Best Attendance Tracking Software for UK Charities and Community Organisations (2026)

If your charity runs sessions, classes, workshops, or drop-ins, you already know the problem: you need to know who attended, when, and how often — and you need that data in a format your funders will accept. Paper registers get lost. Spreadsheets become unwieldy. And when it comes time to write a monitoring report, you spend days piecing together information that should have been captured automatically.

This guide compares the leading attendance tracking tools available to UK charities and community organisations in 2026, explains what to look for, and shows how attendance data connects to the bigger picture of impact measurement.

TL;DR: Digital attendance tracking saves time, strengthens funder reports, and supports safeguarding. Plinth's Bookings feature automatically captures attendance when participants book and check in, with data flowing directly into Impact Reporting — removing the need for manual data entry or reconciliation. Specialist tools like Upshot, Lamplight, and Charitylog also offer attendance features, but differ in scope, pricing, and ease of use. Generic tools like Google Forms work in a pinch but create reporting bottlenecks.

Who this is for: Charity managers, programme coordinators, community centre staff, and operations leads who need reliable attendance data for funder reporting, safeguarding, or outcome tracking.

Why Attendance Data Matters for Charities

Attendance tracking is not administration for its own sake. It is the foundation of three things every charity delivering services needs to get right: funder accountability, safeguarding, and outcome measurement.

Funder reporting

Most grant funders require evidence that funded activities actually took place and reached the intended beneficiaries. The Charity Commission expects trustees to report on the activities carried out to fulfil their charity's mission, including demonstrating public benefit with real evidence and examples (Charity Commission, CC15d). For programme-level grants, funders typically ask for the number of sessions delivered, unique participants reached, and attendance patterns over time. Without reliable attendance data, producing these figures becomes guesswork.

The charity sector is substantial — there are over 170,000 registered charities in England and Wales alone, and around 495,000 voluntary, community, and social enterprise organisations across England when including grassroots groups (Charity Commission register, 2024). Many of these organisations deliver face-to-face services and depend on grant funding that requires activity-level reporting.

Safeguarding

For charities working with children, young people, or vulnerable adults, knowing who was present at a session is a safeguarding essential. If a concern arises, you need to be able to confirm who was in the room, which staff or volunteers were supervising, and when. The Charity Commission's safeguarding guidance makes clear that trustees must have systems in place for recording and reporting concerns (Charity Commission safeguarding guidance). Accurate attendance records are a basic part of that infrastructure.

Outcome measurement

Attendance is the first link in the chain between delivering a service and demonstrating its impact. To show that a programme made a difference, you need to know who attended which sessions and how consistently. A young person who attended 12 out of 12 weekly workshops has a very different story from one who came twice. Connecting attendance data to surveys and outcome measures is what turns raw numbers into evidence of change.

Manual vs Digital: What Is the Real Cost?

Many charities still rely on paper sign-in sheets or basic spreadsheets. According to the Charity Digital Skills Report 2025, 31% of charities describe themselves as poor at or not engaging with collecting, managing, and using data (Charity Digital Skills Report 2025). Separately, 69% cite strained budgets as the biggest barrier to digital progress, followed by 64% who struggle to find funds to invest in infrastructure, systems, and tools (Charity Digital Skills Report 2025).

The result is a gap between what funders expect and what many organisations can deliver. Manual attendance tracking typically involves:

• Paper registers — easy to set up but hard to analyse, easy to lose, and time-consuming to transcribe into reports
• Spreadsheets — more structured than paper, but prone to version-control problems, data entry errors, and formatting inconsistencies when multiple staff contribute
• Retrospective data entry — when busy session leaders enter attendance after the fact, accuracy drops and records may be incomplete

Digital attendance tracking addresses these problems by capturing data at the point of contact — when someone books a place or checks in to a session. The data is immediately available, searchable, and ready for reporting.

What to Look for in Attendance Tracking Software

Not every tool is right for every organisation. Here are the key considerations for UK charities evaluating attendance tracking software:

Ease of use for frontline staff. The people recording attendance are often session leaders, volunteers, or reception staff — not data specialists. The tool must be simple enough that it does not add friction to the start of a session.

Integrated booking and check-in. The most efficient systems combine booking with attendance tracking, so you know both who was expected and who actually turned up. This eliminates duplicate data entry.

Reporting for funders. Can you pull the figures your funders need without exporting to a spreadsheet and reformatting? Look for tools that generate reports by programme, date range, demographics, or funding stream.

Link to outcomes. Attendance data is most valuable when it connects to outcome measurement. Can you see which participants completed a full programme, and cross-reference their attendance with pre-and-post survey responses?

Data security and GDPR compliance. You are collecting personal data about potentially vulnerable people. UK data hosting, role-based access controls, and clear data retention policies are non-negotiable.

Affordability. With 69% of charities citing budget constraints as their primary barrier to digital tools (Charity Digital Skills Report 2025), pricing matters. Free tiers, per-user pricing, and transparent cost structures all influence accessibility.

Comparison: Attendance Tracking Platforms for UK Charities

Plinth

Plinth is designed for UK charities and community organisations that deliver services and need to report on them. The Bookings feature lets organisations publish sessions, accept bookings, and automatically record attendance when participants check in. This data flows directly into Impact Reporting, so there is no separate step to compile figures for funders. For organisations that also manage individual support, Case Management links attendance records to case files, giving a complete picture of each person's engagement.

Best for: Charities running regular sessions, classes, or workshops that need attendance data to feed directly into impact reports.

Upshot

Upshot is a monitoring and evaluation system originally developed by the Football Foundation and now run as an independent social enterprise (Upshot Systems CIC). It supports over 1,400 organisations and has recorded more than 315,000 sessions with 1.3 million participants in the past year (Upshot). Its strength is in outcome tracking for funders — it was purpose-built to help deliverers report against programme objectives. Attendance is recorded at the session level, but there is no integrated booking or self-service check-in for participants.

Best for: Organisations focused primarily on monitoring and evaluation, particularly in sport, youth work, and community development.

Lamplight

Lamplight is a CRM designed specifically for charities, serving over 700 non-profit organisations in the UK (Lamplight). It records activities and attendance through its work records feature, supports outcome tracking with tools like Core 10, PHQ, and Outcome Stars, and offers modular add-ons for communications, safeguarding dashboards, and automations. It is priced per user with a modular structure, which suits organisations that want to start small and add features over time. Lamplight holds ISO 27001 certification.

Best for: Charities that need a full CRM with attendance tracking as part of a broader case and contact management system.

Charitylog

Charitylog is a comprehensive CRM for the third sector. Its Clubs and Clinics module handles session-based attendance recording, including the ability to log anonymous attendees, record session duration, and note non-attendance reasons (Charitylog). A mobile app allows field workers to record arrival and departure times to the nearest second, with real-time synchronisation to the main system. Data is hosted in UK data centres.

Best for: Organisations delivering rostered or scheduled care, community health services, or drop-in sessions where precise timing matters.

Google Forms and Spreadsheets

Many small charities start with Google Forms for sign-in and Google Sheets for analysis. This approach is free and familiar, but it creates problems at scale: there is no link between booking and attendance, no built-in reporting, no outcome tracking, and data is hosted on US servers by default. It is a reasonable stopgap for very small organisations, but it quickly becomes a bottleneck when funder reporting requirements increase.

Best for: Very small organisations with minimal reporting requirements and no budget for dedicated software.

How Attendance Data Connects to Impact

Collecting attendance data is only the beginning. The real value comes from connecting it to outcomes — showing not just that people attended, but that attending made a difference.

This requires three things:

1. Consistent attendance records — knowing who attended which sessions and how many times
2. Pre-and-post measurement — using surveys or validated outcome tools to capture change over time
3. A system that links the two — connecting each person's attendance history to their outcome data

With Plinth, this connection is built in. When a participant books and checks in via Bookings, their attendance is automatically recorded against their profile. When they complete a survey or outcome measure, that data sits alongside their attendance history. Impact Reporting then pulls both datasets together, making it possible to show funders that participants who attended eight or more sessions showed measurable improvement in confidence, wellbeing, or skills — whatever your programme is designed to achieve.

This is increasingly important as funders move towards outcomes-based reporting. It is no longer enough to report that 200 people attended a programme. Funders want to know what changed as a result. The Charity Commission itself has emphasised that trustees should explain the difference their charity makes, noting that "people want evidence about how far their donations are going" and that "real examples" and "hard statistics" help to "inspire trust" (Charity Commission blog, November 2020).

Frequently Asked Questions

Do funders require digital attendance records?

Most funders do not mandate a specific format, but they do require reliable evidence that funded activities took place and reached the intended participants. Digital records are easier to audit, less prone to error, and faster to compile into monitoring reports. Some larger programmes — particularly those funded by the National Lottery Community Fund or local authorities — have specific reporting templates that are far easier to complete when your data is already in a structured digital format.

Can we track attendance for drop-in sessions where people do not book in advance?

Yes. While integrated booking-and-check-in systems like Plinth's Bookings work best for pre-booked sessions, most platforms also support recording walk-in attendance at the point of arrival. The key is capturing the data in real time rather than reconstructing it from memory after the session.

How do we handle attendance data under GDPR?

Attendance records are personal data and must be handled in accordance with UK GDPR. This means having a lawful basis for processing (typically legitimate interests or, for sensitive data, explicit consent), providing privacy notices to participants, and having clear retention and deletion policies. Choose software that is hosted in the UK or EU, offers role-based access controls, and supports data export and deletion requests. The Charity Commission's safeguarding guidance also notes that retention periods should balance data protection requirements with safeguarding needs (Charity Commission).

What if our participants are not comfortable with digital check-in?

Accessibility matters. A good system should support multiple check-in methods — self-service kiosk, staff-assisted entry, or even a simple name-tick list that a session leader enters digitally. The goal is to capture attendance digitally regardless of how comfortable participants are with technology. Many participants are already familiar with basic digital check-in processes such as QR codes and online registration.

How does attendance tracking help with safeguarding?

Accurate attendance records document who was present at each session, which is essential if a safeguarding concern arises. They provide an auditable trail showing which staff and volunteers were supervising, which participants were in attendance, and the times involved. This is a basic expectation under the Charity Commission's safeguarding duties for trustees (Charity Commission safeguarding guidance).

Getting Started

If you are currently using paper registers or spreadsheets and want to move to a digital system, start with these steps:

1. Audit your current process. How many sessions do you run per week? How many participants? What data do your funders require in monitoring reports?
2. Identify your reporting needs. Do you need simple headcounts, or do you need to track individual attendance over time and link it to outcomes?
3. Trial a purpose-built tool. Most charity software providers offer free trials or demos. Test with a real programme and see how the data flows into reporting.
4. Plan the transition. Brief your session leaders, update your privacy notices, and run the new system alongside your existing approach for a few weeks to build confidence.

The voluntary sector workforce — just under one million people as of 2024 (NCVO UK Civil Society Almanac) — is already stretched. Anything that reduces time spent on administration and improves the quality of data for funders is worth investigating.

Recommended Next Pages

• Bookings — how Plinth's booking and attendance tracking works
• Impact Reporting — turning attendance data into funder-ready impact reports
• Case Management — linking attendance records to individual case files
• Surveys — capturing outcome data to connect with attendance
• What Is Impact Reporting? — a deeper look at measuring and communicating impact

Published by the Plinth Team. Last updated 21 February 2026. Plinth is built for UK charities and community organisations that deliver services and need to report on them. Learn more about Plinth.