A volunteer check-in your volunteers don't have to download.

How volunteer check-in works with a front-desk tablet

Put a tablet on the front desk and pair it as a scanner. Each volunteer gets a printed QR badge with their name. They hold it up to the tablet when they arrive and again when they leave. That's the whole system for them: no app, no account, no password.

A Saturday morning at a food bank:

Keeping badges in a box at the desk, filed by last name, means nobody has to remember to bring one. A church works the same way: greeters, nursery staff and the parking team scan in at the welcome desk before the first service. Pair a second tablet for a second entrance; scanners are unlimited.

First-time volunteers and walk-ins

A new volunteer can be on the record in a couple of minutes. Add their name in the dashboard and print their badge, or scan them in with their PIN until it's printed. If a badge goes missing, reissue it in a click and the old one stops working.

For a one-off event with a hundred people you'll never see again, a paper volunteer sign-in sheet may be all you need. TrackBadges earns its keep with regulars whose hours you want to total over months.

Hours for grants, reports and service letters

Funders ask for volunteer hours. Students need service-hour letters. Board reports want totals. Scans make all of it a lookup instead of a clipboard tally.

• Weekly totals: the weekly summary export has one row per volunteer with their total hours.
• Visit detail: the shift export lists every visit with times in and out, the location and who scanned them.
• Longer periods: export each week and combine them in Excel or Google Sheets for a quarter or a year.
• A view for your treasurer: send a view-only share link so a bookkeeper or board member can see timesheets without an account.

Volunteers can't log in to see their own hours, so the coordinator sends them a total or writes the letter from the export. If you report hours as decimals, the minutes to decimal converter helps: 3 hours 15 minutes is 3.25 hours.

Students, kids and knowing who's in the building

Youth volunteers doing service hours need an accurate record of when they arrived and left, and the scan times give you one. The live board also tells you who's in the building right now. If you have to evacuate, open the dashboard on your phone and tap Roll call: it lists everyone checked in, with a checklist to tap off each person outside. See emergency roll call.

What it costs

TrackBadges is free for up to 3 people with every feature, which covers trying it out or a very small team. Every volunteer with an active badge counts as a person, so a pool of 40 regulars is $64.50 a month on Pro, which is $9 a month for your first 3 people, plus $1.50 a month for each person after that. Archive volunteers who stop coming and they stop counting; restore them if they come back.

When it isn't the right fit

TrackBadges is a time clock, not a volunteer management system. It doesn't schedule shifts, run sign-up pages, track background checks or manage donors. Volunteers who log hours remotely, with nobody to scan them, are better served by a form or a volunteer app. Use TrackBadges when people show up at a place and you want their hours counted without asking anyone to install an app.