see the counts first: guardians who will be emailed, opted out, without an email, and students with no guardian on file.
Each guardian gets one email listing each of their own children on the list.
The same child’s month is never sent twice to the same guardian. A double click, a retry or a later automatic summary is skipped for that child.
Your organization’s mailing address must be on file. Every email to a family carries it, and without it nothing is sent. Add it under Business Address on your organization profile, then send again.

The automatic monthly summary

You can also have Muin send it for you. It is off by default. Turn on Monthly attendance summary in the class alerts settings.

It runs on the 2nd to the 4th of each month, about the month that just ended.
Each coordinator gets one summary naming the students in their classes who passed a line.
Families are emailed only if you also turn on the family notice Their child’s monthly attendance summary.
It follows the same rules as the manual send: one email per guardian, and never the same child’s month twice.

Running a session live

The class’s Live session screen shows the class in progress and lets the office mark or correct anyone. End class is the close-out: it checks out everyone still clocked in, works out the teaching hours and submits them.

Live now, at the program level, is today’s coverage board: which teachers have checked in and which classes are running right now. It is read-only for students. Nothing about a child is changed from there.

Attendance exceptions

From Live now, open Attendance exceptions. It is this program’s punch review queue: every punch that needs a human look before the hours are trusted, and every class that ran with nobody clocked in.

The codes it shows are Late, Off-site, No photo, Auto-closed, No-badge fallback, Self-amended, Outside schedule and Unusually long punch.

Reviewing it needs program-view rights, not payroll rights, so a principal or coordinator can clear the queue without seeing anyone’s pay.

Correcting a register after it closes

A register can be edited in place for 24 hours. After that, or once the session is closed out, an in-place edit is refused and the correction is recorded as an amendment with a reason instead. A program administrator can amend a student’s attendance, unlock a session’s register, and reopen a teacher’s presence.

This is deliberate: the history of who changed a register and when is itself a report.

What it affects

Attendance feeds the by-class, by-classroom, by-student, by-day and by-level-and-group reports, each exportable as CSV.
Late arrivals and unexcused absences feed the school-wide Tardiness list and the monthly summary.
It feeds the attendance category of the gradebook, where present counts 1, late counts half, an unexcused absence counts 0 and an unmarked register counts neither way.
It feeds the parent portal, where a family sees how their child’s attendance is tracking.
Days off remove closed days from the denominator, so nobody is marked absent for a holiday.
Ending a session is what submits the teacher’s hours to payroll.

When it goes wrong

What you see	Why	What to do
“This class has not happened yet, attendance can be taken on the day it meets.”	The register was opened before the session date	Take it on the day. Nothing is lost
“Check in before taking attendance. Tap the sticker in your classroom, or use ‘No sticker? Mark your time’ if there is no tag here.”	The teacher has not punched in	Tap the room sticker, or use the no-sticker option
“The 24-hour window for changing this register has closed. Ask a program administrator to make the change.”	The in-place edit window expired	A program administrator records an amendment with a reason
“This class session is locked; an in-place attendance edit is not allowed. Record an amendment with a reason instead.”	The session was closed out	Record the amendment
“This class takes one register a day, and it is taken in Period 1.”	The mark was aimed at the wrong period	Mark it in the period that owns the register
A class shows No teacher checked in after it ran	Nobody punched in	It appears on Attendance exceptions; reopen the teacher’s presence and record the hours
“20 min late” is greyed out	That time has not happened yet	Wait, or use Just now
“That is before the class started at 1:00 PM, so they were not late.”	The arrival time is earlier than the class start	Mark the child present instead
A child the teacher ticked present after the bell is not on the Tardiness list	Only a recorded arrival counts as late	Use Late on the register next time
“No email was sent. Your organization has no mailing address on file…”	Every email to a family must carry your mailing address	Add your Business Address on the organization profile, then send again
A guardian got nothing about a child they were already told about	That child’s month was already sent to that guardian	Nothing to do. It is sent once per child per month
A child is on no register at all	They are enrolled but not placed	Place them on Class enrollment

Next step

Record what the term produced: Progress and report cards.