It’s important to ensure Volunteer Resumes reflect the actual number of hours a Volunteer has served. Virtuous Volunteer Admins are able to choose how Volunteer hours are calculated in the app and verified to credit those who serve and exactly how long they serve. Admins also can enable a one-time recalculation for historical volunteer hours to create standardization in logging and reporting on volunteer hours.
To configure whether Virtuous Volunteer automatically calculates volunteer hours using Check-in and Check-Out times OR Event Start and End times, navigate to the Settings Icon, and select Org Settings. Then, scroll down to Volunteer Hours Calculation.
Here you’ll find a drop down menu with four options for Calculation:
- Off by default: When selected, hours will be calculated based on Event Start + End time by default. This can be managed within Opportunity Settings to turn on for a specific Opportunity.
- On by default: When selected, hours will be calculated based on Check-in + Check-out time by default. This can be managed within Opportunity Settings to turn off for a specific Opportunity.
- Always off: When selected, hours will be always calculated based on Event Start + End Time.
- Always required: When selected, hours will be always calculated based on Check-in + Check-out time.
If “On by default” or “Always required" is selected, this means that when a Volunteer checks into an Opportunity, Virtuous Volunteer will calculate their total volunteering time based on their exact Check-in and Check-out time. For example, if they check-in at 10:15 am and check-out at 11:00 am, their volunteer hours will be 45 minutes total.
If “Off by default” or “Always off” is selected, the Volunteer’s hours will be calculated based on the Event Start and End time. For example, if the Opportunity begins at 10:00 am, but they check-in 15 minutes late, they will still be credited a full hour on their Volunteer Resume.
When using the Volunteer Hour Calculation, if the Volunteer forgets to check-out, then Virtuous Volunteer will calculate the total time based on their check-in time and the end of the serving time. However, if a Volunteer does not check-in to their serving time at all, then they will get 0 hours for that Opportunity.
Learn more about Check-in Kiosks here.
Manage Per Opportunity
When creating an Opportunity, admin can select to Calculate hours if the Org Setting (above) is configured to “Off by default” or “On by default” under Advanced Options. This allows you to configure this setting per Opportunity rather than the global setting. Learn more about Advanced Options on an Opportunity here.
Anonymous guests automatically inherit their lead volunteer's check-in time, checkout time, break entries, and calculated hours. Whenever the lead volunteer checks in, checks out, or logs a break, those same timestamps are applied to all of their anonymous guests. Note that this only applies to anonymous guests without email addresses. Named guests (those with email addresses) will appear at the Check-in Kiosk and manage their own check-in and checkout independently.
Verifying Hours with Calculation
If your organization requires Volunteer hours to be verified by Admin before they are posted to Resumes, learn how to configure Verification settings here. Verifying Hours can work in conjunction with hour Calculation or independent of it, depending on your preference.
Keep in mind:
- Unverified hours will not be counted as completed hours or serving dates.
- If a serving time is Verified by admin, but the total time using Calculate Volunteer Hours is 0, then it will NOT count as a completed serving date.
- Hours may take up to 10 minutes to load after an event ends.
Historical Hours Recalculation
In general, the Volunteer Hour Calculation setting will apply to all new hours once it is modified. However, when the “Calculate volunteer hours by check‑in + check‑out time” setting is modified to Always Required, VOMO will allow you to optionally recalculate all historical Volunteer hours for your organization’s Volunteers to the recorded check-in and check-out times rather than the event start and end times. This means Dashboards, Volunteer Resumes, Economic Impact data, and all other Reporting metrics can be updated in mass to reflect a more accurate record of volunteer service.. If the setting is later turned off, hours calculations going forward will adhere to the new setting, and any previously re-calculated historical hours will remain untouched.
How Does the Recalculation Work?
When configuring the Hour Calculation setting to Always Required, a pop-up will appear below the drop-down allowing you to review how historical Volunteer hours would change if recalculated using check-in and check-out times instead of event start and end times.
Select the blue Preview Historical Hours Recalculation button to review a snapshot of how your total Volunteer hours may change.
This Recalculation Preview will only display the past 6 months of recalculated Rollup data to give you an idea of how this trigger may alter your historical hours. If you wish to proceed with the update of all historical Volunteer hours, select the blue Schedule For Tonight button in the bottom right. Then confirm Yes in the pop-up. Note that this recalculation is a one-time process and is irreversible.
As this process requires updating a large number of records, the recalculation will be done at midnight.
Keep in Mind
- If a volunteer never checks in, the hours will be reflected as 0 hours. Only attendance with both check-in and check-out timestamps are counted. For this reason, we highly encourage you to review any missing timestamps in historical Volunteer hours prior to the recalculation, as hours may reduce significantly if Volunteers are missing check-in or out times.
- If an Admin manually overrode any historical hours, the overridden value is retained and not recalculated.
- This is a one-time mass recalculation. The setting Hours Calculation setting can be modified in the future, but the historical recalculation cannot be undone.