Features

Attendance

Attendance is the record of who was there. It is the thing a choir needs most often and keeps worst.

Present or late is recorded the moment a member scans in — the server compares the arrival against the event's own late threshold, so nobody has to judge it by eye.

Every scan is stored against the event and the member. Attendance for any event can be read back afterwards — on the screen rather than in a book at the door or a lever-arch file.

QR self-check-in

Each rehearsal gets its own code. You display it at the door or on the screen at the front; members scan it as they arrive.

The arrival time is recorded by the server, not by the phone. Nothing on the member's device sets the time, so a wrong clock or a changed clock does not change the record.

Scanning twice does not change a recorded time. The first scan is the arrival; a second scan tells the member they are already marked and leaves the record alone.

The code belongs to that rehearsal only. Yesterday's code does not check anyone in today.

Calendar

Rehearsals, services and concerts, in one calendar the whole choir can see. A director adds them in the app.

An event carries a title, a location, a start time and an end time. It can also set how late counts as late, so attendance can tell a latecomer from someone who was there from the start.

Reminders ahead of an event are planned, but not built yet. Today, the calendar itself is the answer to "was there rehearsal tonight?".

Chat

The choir's conversation, kept with the choir rather than in a personal messaging group that nobody controls. Members can talk to the whole choir, or start a smaller group for a section, a committee or a tour party.

When a member leaves the choir, they leave the conversation too — no group chat still carrying their number a year later. It also means a director is never obliged to hand out a personal phone number to be reachable.

To-dos

Who does what, by when.

Tasks are assigned to a person with a due date: book the hall, collect the programme copy, fetch the risers, chase the photographer.

Everyone can see what is outstanding, so the work of running a choir stops living in one person's head.

Projects

A concert, a tour or a fundraiser is not one event. It is months of rehearsals, deadlines, jobs and people.

A project holds the tasks it needs done, each assigned to a person with a due date. Open the project and you see what is outstanding and what is done.

When it is over, the record of it stays — useful the next time you plan the same thing.

Document library — planned, not yet available

A place for the choir's own files: meeting minutes, newsletters, concert programmes, constitutions, orders of service.

This is planned. It is not available yet, and it is not part of what you are licensed today. It is listed here so you know where we are going, not so you can count on it.

Where it runs

Members use the AtChoir app on iPhone and Android. It is free to install.

Directors use the same app today. A web console in the browser — where members are added, attendance is read and projects are set up — is planned but not built yet.

What AtChoir does not ask for

No date of birth. No age. No flag marking anyone as a child.

The app is built to the standard a child deserves, for everyone, so it never needs to ask. What it holds is a display name, an email address, an optional voice part, a role, and the choir's own attendance and task records.

Setting up your choir

AtChoir is set up at organisation level. Write to info@sjl-consulting.co.za and we will set your choir up; you then add your members, and they sign in.