Tracking Sunday school attendance can help a religious organization evaluate and adjust its services to meet the needs of its community. For example, attendance records can help Sunday school leaders make decisions about whether to add or subtract classes. Sunday school attendance records also provide trends of student engagement in religious studies over time. To help Sunday school organizers run their programs, we offer a Sunday school attendance sheet template with 5 different attendance worksheets.
Below is a list of worksheets included in this template.
Portrait Simple
A simple attendance sheet in portrait orientation, with space for up to 35 students.
Landscape Simple
A simple attendance sheet in landscape orientation, with space for up to 25 students.
Landscape ABV
An attendance sheet with the following letter codes in landscape orientation:
Portrait Dates
An attendance sheet in portrait orientation with space for up to 35 students. This worksheet includes automated date setting.
Landscape Dates
An attendance sheet in landscape orientation with space for up to 25 students. This worksheet includes automated date setting.
Our “Simple” attendance sheet is available in both portrait orientation and landscape orientation. Portrait orientation provides more room for student names, to accomodate class sizes of 25 or more students. However, the tradeoff is less space populate with dates. Our “Simple” attendance sheet in landscape orientation, on the other hand, can display as many as 19 Sunday school sessions, but is best for class sizes of 25 or fewer students.
No matter which orientation you select, the fields at the top are the same - “Title,” “School Name,” and “Starting Date.”
To start using the Sunday school attendance sheet, populate the standard fields as shown below.
Next, enter the date of each school session across the top row. Because the dates are not automatically set to appear every week (as they are in our “Dates” worksheets), the “Simple” attendance worksheets work great if you don’t have consecutive school sessions. Once the dates are entered, they will appear vertically at a 76 degree angle, as shown below.
Next, enter the student names in the column labeled “Name” and take attendance. Attendance can be recorded in many different ways - a quick and simple method is to mark students who are present with a “P” or an “X” in the appropriate cell.
Finally, tally up total attendance for each student in the “Total” column. This can be done manually or by using a simple formula (see “Calculate Attendance Totals”).
Tip: Choose “center alignment” to line up the attendance records for aesthetics.
The “Dates” attendance worksheets are useful if your Sunday school sessions occur consistently (e.g. every Sunday). The “Dates” worksheets can be used just like the “Simple” worksheets (see “Simple (Portrait and Landscape”)), the biggest difference being how the dates are entered; our “Dates” worksheets are set to calculate the dates automatically. Once the “Starting Date” is set, our algorithm will assume that there is a Sunday school session each week, and populate the fields as shown below.
Tip: Automatic dates can be adjusted. For example, change the current formula, “previous date + 7” to “previous date + 14” to run Sunday school sessions every 2 weeks.
The “Landscape ABV” attendance sheet allows you to track Sunday school attendance (A), as well as important activities such as Bible reading (B) and memory verse (M). To start using the “Landscape ABV” attendance sheet, populate the “School Name” and “Starting Date” fields. The dates in this worksheet do not appear automatically - enter the dates for each Sunday school session in the top row, as shown below.
Next, enter student names, track their attendance, and track successful completion of Sunday school activities. In the example above, Nicole Jellano is present, but she was not able to complete “Bible” and “Memory Verse” activities during the 1st two Sunday school sessions. Finally, tally up total attendance for each student in the “Total” column.
Tip: You can tailor Sunday school activities as needed. For example, if your school does crafts instead of memory verse, simply overwrite the current letter codes with a new letter code to describe a new activity, as shown below.
Attendance totals can be summed up manually for any of the Sunday school attendance sheets included in this template. However, to save time, attendance can also be calculated automatically using a simple formula. For example, if you are using an “X” to count attendance in the “Portrait Simple” worksheet, enter the formula shown below into the “Total” column for each student.
This formula will capture any attendance marked with an “X” with a range of C7 to M7. Drag this formula down to automatically calculate attendance for all students.
Note: Adjust the formula as needed for unique range and letters or symbols used to track attendance.
If you enjoy personalizing your tools, consider some of the alternative methods of attendance tracking detailed below.
Attendance can be tracked using color codes. In the following example, green is used to indicate that the student is present, while red is used to indicate absence.
Number each session when a student is present to make counting total attendance a snap.
If you are a fan of checking the box, you can use check marks to take attendance, too! To enter a checkmark, use the “Wingdings 2” font and enter “P” into the cells.
If more space is needed for a larger class, expand the worksheet to include as many students as necessary. To add more students, simply copy (Ctrl + C) the last row of the worksheet and “Insert Copied Cells” under the last row. Finally, update the student number and all other information.
Tip: Column headings will disappear if you scroll down toward the middle of the page. Use the “Freeze Panes” option to retain column headings. A tutorial on how to freeze panes can be found here.
You may want to create new attendance sheets and organize them in the same file. Create a new worksheet by duplicating the previous worksheet. This method will allow you to create historical records of previous attendance sheets. Finally, delete any old attendance records from the previous worksheet and start over.
Tip: Create copies of attendance sheets before using them, to avoid deleting old information.
A tutorial on duplicating worksheets can be found here.
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