Hello, wondering if I can do this

Hey, I need to make a sheet with student names on the left and the date across the top to calculate attandance/absence, and tardiness. The problem is then I'm going to have to calculate how many days they are absent, and who was tardy. If I use A= currently in school, B = absent, T=tardy will excel beable to calculate A's and B's? I have to do this in 5 subjects, and for 3 months, so for each month i'll just use a macro with a button for that, and 5 worksheets for each class. My only problem is how I'm going to calculate if each student is absent or in attandace or tardy. I just don't like the 3 variables, would be great if I could just have if there were in attandance or not, and somewhere else if they were tardy. If anyone has any different ideas I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks,
Chad.

Thank you very much!