Setting up custom attendance statuses

Default attendance statuses

School Vault comes with four system statuses that can be renamed and recoloured but not disabled:

• Present, child is in school
• Late, child arrived after the school's designated start time
• Absent, child is not in school (reason unspecified)
• Excused, child is absent for an authorised reason

For most day-to-day attendance, these three are sufficient. But many schools need more nuance, especially when reporting to parents, analysing attendance data, or complying with regulatory requirements.

Creating a custom attendance status

1. Go to Settings → Attendance Statuses.
2. Click Add Status.
3. Enter the status name (e.g. "Field Trip", "Sick Leave", "Authorised Absence", "Public Holiday").
4. Choose a colour for the status. This colour appears on the attendance calendar and register views. Pick something distinct from your existing statuses.
5. Set whether this status counts as Present, Absent, or Neutral for analytics purposes:
   • Present, the child is accounted for and this counts positively toward attendance percentage (e.g. Field Trip)
   • Absent, the child is not at school and this counts against attendance percentage (e.g. Sick Leave, Unauthorised Absence)
   • Neutral, the day is not counted in attendance calculations (e.g. Public Holiday, School Closure)
6. Optionally, check Triggers parent notification if using this status should send an SMS/WhatsApp to the parent.
7. Click Save Status. The new status is now available on the daily attendance screen.

Editing and disabling statuses

• To edit a status: go to Settings → Attendance Statuses, click the status, change any field, and save. Existing records using that status are not changed.
• To disable a status: toggle the Active/Inactive switch. An inactive status does not appear on the attendance screen but existing records are not affected.
• Custom statuses cannot be deleted once they have been used in at least one attendance record. Disable them instead.

Common mistakes

• Creating a "Holiday" status but setting it as Absent, public holidays should be Neutral so they do not count against any child's attendance percentage.
• Creating too many statuses, more than eight or ten statuses makes the attendance screen cluttered and teachers will stop using the custom ones. Keep the list short and meaningful.
• Enabling parent notifications for statuses like Sick Leave where the parent is already aware, this creates noise in the notification system and parents may start ignoring messages.