This post was last updated on February 23rd, 2024 at 08:44 am.
The simplest, fastest, easiest way to check-in at your church.
Icon Systems is excited to announce Icon Check-In: a fast, secure, and safe child check-in software for churches that lets your whole team work together in real-time! Checking in children as fast as possible is essential to a smooth-running event, like a Sunday morning worship service, everyday daycare, or other ministries.
“After speaking with organizational leaders in the community, the goals of the new system were set high. Armed with their feedback, we developed a system that has a minimal hardware investment, real time collaboration, and unprecedented flexibility.” says Bill Gifford, President. “We sought to eliminate unnecessary buttons and navigation. The system is easy-to-use, secure, and the work flows are completely customizable. We built Icon Check-in from the ground up using the latest web-based technology to facilitate a quick, smooth process on any device – without extra hardware, ink, and paper.”
Here’s a brief rundown of how it works:
- Individuals – Enter the folks to be checked in and their families. Pictures can (and should!) be uploaded for each person, as well as contact information, relationship data, and more. Individuals are sorted into households with a common address, though you’ll spend most of your time working with individuals.
- Groups – Organize individuals into groups, such as “2nd Graders” or “Wednesday Evening Adult Study”. When doing check-in, you’ll be able to choose a particular group per event.
- Events – Each time you are ready to check-in, you’ll create an event, such as “Sunday Morning 9 a.m.” Once created, the person checking in can choose the group to check-in, and will see names and pictures of everyone in the group to check-in and -out.
- Users – Create as many user IDs as you need to give employees and volunteers access Icon Check-in, Each use ID has its own customized level of security access.
View the full press release on Yahoo Finance.
Icon Check-In is entirely cloud-based; which means you don’t have to deal with app stores, downloads, upgrades, hardware, or installing updates. It’s also mobile-friendly and can easily be accessed on smartphones, tablets, laptops, or any other device that’s handy. Icon Check-In is available for only $25 per month. You can find more information and sign up for a free 10-day trial at https://www.IconCheckin.com.
How would we be able to be responsible for children that lets say were checked in with a mobile devise but weren’t really even at the check in area? Or if they are checked out but still in the kids class? I guess I’m not understanding how it can be safe being used by a mobile device. I love the concept of smooth and fast check in, but I’m concerned that people might check in the parking lot or something like that when they aren’t really even in the building.
Thank you
Good question, Chrissy!
There are quite a few models for check-in in general; at this time, we’ve chosen a single one to implement at this time, and perhaps will do more in the future.
A common model (not ours) is the kiosk model: the church has a bunch of kiosks that parents can check-in from. They usually print a name tag or a couple for the kids and/or parents. If the church is pretty security-conscious, they also have some form of check-in at the classroom itself to make sure the child got all the way from the kiosk to their class. This can be done either electronically or via an extra printed name tag.
We went with a model where the only place one can check-in a child is at the classroom. Similarly, the only person who can do the check-in is one of the staff members in the classroom. Parents can’t log-in to the app directly.
(There are other variations on these themes, and we expect that we may support other models in the future.)
Why’d we pick our model? A couple reasons:
It’s the simplest to implement. Churches can probably use existing hardware and mobile devices rather than purchasing a bunch of kiosks and printers.
No matter the system, security is up to the volunteers at the door no matter what. We don’t see a lot of benefit in adding complication above that. (We do, of course, highly encourage adding pictures to check-in to help with verification.)
And with a kiosk system, to have any sort of security, you need to check-in at the classroom anyway. Why add anything beyond that?
So, to wrap up, mobile device check-in is only done by a church volunteer or staff member responsible for the kids in the first place.
Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have more questions.