Administration

School settings

Your school profile, operating hours, and the grace period before someone is late.

Written for School admin
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Two things live here: your school’s identity, and the hours it runs. The second is much more consequential than it looks — attendance is measured against it.

Who can do this

Manage School. Admin holds it.

School details at the top, operating hours below — one row per day, each with an open switch and its own times.

School details

Name, phone number, email address and full street address. These appear across the system and on anything the school sends out.

The country is not cosmetic. It decides how phone numbers are read: a local number typed as 071 123 4567 is understood as a South African number because the school is set to South Africa. Get it wrong and phone numbers fail to parse — which shows up later as a parent who cannot be reached by SMS.

South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini and Namibia are supported.

Operating hours

One row per day of the week. Each carries an open switch and a start and end time.

This is what “late” means

Staff clock-in reads these hours. A member of staff who clocks in after the start time plus the grace period is recorded as Late.

A school that starts at 07:15 and never changed the default will mark its entire staff late, every day, and the attendance reports will be worthless. Set this before you rely on attendance for anything.

The days marked open also define your working week, which is what attendance reports count against. A school that runs Saturday classes marks Saturday open and its reports count Saturdays; one that does not, does not.

The grace period

A few minutes after the start time during which an arrival still counts as Present rather than Late. It exists because a system that marks somebody late at 07:30:04 produces a report nobody trusts and everybody argues with.

Set it to whatever your school actually operates. Five minutes is common; ten is not unreasonable.

What reads these settings

SettingUsed by
Start timeWhether a staff clock-in is Present or Late
Grace periodThe same
Open daysWorking-day counts in attendance reports
Open daysThe generator’s total weekly lesson slots
CountryHow phone numbers are parsed everywhere
Name and addressEverything the school sends out

Checking it after setup

The Setup Guide includes Check your school hours as a step for exactly this reason. The defaults are Monday to Friday with a short grace period — a reasonable guess, and a guess.