Attendance sheet to be used in conjunction with Barcode Scanner

Hi guys,

I am part of a small business of football, we do plenty of sessions for kids and now we can to start keeping track of who comes and who doesn't to then ask and know why they are not attending...

We are looking at buying a barcode scanner to put up at our events, and then each person would be given an id card with a barcode in it... There is a couple of things I'd love to know to have it all working...

Firstly... How do you make sure the barcodes are linked to the persons info? Like name number etc... How does the machine knows that info so that after scanning it goes atumatically where it should? Mainly if ID and barcode number is xxxx, hoe does it know that xxxx is ie John Doe, mobile number x, venue.

Second, and maybe the biggest issue, I'm no programmer or anything, I have very basic but steady knowledge of excel and other programs, I heavily rely on finding stuff on the internet and following steps... So I have no idea how to start, create, or after getting it, modify an excel spreadsheet with what we need.

If anyone could help me solve this it would be heavily appreciated!

What I'm looking for is a simple spreadsheet for attendance.
First, having the list of all the members that could attend any of the events on different venues (3 or 4). So in that info sheet, we will see name, mobile number, and venue. If we have more people registering, being able to add to that list, with a new code and barcode...
Second, an automated sheet on which after the kids scanning their id/barcode, it comes up with a yes or a 1 or something that tells me the kid attended at a certain date, without me necessarily clicking something as "I can verify he is here" or whatever. Scans and he is in (only once hopefully...).

All we will see at the end is a nice sheet with the whole attendance after being scanned. Maybe colour in red the box if the kid didn't attend, although that is not a must...

If anyone can give us a hand with this, I'll be forever thankful. We are a very small business but we try our best to grow and to make it work as good as we can for the kids.

Any other info you might need please tell me, after all, you are the ones helping!

Thanks in advance!

Originally Posted by noboffinme

Hi sportzonenz,

Have you asked a supplier of the Barcode Scanner where the data goes, who stores it & how you can retrieve it?

I'd start there.

We still haven't bought it... Its a new project and we are at step 0, asking around to make sure we do it properly...

What would you recommend then? To buy it first, and get those questions answered, then come back?

Cheers

Originally Posted by noboffinme

Have a look at this video;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rnX-AE8WgE

This will give you an idea of how scanning data gets to a spreadsheet.

Any company that supplies barcode scanners should be able to help you set up what you need.

This will obviously cost some money, so are how are you going to ensure that you get the people to scan their cards?

You'll need to get the support from those people or this won't work.

This is entirely up to you, but I would be considering NOW how I can enforce the use of the scanner by everyone.

Would you have a rule for people who lose/ forget/ damage their cards?

Just thought I'd bring those points up.

Firstly, take your above questions to a barcode scanner company & get them to answer all of them thoroughly.

Cheers

Thanks for that...

I watched the video, I guess my question happens right before all that, as what I'm not sure on how its done is that if I create a custom barcode say in excel, how do I know that when printed into a card, and then scanned by us, it will go into the computer to the spreadsheet... But I think I'll get the scanner, and then have a look around that first...

As for the spreadsheet itself, I kind of know what I'm after, and I know there's people doing it, or companies, but as mentioned before, we are a small business trying to find the easiest, quickest, cheapest ways of doing this things, and hiring a company to do so probably doesn't fit into our budget...

As for the scanning and how on getting them to do it... Well, what we are doing is simple football sessions... So kids attend a venue on which we've got all our football gear and a trailer that has the goals, and a computer that runs a system for registration and other things... We can to plug the scanner into it and then each registered kid will have their own ID card with a barcode... So when they arrive, they just scan it with us and jump and play... Its not massive events, we usually get groups of 15 kids every 30min, sometimes a bit more, but we can handle... Plus we are considering putting a nice football goal design or something so that it will be somehow fun to do it...

As for loosing, forgetting, damaging, the ID card has some of the owner's info and ours as well, so if someone finds it we can get it back. If damaged, we can print another one, its no biggie...

Thanks a lot tho, at the end those details are the one that make things work!

Cheers