Volunteer shifts and check-in

Open the Schedule tab and click + Add shift. Select a role, set the date, start and end time, and how many families can sign up. Save. The shift appears immediately on the Volunteer page and the Community Calendar, with its full start and end time everywhere it is listed. To edit a shift later, click it from the same Schedule tab and update any field you need, or find it on the calendar instead (see below).

Click the + New button in the calendar toolbar, select Volunteer shift, and fill in the same fields. This is faster when you’re already looking at a specific week and want to place shifts visually. Once a shift exists, clicking its pill on the calendar opens the same Edit, Duplicate, and Delete actions described below. You don’t have to go back to the admin Volunteers page to manage a shift you spot on the calendar.

Most shifts end the same day they start. If you add or edit a single shift that ends 24 hours or more after it starts, the form checks with you before saving and says how long the shift lasts and when it ends. Click Fix it to go back to the form with everything you entered, or Save anyway if the shift really does run that long, such as a weekend retreat. A shift that runs for days stays off the Attendance tab until it ends. Weekly shifts have a stricter limit, described next.

The + New menu also has a Volunteer setup… option below the divider. It opens the same requirement and role forms described in the next two sections, so you can adjust your policy without leaving the calendar.

A role that needs covering at the same time every week does not have to be entered date by date. Tick Repeat weekly through the end of this term on the shift form and HomeschoolGo creates the whole run in one go, skipping any dates the term has marked as no-meet. The same box is on the + New shift form in the calendar.

Set End to the same day as Start, since the series already repeats every week. A weekly shift has to end less than 24 hours after it starts, so an evening shift that runs past midnight is fine. If End is a day or more after Start, the form won’t save and asks you to change it. The same limit applies when you edit This and all later shifts in the series.

Families see a series marked Weekly through the end of the term, and they can take every remaining week in one action rather than signing up again each week. Each occurrence is still its own shift underneath, so capacity, reminders, attendance and credit all work per date, and a family can cancel one week without dropping the rest.

Taking the rest of a series is all or nothing. If any of the remaining weeks is already full, none of them are booked and the family is told so. They can still sign up for the weeks that have room one at a time.

On the Schedule tab, every shift in a series carries a Weekly series tag. Click or tap the tag to see which weekdays and time the series runs on, and its first and last upcoming dates. The same summary is at the top of the Edit form.

If you missed a date when you created the series and added it by hand afterwards, open the menu on that shift and choose Add to a series. It joins the series, so a family who takes the rest of the series from that week on gets it too. Only a series for the same role is offered. The dialog also lists the people who already took every remaining week of the series (or, for a date added after the series’ last week, every upcoming week), with a box to sign them up for the added date as well. It’s ticked to start with; untick it to leave them off. Anyone who had signed up for that date and then cancelled is left off either way.

For a one-off copy rather than a weekly run, click Duplicate on any existing shift. A pre-filled form opens with the same role, time, and capacity. Change the date, and anything else that differs, and save.

Duplicating a shift from a weekly series adds a Keep in the same weekly series box, unticked to start with. Tick it when you’re filling in a week the series missed, and the copy joins the series instead of standing on its own. You can also choose to sign up the people who already took the rest of the series.

Click Edit on any existing shift to change its date, time, role, or capacity. Families already signed up are not affected. Their signup stays in place. Use this when a shift needs to move to a different time or when you want to expand capacity after a slot fills.

If the shift is part of a weekly series, the form asks what to apply your changes to. Only this shift is selected to start with. Choose This and all later shifts in the series to fix every remaining week at once, for example a series entered as 9 AM that should have been 9 PM. Each shift keeps its own date and takes the new time, role, capacity, location and reminder setting. To move a shift to a different day, change it on its own.

When anyone is signed up for the shifts you’re editing and you change the time or place, they’re emailed about it. Each volunteer gets one email listing their shifts with the old and new times, even when a whole series moves. Nobody is emailed when the time and place stay the same, and you can untick the box if you’ve already told them. Volunteers who turned off Volunteer shift changes (or all email) in their notification settings aren’t emailed.

The Schedule tab lists shifts under a heading for each day. While you scroll through a long day, its heading stays pinned at the top until the next day’s takes its place, and each shift still shows its own date and time. For a holiday or a cancelled co-op day, click Delete day beside that day’s heading. You’ll see how many shifts will be removed and how many volunteers were signed up before anything is deleted. Each of them gets one email listing the shifts that were cancelled. Untick Email the volunteers if you’ve already let them know another way. Volunteers who turned off Volunteer shift changes (or all email) in their own notification settings aren’t emailed. Deleting a single shift that someone has signed up for asks the same question.

Open the menu on a shift and choose Manage volunteers. The dialog lists who is signed up, with a Remove button beside each name. Each entry shows the person’s name with their family’s name in brackets, so you can tell which parent in a two-parent household took the shift. The shift chips on the Schedule tab and the rows on the Attendance tab show names the same way.

Below the list is a search box. Type a family or parent name and pick the family. If more than one adult in that family has signed in, choose one under Who is volunteering?, then click Add to shift. This is the quick way to move a paper or spreadsheet sign-up sheet into HomeschoolGo, or to swap someone in when a parent asks.

If the shift is part of a weekly series, the dialog also has a Also add them to every later date in this weekly series box. It starts unticked. Tick it and the button changes to Add to series, which signs the person up for this date and every later date in the series. Dates that are already full, or that they already hold, are skipped, and the message afterward lists them, for example “Skipped: Oct 13 (full).” To fill a skipped date, raise its capacity and add them to that date on its own. This works differently from a family taking the rest of a series themselves, which books nothing unless every week has room.

Only people who have signed in to HomeschoolGo can be added, because a signup belongs to a person’s account. If nobody in a family has signed in yet, the dialog says so. Invite them first, then add them.

The usual limits still apply. A full shift stays full, so raise its capacity from Edit first. A role limited to one shift per family per day still refuses a second one that day. Adding someone does not send them a message. If the shift has reminders on, they get the normal reminder before it starts, so tell people they have been signed up. A shift already marked completed or no-show can’t be added again or removed here. Use the Attendance tab for those.

The same dialog has Print and CSV buttons above the list. Print opens a check-in sheet you can take to a table by the door: a numbered list of names, whatever note each person left, and an empty column to tick off as they arrive. CSV downloads the same names and notes as a spreadsheet file. Both use the list as it stands right now, so print it on the morning of the shift rather than the week before.

The shift form has a Reminders box. With it checked, everyone signed up gets a heads-up about a week out and then a second reminder closer to the shift. The Send the reminder dropdown decides how close that second one lands: 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, or 1 week before. A shift uses two days unless you pick something else. Reminders go out once a day in the morning, so the timing is approximate rather than to the hour.

Uncheck the box and this shift sends nothing. That is worth doing for a standing weekly slot everyone already plans around, where another email is just more mail. The setting belongs to the one shift, so turning it off does not affect any other shift or anyone’s own notification preferences.