Managing Classes

Classes in TimelyChurch represent your church's Sunday School rooms, Bible study groups, and other educational settings where teaching takes place. Each class has an assigned room, age range, teachers, and a roster of enrolled students.

Accessing Classes

Classes have their own page: open Planning > Classes in the sidebar. Classes are still a kind of Group behind the scenes, but the Classes page is their one home -- if you open a class from the Groups list or an older link, TimelyChurch takes you to its class page.

The Classes page shows:

• Counts of Total, Active Classes and archived classes.
• A search bar (Search classes...) and filters (see below).
• A row for each class showing its name, age range or time slot, room, a Teachers column (the lead teacher first, or No teachers), and member count.

Click a class to open its detail page, where you manage the roster, attendance, teachers, and settings.

Creating a New Class

1. On the Classes page, click New Class (or Create Your First Class if you have none yet). Choosing Add Group → Class on the Groups page brings you here too.
2. Fill in the class details:
   • Name (required) -- The display name of the class (e.g., "3rd-5th Grade Sunday School").
   • Description -- An optional description of the class, what is covered, etc.
   • Age Range -- A descriptive text such as "5-7 years", up to 50 characters.
   • Time Slot -- The meeting time (e.g., "9:00 AM" or "11:00 AM Service"), up to 50 characters.
   • Room -- Select from your church's configured rooms (from the Rooms module). Rooms provide capacity and amenity details.
   • Color -- A color used for visual identification on cards and calendars. Defaults to blue.
   • Assign Teachers -- Pick one or more teachers (hold Ctrl/Cmd to select several).
   • Who is this class for? -- Min Age / Max Age and Min Grade / Max Grade (leave blank for no limit). These are used by auto-enroll and check-in.
   • Requires check-in -- Whether attendance for this class is recorded through the Check-in module.
   • Auto-enroll by age/grade -- See Auto-Enroll below.
   • More details -- Optional Class type, Meeting day, Meeting time and Location.
   • Active (appears in scheduling) -- New classes default to active.
3. Click Create Class.

Class Detail Page

Clicking on a class opens its detail page, which provides a unified "My Class" experience organized into three tabs.

Page Header

The header displays:

• Class name, age range, room, and primary teacher.
• Color-coded icon for quick identification.
• Quick stats: Enrolled count, Here Today count, and Not Marked count.
• Settings gear button to access class configuration.
• A More tools link (on a computer) that opens the class's group tools -- templates, tasks, files, email, and the detailed attendance report.

Today Tab

The Today tab is the primary view for Sunday morning. It shows:

• The full roster with attendance status for each student.
• Quick-tap buttons to mark each student as Present, Absent, Late, or Excused.
• All Present and All Absent buttons for bulk attendance.
• Check-in status for students who were checked in through the Check-In module.
• A filter to search within today's roster.

Attendance is saved the moment you tap -- there is no need to submit a form or refresh the page.

Roster Tab

The Roster tab manages student enrollment and teachers:

• A list of all currently enrolled students showing name, age, grade level, allergies, enrollment date, and family information.
• An Add Student button that opens a searchable dropdown to find and enroll people. Adding someone who was enrolled before simply reactivates their enrollment.
• A Remove action on each student to unenroll them from the class.
• The Teachers card (see Teacher Management).
• An Invite to group form for inviting someone by email; once they accept, they appear as a request with Approve and Deny buttons (see Managing Group Members).

History Tab

The History tab shows past attendance data:

• A summary of the Last 12 Weeks of attendance records.
• Each class day shows how many were present, absent, late, and excused, out of how many are on the roster.

For per-student attendance rates, open More tools and the Attendance tab (see Group Reports and Health Metrics).

Class Settings

Click the gear icon on the class detail page to open Class Settings. Saving keeps every field you did not change. The following fields can be updated:

Basic Information

• Name -- The class display name.
• Description -- A description of the class.
• Color -- The accent color for visual identification.
• Active (visible in check-in) -- Toggle the class on or off.

Age/Grade Configuration

• Age Range -- Descriptive text for the target age range.
• Who is this class for? -- Min Age, Max Age, Min Grade and Max Grade (leave blank for no limit). Used by auto-enroll and check-in.
• Requires check-in -- Whether attendance is recorded through the Check-in module.
• Auto-enroll by age/grade -- See Auto-Enroll.

Auto-Enroll

When Auto-enroll by age/grade is on for a class, TimelyChurch places children in it automatically:

• When: a child under 18 is added with a birthdate (for example added to a family, registered as a visitor at a check-in station, or imported), or a child's birthdate changes.
• Which class: the class whose Min/Max Age and Min/Max Grade fit the child's age today (grade is worked out from age, with kindergarten at 5). A class that sets neither falls back to its Age Range text (such as "5-7 years"); a class with no audience at all is never chosen. If several classes fit, the one with the narrowest range wins.
• One class at a time: a child who was auto-enrolled and then has a birthday that puts them in a different class is moved, not added twice.
• Your decisions win: a child you placed in a class by hand is never moved, and a child you removed from a class is never put back.

Parents also see each child's current class on the Family page of the member portal.

Room Assignment

• Room -- Freeform room name/number.
• Room (from Rooms module) -- Select a preconfigured room that includes capacity and amenity details.
• Time Slot -- The meeting time for this class.

Teacher Management

Assigning Teachers

When creating a class, you can pick teachers under Assign Teachers. Only users with a teacher or church administrator role who belong to your church appear in the list.

Managing Teachers on the Class Page

For an existing class, open the class and go to the Roster tab. The Teachers card lists each teacher as Lead teacher or Co-teacher:

1. Click Add teacher, type at least 2 characters under Search person, pick the person, and click Add teacher.
2. The first teacher becomes the lead teacher; anyone added after that joins as a co-teacher.
3. Click Make lead next to a co-teacher to make them the lead teacher (the current lead becomes a co-teacher).
4. Click Remove to take a teacher off the class.

Managing teachers needs a church administrator or a role with the Classes assign teachers permission; other people see the list without these buttons.

Lead Teacher vs. Co-Teachers

• The first teacher assigned is the Lead teacher.
• Additional teachers are Co-teachers (co-leaders of the class).
• Use Make lead to change who leads.

Teachers in the System

Teachers are tracked as leaders of the class rather than as enrolled students. This means they appear in the class's member list as leaders, not in the student roster.

Classes Are a Kind of Group

A class is simply a special kind of group. The students you enroll are listed as active members of that group, and the teachers are listed as its leaders. If you export your data or look at the activity log, classes will appear alongside your other groups.

Filtering and Searching Classes

Search

Type in the search bar to find classes by name, description, room, or age range.

Filters

• Status -- All Status, Active Only, or Inactive.
• Teacher -- Filter to show only classes taught by a specific teacher.
• Has Teachers -- Show classes that have at least one teacher assigned, or only unassigned classes.
• Archived -- Include Archived, or Archived Only.

Class Order

Classes are listed in the order they were created (each new class goes to the end), then by name.

Bulk Actions

Bulk Toggle Active

Select multiple classes and click Activate Selected or Deactivate Selected.

Bulk Archive

Select multiple classes and click Archive Selected. Archived classes can be restored later.

Archiving and Deleting Classes

Archive

Archiving a class hides it from your classes and from check-in, but keeps its roster and attendance history. Archived classes are kept until you delete them yourself -- they are never cleared out automatically.

1. On the Classes page, open the class's row actions.
2. Click Archive and confirm.

TimelyChurch confirms that the class is hidden from your classes and check-in until you restore it. (Deactivating a class is different: an inactive class stays in the list and can be switched back on with Activate.)

An archived class can still be opened: its page shows This class is archived with Restore and Delete Permanently buttons, and the rest of the page is read-only.

Restore

1. On the Classes page, set the Archived filter to Archived Only (or Include Archived).
2. Click Restore on the class (or open it and click Restore on its page).
3. The class is back, with its roster and history.

Permanently Delete

1. Find the archived class (only archived classes can be deleted permanently).
2. Click Delete Permanently and confirm.
3. The class, its roster and teacher assignments, and its attendance history are deleted. This action cannot be undone.

Rooms Integration

When rooms are configured in the Rooms module, they appear as options when creating or editing classes. Selecting a room from the dropdown automatically associates the class with that room, providing:

• Room capacity information (useful for knowing how many students can be enrolled).
• Amenity details (projector, whiteboard, sound system, etc.).
• Building and floor information for wayfinding.

You can still use the freeform "Room" text field if your church does not use the Rooms module.