Set your timezone (and why it controls attendance)

Your organization’s timezone does more than format times on the screen — it decides what counts as “today” for attendance. If it’s set to the wrong zone, teachers can find that the day’s attendance won’t save, or that it lands on the wrong day. This guide explains the setting, why it matters, and how to get it right.

Set your timezone

1. Go to Settings.
2. Find the Timezone setting.
3. Choose your local timezone from the list and save.

Why it controls attendance

Attendance is always recorded against a calendar day, and MarkTrack figures out which day “today” is using your organization’s timezone. That single value drives three behaviors:

• Future dates are blocked. You can’t mark attendance for a day that hasn’t happened yet in your timezone.
• Past dates can be locked. If Lock Past Attendance is on, you can’t edit attendance for days before today without an admin unlocking it.
• The date picker and the “today” highlight follow the same value.

The common mistake to avoid

If the timezone is left on a zone that’s ahead of yours (for example, UTC while your school is in the U.S.), the calendar can roll over to “tomorrow” too early in your evening. The result: taking this evening’s attendance gets rejected as a future date, or yesterday’s real session suddenly looks like a locked past day.

The fix is simply to set Settings → Timezone to your actual local zone. Do this before your first attendance day and you’ll never hit it.

Lock Past Attendance

Also on the Settings page is the Lock Past Attendance toggle. When it’s on, teachers can’t change attendance for previous days — useful once a period is finalized. Leave it off if you want to allow back-dated corrections. Because “past” is measured against your timezone, it’s worth getting the timezone right first.

Ready to take attendance? See the other guides in Attendance.