18 Printable Attendance Sheet Templates

Taking attendance at school and in many jobs is common and utilized for many purposes at educational facilities and industry. Teachers take attendance every morning, which helps students in many ways. Matching attendance to reported absences adds security for the student and helps parents know where their child is. Many companies use attendance sheets to calculate payroll and benefits, including holidays, overtime, and other special leaves, such as sick leave, maternity leave, and casual leaves.

Both companies and educational institutions often report and award individuals for perfect attendance records. They reinforce behavior patterns and contribute to a more successful environment for the students as well as the company. The attendance record also helps to identify individuals with chronic attendance issues and provides an opportunity to take action to remedy the situation. Students with poor attendance typically do not do well compared to their peers. Employees with chronic attendance issues can contribute to reductions in productivity, negative impacts on morale, and ultimately impact the bottom line if it is a problem across the company.

In this post, we will discuss attendance sheets and how to use them.

What is an Attendance Sheet Template?

An attendance sheet template can be used over and over again. The template should contain all of the essential elements, with entries available for data input and automatic calculation of attendance each day by total present and totals for the month or for whatever period you need to track.

Many people try to keep the attendance timesheet to one page for ease of use if a paper copy is used and also for printing purposes if an online system is used. Online systems can be integrated with other classes or groups of employees to create a school record or corporate record.

Each time you use the template, various data information must be filled in, such as the date, names, and any other factors you wish to track.

Attendance Sheet Templates & Examples

Essential Elements of an Effective Attendance Sheet

Attendance sheets are normally pretty straightforward and require a limited set of basic information, which can later be aggregated to be used for a variety of purposes.

• Title – Always add a title for your attendance sheet. The title should include the name of the school, classroom, or company and organization.
• Dates – the starting and end date for the attendance record, which could be weekly or monthly
• Days of the week – add days of the week; you can eliminate Saturday and Sunday if these days are not tracked
• Students 0r Employees – the names of the students or employees that are included on the timesheet
• Columns for totals – add columns for totaling the total number of students or employees attending on any day as well as a total for the period being tracked for each student or employee.
• Custom entries – depending on your organization, there may be other information you need tracked or calculated which can be added to the timesheet.
• Printable area – the area you want to print should always be determined and programmed into the sheet otherwise;, you will end up with more than one page covering your employees or students over a given week.

How to Create an Attendance Sheet (in Excel)?

Creating an attendance sheet in Excel is straightforward, especially if you are familiar with using spreadsheets. Excel is flexible, and the attendance sheet can be customized to meet your needs as an employer or school teacher/administrator.

Create an Excel File – one of the most important steps is to create a file and save it in a location you will remember and with a name appropriate for your school or company. The word template should be part of the name to signify that this file is your template file. You may also want to include a version number as well. The format of the name could be something similar to – name-attendance-template-Vx, where name is the name of your school, class, or company, and Vx indicates the version, and the x indicates the number. Once the template is complete, resave the file with the name of the attendance record you want and remove the word template to indicate this is an actual file with data. Keep the version number, so you know which version number was used to create this record.

Build your Template (This example is based on a Student attendance template)

• Add Basic Labels –
  • Add “Attendance record name” across the top of the spreadsheet in line 1
  • Add “Names” column 1, starting in line 2
  • Add generic student names, e.g., “student 1”, “student 2”, etc. in column 1 line by line, and continuing in line 3…. until all students are included
  • Add sufficient lines to cover the maximum number of students you expect to track
  • Add dates beginning in line 2, column 3, across the columns for the number of dates tracked, a week, a month, etc.
  • Format the date into the desired format, e.g., dd/m/y or day dd/m/y, etc.
  • Add the word “Total” in column 2, line 2 to track the totals for each student
  • Add color to your sheet by selecting different areas and choosing a color to designate different areas of the worksheet, e.g., titles vs. data entry

• Add Formulas to total attendance by the student
  • In the first cell under the total column and beside the first name, enter = and click on the formula icon on the main menu and select sum, then select the boxes you want to sum, which in this case are all of the date boxes on the line for this student. Test your formula by adding the number 1 in the various data fields for this student.
  • Once you are satisfied with the formula, copy this formula into the remaining lines under total for each of the students and test to ensure that the formula is counting the number of days each student has attended accurately.
  • These totals for each student will tell you how many days the student has attended over the time you are tracking.

• Add formula to track total students attending each day.
  • After the last student’s name in column 1, enter “Total Daily Attendance.”
  • Leave several lines between the last student and the above entry to allow for adding more students later.
  • Under the first date and across from the heading “Total Daily Attendance”, create another formula that totals the number of students attending on each date using the same approach as outlined above.
  • Test your formulas by adding a 1 under various dates and students.

You now have your basic template created (V1) and can begin using the template to track student attendance. Save the template as described above and then resave the file under a different name which you will use to track your students.

In the future, if you decide that more features are needed, recall the template, make the changes and resave it as above, with (V2) to indicate this is version 2 of the template.

Why You Need to Record Employee’s Attendance in Detail

There are several advantages for the employee and the employer to ensure an accurate record of an employee’s attendance. Details are also important to understand to ensure that the correct codes, benefits, and salary are applied if an employee is absent. The following benefits will help both employees and employers appreciate these benefits:

• Enable accurate calculations of salary, wages, benefits, and overtime
• Maintain a record of long term attendance records
• Maintain awareness of absence trends and project impacts
• Individual employee efficiency
• Ensures timely payments to employees
• Identify attendance issues
• Reduces absenteeism
• Helps to schedule vacation time
• Assists in managing employee/employer disputes about salary and benefits
• Increases payroll preparation efficiency

Why Student Attendance Sheets Are Important

There are also several advantages for the students and schools to ensure an accurate record of a student’s attendance. Details are also important to understand to identify trends and issues associated with individual students as well as the student body. The following benefits will help both students and schools appreciate these benefits:

• Regular attendance improves student achievement
• Regular attendance supports applications and scholarships at college and university
• Monitors student attendance meets school requirements
• Helps establish a positive habit of maintaining good attendance
• Manage student records and school efficiency
• Assists in managing student punctuality
• Reinforces student participation in the school community

Tips to Improve School Attendance

Students who miss many days at school are at much greater risk of failing grades, dropping out of school, and not attaining the career success they might have if they had not missed school. Students who fall behind by missing an average of 2 days a month often do not read at the same level as their peers and begin falling behind. Many do not even finish high school or go on to post-graduate educational institutions.

Experts in the field of education and attendance suggest that the following tips and strategies help to improve attendance and the ultimate goal of students finishing high school include:

• School should be a positive and welcoming place for students
• Identify and connect with students who are perceived to be at risk
• Check-in with the parents and involve them with attendance strategies
• Give out awards for attendance achievements
• Maintain a focus on attendance across the school and the school board
• Parents can take an active role
• Parents should check homework
• Parents should be involved in their child’s education and events at school
• Parents should make school and education a priority
• Parents can help their kids get to school on time and reinforce positive behaviors.

Parents and teachers have to work together to ensure that the focus on education and attendance are priorities for their children. For many, the conversation can begin with, “when you graduate from high school” is considered better than “if you graduate”, or “you need to graduate”, and can confirm a long term direction in the mind of the student. Set the tone early and reinforce it over the years.

Attendance sheets for students and employees have many advantages for both the student, the employee and the organization. They promote good habits, build literacy by enabling good attendance at school and provide many benefits for employers managing payroll and benefits.

Attendance sheets increasingly are managed using online systems as well as simple excel spreadsheets to keep track of attendance and develop statistics about the student or employee or the group overall. If using an excel spreadsheet, always build a template and save it separately from the worksheet you use to keep track of attendance. Give it a version number to help manage updates to the template at a later date. Save time by noting where the template is saved so you can find it later.

Parents should get involved in ensuring good attendance at school for their children. Every time the student misses a day, they fall behind the other students, and unless they catch up, eventually they fall behind in literacy and the other basic courses. This can jeopardize the career they follow and cause them to perhaps not graduate from high school or attend post-secondary educational facilities.

Focusing on attendance builds great habits and commitment, which carries through into young adulthood and their careers. No one takes attendance at post-secondary schools, so if they miss classes because they have a habit of poor attendance from childhood, the student is doomed to failure. The same can be said for work environments. Employees with poor attendance do not last long.

Employers benefit in many ways as well. Attendance sheets help them calculate payroll and salary, benefits, and vacation plans. Attendance sheets also assist in managing workforce planning issues, team efficiency, managing projects, and serve as a record during discussions with employees over disputes about pay, vacation, and benefits.

Develop your attendance sheet template using an excel spreadsheet or download one of the many templates available online. In both cases, the user must customize it to meet their personal needs.