The Check-In Count on Your Live Event Dashboard: What It Actually Measures
TIME&SPACE · Organiser's Playbook
Insights Live shows a check-in number beside scans, selfies and downloads. It comes from a single tap in the TIME&SPACE app, it only counts once per person, and it means something different from a scan. Here is exactly what it tracks.
In short: Open Insights while an event is running and, beside scans, selfies and downloads, there is a number labelled check-ins. It comes from one tap, "I'm here", inside the TIME&SPACE app, not from the guest photo-delivery flow. A guest can tap it once; tapping again does not add to the count. It is a presence signal, not a photo metric, and it sits in the same Live view a VIP collaborator is allowed to see.
An organiser checking the live pulse of an event on their phone sees a handful of running numbers: scans, selfies taken, people matched to their own photos, downloads, how many uploads are ready versus still indexing. Check-ins sit in that same row. It is the smallest of the numbers and the easiest to misread, because it is the one that has nothing to do with a camera.
Where the number comes from
Check-in lives in the TIME&SPACE app, not on the public event page a guest reaches by scanning a QR code. A signed-in guest taps "I'm here" once the event is live, and that single tap writes one row against their account and that event. Tap it again, next hour or next day, and nothing changes: the write is an upsert keyed to the person and the event, so the same guest can never be counted twice. The organiser's dashboard reads the total count, nothing more.
That also means check-in needs an account. The anonymous selfie-scan flow that finds a guest's photos works for anyone who scans a QR code, account or none. Check-in does not: it is tied to a signed-in user, so the count is a count of people, never of taps.
Why it is not the same number as a scan
Scans and selfies measure a guest looking for their photos, which can happen any time after the event starts, often hours later from home. Check-in measures something narrower: a guest confirming they are physically there, while it is happening. A large check-in count with a small scan count is not a contradiction, it usually means people are at the event and have not gone looking for pictures yet, which is exactly what the chapter the dashboard is in would predict.
It is also a different thing from RSVP interest on an upcoming event, which TIME&SPACE deliberately keeps as a single merged figure rather than splitting it into categories. Check-in is not a second interest number and is not meant to replace or compete with it: RSVP happens before an event exists in the past tense, and check-in only exists once the event is actually running.
What it is useful for
For an organiser on the ground, the number is a quick gut-check against a guest list or a door count: if check-ins are climbing far slower than people are visibly walking in, it usually means guests have not opened the app yet rather than that attendance is low. For a VIP collaborator, who sees the same Live view with nothing editable, it is one more piece of the picture an organiser lets them watch without handing over any control.
The short version
The check-in count on Insights Live comes from one "I'm here" tap in the TIME&SPACE app, counted once per signed-in guest no matter how many times they tap it, and it measures presence, not photo activity. It is not a scan, not a selfie, and not a second RSVP figure. It is the simplest number on the page, and the one most worth reading correctly.
Founder, TIME&SPACE