Who this is for: members who log volunteer time, and the administrators who approve it and report on it. Permission required: none to submit and view your own hours. Manage Volunteer Hours to add, approve and decline hours for others. Setting up practice volunteer roles and automatic hours is done from Practices → Manage, which requires Create Practices or Set Practice Lineups.
Many clubs ask members or families to give a set number of hours each season: launch driving, regatta setup, boathouse cleanup. Volunteer hours give you one record of that time. Members submit their own hours, an administrator approves them, and only approved hours count toward each person's total.
Where volunteer hours live
| Page | Who sees it | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Tasks → Volunteer Hours | Every member | Your own hours, totals and the Submit Volunteer Hours button. |
| Tasks → Manage Volunteers | People with Manage Volunteer Hours | Totals for every member, the approval queue and adding hours for someone else. |
Submit your hours
- Go to Tasks → Volunteer Hours.
- Click Submit Volunteer Hours and fill in:
- How many hours did you earn? — up to 24 per entry, in tenths of an hour.
- What day did you volunteer on?
- What was the name of the volunteer event?
- Briefly describe how you earned the hours
- Click Submit Hours.
The entry appears in your Volunteer Hours table with the status Pending until an administrator approves it.
At the top of the page, Earned Hours is the total of your approved hours and Hours Pending Approval is what is still waiting. Use Date Range and Change Dates to look at a season or year; by default the page shows everything since your account was created. The table can be exported to Excel or CSV.
Tip: submit one entry per event or day, with a clear event name. It makes approval faster and your history easier to read.
Approve or decline submitted hours
- Go to Tasks → Manage Volunteers.
- Scroll to Volunteer Hours Pending Approval. It lists every submission waiting for review, with the member's name, Hours Requested, Event Date, Event Title and Event Description.
- Click Approve to count the hours, or Decline to remove the submission.
Only approved hours are included in the totals. A declined submission is deleted, not kept with a "declined" status, so let the member know if you want them to resubmit it.
See hours by member
The Volunteer Hours By User table on Tasks → Manage Volunteers lists every member of the organization with their User Id, Name, Hours Earned and Joined Org On date. Members with no hours show 0, so you can see quickly who still owes time.
- Set the Date Range and click Change Dates to report on a season. By default it runs from January 1 of the current year to today.
- Click View Hours to see each approved entry for that member.
- Use the Excel or CSV buttons to export the totals.
Add hours for a member
Use this when someone volunteered but did not log it, or when you record hours for a whole event.
- On Tasks → Manage Volunteers, click Add Volunteer Hours.
- Choose the member under Which user are you adding volunteer hours to?, then enter the hours, date, event name and description.
- Click Submit Hours.
Hours you add here are approved immediately.
Add hours automatically from practice volunteer roles
If your club uses volunteer roles on practices (for example Launch Driver), Boathouse Connect can credit hours for each signup once the practice is over.
- Go to Practices → Manage and open the Volunteer Roles tab.
- Click Create Volunteer Role and set:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Role Name | The job, such as Launch Driver or Dock Cleanup. |
| Description | What the volunteer does. |
| Add to New Practices | Yes adds this role to every new practice. It can still be changed per practice. |
| Volunteers Needed | How many people the role needs by default. |
| Hours Earned | Hours credited per signup. Leave at 0 to credit the length of the practice. |
- Tick Automatically add and approve volunteer hours once the practice is over. This is off until you turn it on.
Members sign up from Practices → My Attendance under Volunteer for a Practice, and coaches can add volunteers from the Volunteers tab of a practice's lineup page. After the practice ends, each signup is added to the member's volunteer hours as Approved, using the role name as the event title. See Creating & managing practices and The lineup builder.
Changing the automatic hours setting and creating roles also requires Manage Organization Settings.
FAQ
Why aren't my hours in my total? They are still pending. Only approved hours count toward Earned Hours. Ask whoever manages volunteer hours at your club to review them.
I made a mistake on a submission. Can I edit it? There is no edit option. Ask an administrator to decline the entry, then submit it again with the right details.
Can an administrator change hours after approving them? The View Hours window on Manage Volunteers is read-only. Approve carefully; if an approved entry is wrong, contact [email protected].
Do automatic practice hours need approval? No. They are added as approved as soon as they are credited.
Who can approve hours? Anyone in a group with the Manage Volunteer Hours permission. See Roles & permissions.