It is 10:28. There are eleven parents outside the kids room, two of them with a toddler on each hip, and the service starts in two minutes. Somebody is holding a clipboard. Somebody else is trying to remember whether the boy in the red coat belongs to the family who visited last week.
Every church that runs children's work knows this moment. Get it wrong and you have either a queue that eats the first worship song, or — far worse — a child handed to the wrong adult. A check-in system exists to solve exactly two problems, and it is worth being clear about which is which.
Speed at the door, certainty at collection
Drop-off needs to be fast. Collection needs to be certain. Most churches solve the first with a paper register and never really solve the second, because a signature on a sheet at 10:28 tells you nothing about who is standing at the door at 11:45.
The fix is not a longer form. It is making collection something the system verifies rather than something a volunteer has to remember.
One code, and it keeps moving
When a leader opens a room, the system mints a code. The parent scans it on their phone, the child is checked in, and the parent's phone now holds the proof that they are the one who dropped off. At the end, the same phone is what releases the child.
The code rotates — by default every 60 seconds — so a screenshot taken in the car park is useless by the time anyone reaches the door. That single detail is what separates a real check-in system from a QR code printed on a laminated sheet.
It also means the record writes itself. Who dropped off, who collected, and when, without anyone typing a name.
Ratios you can see, not ratios you hope for
Most churches know their ratios in principle and have no idea whether they are meeting them at 10:31 on a busy Sunday. A room that quietly drifts from eight children to fourteen while one leader nips out for a nappy bag is the ordinary way ratios get broken — not by anyone deciding to break them.
So the room should count. As children check in and adults mark themselves as being in the room, the number of adults needed is worked out per age band and shown on the screen. Under-twos need more adults per child than eight-year-olds, so a room with four toddlers and ten juniors is a different staffing question from a room with fourteen juniors.
- A minimum number of adults in the room regardless of how few children are present — two, by default, so nobody is ever alone with a child.
- Tighter ratios for the youngest: under 2, then 2-year-olds, then 3 to 7, then 8 and up.
- A warning the moment the room drops below what it needs, rather than a report on Monday.
Ratios are your church's own safeguarding policy, not a setting somebody else decides for you. The defaults are a sensible starting point for UK churches — your safeguarding lead should review them against your policy and your insurer's requirements before your first Sunday.
Who is allowed to open a door
This is the part churches usually get backwards. Opening a room is not the same job as checking a child in, and the two should not need the same person.
Opening a room mints the code that lets somebody hand over a child, so it should sit with the room's lead or co-lead. Once the room is running, the phone gets passed around — and a worker in that team should be able to check children in and out without going to find the lead every time.
It should also be scoped to that room. Being a worker in Kids Church is not a reason to be able to open the creche's door. Different rooms, different registers, different people.
The collector rules worth setting
Two settings do most of the work here. The first is a minimum age for whoever collects — 16 by default, which stops an older sibling being handed a toddler without anyone making a decision about it. The second is whether an adult whose date of birth you do not hold can collect at all.
That second one is a genuine trade-off. Turn it on and your records get tighter; turn it on the week a grandparent visits and you have a queue and an awkward conversation. Most churches are better off leaving it off and letting the drop-off record do the work.
What you actually get out of it
A register per room, per Sunday, that nobody had to write. A safeguarding trail that answers “who collected Amara on the 3rd?” in one look. And a first hour of the service where your children's team is with the children rather than with a clipboard.
In Aurnet, children's check-in is on every paid plan. You tick “Children's work” on the departments that run rooms — Kids Church, the creche, the 3–5s — and the doors, the ratios and the register follow from that.