What clock hours require
Many career, health and licensing programs measure completion in hours attended, not credits or grades. That turns attendance into a graduation requirement, so for each student you need more than a tally: you need to show which sessions they attended, when they arrived and left, and who confirmed it. Check your own regulator or accreditor for the exact rules, because they differ, including on rounding, make-up time and whether a signature is required.
What a good record contains
For each session, a defensible record shows the scheduled time, the student's actual arrival and departure, any break that does not count, and the name of the person who confirmed it. If time was corrected, it shows the original, the change, who made it and why. A record that can be changed without leaving a trace is much weaker than one that can't, even if every entry happens to be true.
Where paper falls short
Paper sheets are familiar, and some regulators still expect them. Their weakness is that a signature proves only that someone signed. Times are often rounded or filled in afterward, adding up hours by hand invites errors, and a lost sheet is lost hours. If you stay on paper, have students write their own times, have the instructor sign each sheet the same day, and store sheets where they can be found later.
Doing it in software
Software helps most when it adds up hours from timestamped events, handles breaks and late arrivals by fixed rules, keeps signed-off hours apart from pending ones, and shows each student progress against the requirement. AttendVia does this, with final hours existing only after an instructor signs off a session. Whatever you choose, show a sample report to your regulator before you depend on it.