Run the commitment dashboard
For commitment chairs and treasurers: setting the yearly target, adding and correcting credit, watching family progress, and closing out the year.
The commitment dashboard is the program’s ledger: every family’s target, every credit entry, and the year-end machinery. If you’re the commitment chair or treasurer, this is your desk.
Set up the year
Configure the program before families start earning:
- The commitment — how much each family owes for the year, plus any variations your school offers.
- The rollover policy — what happens to surpluses and shortfalls at year-end: fresh start, surplus-only carry, full carry, or carry with caps. (Parents’ view of this: What happens at year-end.)
Set both deliberately — mid-year changes to either are technically possible and politically expensive.
Add credit
Most credit should arrive on its own via QR check-ins (see Create a volunteer opportunity); the dashboard is where you enter the rest — bake-sale contributions, buyout payments, the shift where the QR table never got set up. Pick the family, describe the credit, enter the amount. It lands on their tally immediately, visible to them.
A description a parent will recognize (“Fall Festival — cleanup crew”) saves questions later. They see exactly what you type.
Correct a mistake
Corrections don’t edit history — they supersede it. When you fix an entry, the original is marked as replaced and the corrected entry takes over the math; both remain in the record. That audit trail is what lets you answer “what happened to my hours?” with confidence in March, so resist any instinct to make corrections “quietly.” The family sees the current, corrected state.
Watch the year
The dashboard shows the whole community’s progress — who’s on pace, who’s far behind. A mid-winter nudge to families with a large remaining balance (“here are the spring opportunities”) lands far better than a May surprise.
Close out the year
At year-end, run the rollover. Balances reset or carry per your policy, carried amounts appear as opening entries in the new year, and the old year’s records stay queryable. Before you run it: settle disputes, enter the year’s stray credits, and give families a “last call” announcement — corrections are cleaner before rollover than after.