Attendance Tracker

Google Meet attendance for language schools & ESL tutors

Online language teaching runs on lesson credits, no-show policies, and students scattered across timezones. When a student claims "I was there" and your records say otherwise, the tutor with minute-accurate join/leave logs wins the conversation. Here is how language schools and independent ESL tutors track Google Meet attendance automatically.

The reality of running language classes online

Language schools and tutoring businesses have attendance problems most classrooms never face:

• Prepaid lesson packages. Students buy 10- or 20-lesson bundles. Every session you can't prove happened is a lesson credit you may have to give back.
• No-show and lateness policies. "If you're more than 15 minutes late, the lesson is forfeited" only works if you can show exactly when the student joined — or didn't.
• Billing disputes. A parent disputes a charge for a lesson their child "never attended." Without timestamps, it's your word against theirs.
• Students across timezones. A student in another country who confused the time joins 40 minutes late. Was that a partial lesson or a no-show? Your policy needs data to apply fairly.
• Trial lessons. Free trials only convert if you can follow up with facts: they attended, they stayed the full 30 minutes, they came back for a second look.

Minute-accurate logs protect your billable hours

Attendance Tracker is an official Google Meet add-on (it opens in the side panel from the Activities menu, using the official Meet REST API — not a Chrome extension). Once you press Start, it records for every participant:

Every session downloads instantly as a CSV, exports to Google Sheets, or generates a PDF report you can attach to an invoice or forward to a parent.

A late threshold that matches your grace policy

Most schools give a 5-minute grace window before a student counts as late. The late threshold in Attendance Tracker is configurable, so the panel applies your policy automatically: join within the window and you're Present; join after it and you're marked Late with the exact timestamp attached. No judgment calls, no arguments — the same rule for every student, every lesson.

One roster per class level

Create a Class Roster for each group — Beginner A1, Intermediate B1, Business English, IELTS prep — and the panel checks live attendance against the enrolled list. Students who are enrolled but absent show up as Absent instead of silently missing from the report. For group classes that recur on the same Google Calendar invite, each student's attendance percentage accumulates across sessions automatically, so you always know who has attended 9 of 10 lessons in their package.

If your school also uses Google Classroom, you can import a roster from it in one click.

Certificates when the course ends

Course completion certificates matter in language education — students use them for visa applications, university admissions, and employers. With Pro, Attendance Tracker generates per-attendee PDF certificates backed by a public verification page at attendancetracker.dev/verify, so anyone the student shows the certificate to can confirm it's genuine. That's a professional finishing touch most small schools can't otherwise offer.

An interface your international staff can actually use

Language schools are multilingual by definition — your teachers and student-facing staff may work in Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, or Polish. The Attendance Tracker panel is localized in 60 languages, so every teacher sees the buttons and statuses in their own language. No training document required.

Getting set up (5 minutes)

1. Install Attendance Tracker from the Google Workspace Marketplace (button below). It works on personal @gmail.com accounts and every Workspace tier.
2. Join your Google Meet lesson and open the add-on from the Activities menu.
3. Create a Class Roster for each class level and set your late threshold to match your grace policy.
4. Press Start at lesson time. The panel sorts students into Present, Late, and Absent live.
5. After the lesson, download the CSV or PDF, or export to Google Sheets — your permanent record for billing and lesson credits.

Frequently asked questions

Does this work for 1-on-1 tutoring?

Yes. There's no minimum group size — solo tutors use it to log every private lesson with exact timestamps, which is precisely what protects your no-show fees.

Do my students need to install anything?

No. Only the teacher uses the panel. Students join the Meet as usual, from any device.

What does it cost?

The core is free: real-time tracking, rosters, PDF reports, and 2 free exports per month across Google Sheets, CSV, or binary Excel (for classes up to 25 attendees, plus 1 large-class grace export). Pro adds unlimited exports, hands-free Auto-Capture (finished meetings you host auto-export within hours, even with the panel closed), cumulative class summaries, certificates, and chat digests — $14.99/year for the Educator Annual Pass ($4.99–$7.99/year regional), $29 one-time for an Individual Lifetime Pass ($9.99–$19 regional), or $59/year for a Department plan covering every teacher on your school's Workspace domain (Institution $149/year for districts).

Can I see attendance across a whole course, not just one lesson?

Yes. Recurring lessons on the same Calendar invite roll up automatically, and the Meeting History dashboard at attendancetracker.dev shows every past session. Pro adds a cumulative Class Summary across the whole course.

What if a student's connection drops mid-lesson?

Rejoins are tracked separately, and the duration reflects total minutes actually in the lesson — so a flaky connection doesn't turn a real attendee into a no-show.