Attendance Tracker

Google Meet attendance for homeschool co-ops & micro-schools

If your co-op runs literature circles, science labs, or foreign-language classes over Google Meet, somebody is keeping the attendance notebook — probably a parent volunteer, probably at 9pm, probably from memory. There's an easier way to keep the records your state (and your peace of mind) asks for.

Why homeschoolers end up needing attendance records

• State requirements. Many US states require homeschooling families to document a minimum number of instruction days per year. Online co-op classes count — if you can show they happened and who was there.
• Portfolio reviews and evaluations. States with annual evaluations or portfolio reviews expect organized records. A tidy attendance log for each class makes the evaluator's job (and yours) easy.
• Parent volunteers teaching. Co-op classes are usually taught by whichever parent knows the subject — not by someone who wants an extra spreadsheet job on top of lesson planning.
• Mixed-age, small groups. A co-op "class" might be four kids ages 9 to 13. Tools built for 30-seat classrooms feel like overkill; a notebook feels like too little.

Attendance Tracker sits in the middle: it does the recording automatically during the Meet, and hands you a clean record when class ends.

How it works during class

It's an official Google Meet add-on — it opens in Meet's side panel from the Activities menu (no Chrome extension to install, and it works in any browser, including on Chromebooks). Whichever parent is teaching presses Start, and the panel quietly keeps the log:

• Who's Present, who joined Late (you pick the grace window), and who's Absent from the class list.
• Exact join and leave times, total minutes, and each student's attendance percentage for the day.
• A Notes field for the human details — "left early for orthodontist," "joined from grandma's house."
• Absences can be marked Excused, so a sick day never looks like a skipped day in the records.

One simple roster per class

Set up a Class Roster once for each co-op class — Tuesday Literature, Thursday Spanish, Friday Science Lab. Just paste the kids' names and emails, one per line. From then on, every session is checked against that list, so a student who misses class shows up as Absent in the record instead of just not appearing at all. If the same class meets weekly on the same Google Calendar invite, each child's attendance percentage rolls up across the whole semester automatically.

Records for the portfolio, reports for the evaluator

• Instant CSV download after each class — drop it in the family records folder, or open it in Excel or Google Sheets.
• PDF report — a formal, dated attendance report per session. When evaluation season comes, you hand over a stack of clean PDFs instead of deciphering a notebook.
• Google Sheets, CSV & Excel exports — keep a running attendance sheet per class (2 exports/month free across Google Sheets, CSV, or Excel for classes up to 25 students; unlimited with Pro).
• Meeting History dashboard at attendancetracker.dev — every past session in one place, so nothing lives only on one parent's laptop.
• Attendance percentages per child across the semester — exactly the kind of summary that makes a portfolio review painless.

Small groups and 1-on-1s are fine

There's no minimum class size. A 1-on-1 piano lesson, a three-student writing workshop, a twelve-family co-op — the tracking works the same. And because the free plan has no time limit, a small co-op can run entirely on it: real-time tracking, rosters, PDF reports, and 2 exports/month are all free forever.

Getting started (before Tuesday's class)

1. Install Attendance Tracker from the Google Workspace Marketplace (button below) on the Gmail account that hosts your co-op's Meets.
2. Join your class Meet and open the add-on from the Activities menu (the shapes icon in the bottom-right).
3. Create a Class Roster for the class — paste names and emails, one per line, as Name <email>.
4. Press Start when class begins. Teach; the panel keeps the log.
5. When class ends, download the PDF or CSV for the records folder. Done — attendance day documented.

Frequently asked questions

Do we really not need a school Google account?

Really. It works on free personal @gmail.com accounts as well as every Google Workspace and Workspace for Education tier. Most co-ops run it on a regular Gmail account.

Do the kids need to install anything?

No. Students just join the Meet like always, from any device. Only the parent teaching the class uses the panel.

Can different parents track different classes?

Yes — each teaching parent installs the add-on on their own account and tracks the classes they host. Each family's records live in their own dashboard. (If one co-op account hosts everything but different parents teach, a Workspace admin can enable delegation at attendancetracker.dev/setup so non-hosts can track too.)

Will this satisfy my state's homeschool requirements?

Requirements vary by state, so check yours — but dated, per-session attendance records with names, times, and durations are exactly the kind of documentation evaluators and portfolio reviews look for. You'll have a clean, consistent log rather than reconstructed memories.

What does it cost a small co-op?

Usually nothing. The free plan covers live tracking, rosters, PDF downloads, and 2 free exports a month across Google Sheets, CSV, or binary Excel (for classes up to 25 attendees) — plenty for most co-ops. If you want unlimited exports and extras, the Educator Pass is $14.99/year ($4.99–$7.99/year regional) and the one-time $29 Lifetime Pass ($9.99–$19 regional) never renews.

What about a hybrid co-op that meets in person some days?

Attendance Tracker records your Google Meet sessions. For in-person days, many co-ops keep the same Google Sheet going and add rows by hand — the exported columns make that easy to keep consistent.