Your first ten minutes
Setup asks four short questions and then gets out of the way. None of it is permanent, and you can change every answer later in Settings. You do not need your whole year planned to start.
The signup questions
1. Your family name. This is what appears on documents you export later, so a real family name reads better on a transcript than a nickname. It’s editable afterwards.
2. Your first child. A first name and a grade level. That’s all we ask for, and the grade level is what decides which parts of the app appear for them. You can add the rest of your children afterwards in Settings, and there’s no limit.
3. Your country. And if that’s the United States, your state as well. We ask because record-keeping expectations differ from one state to the next, and it shapes what your records bundle looks like. Verify your current requirements with your own state: we don’t stand in for it.
4. Where you’d like to begin. Four choices: plan the year, start keeping records, prepare reports or a transcript, or just look around. This only decides where the app puts you first. Nothing is locked behind the answer, and it isn’t stored as a setting you’ll have to live with.
The one thing worth doing on the first day
Capture something. Anything that happened today: a note about a conversation, a photo of a page they finished, a grade on a quiz. It takes a few seconds and it’s the moment the rest of the app starts working, because attendance, hours, and per-child progress all build themselves out of captures.
A single capture also settles the question most new users have, which is what the app actually does with what you give it. Save one, then look at Records. The instruction-day count will have moved on its own.
What you can safely skip
Full-year planning. Subjects, terms, breaks, and a weekly rhythm are all useful, and none of them are required before you can record anything. Setting up the year in September and setting it up in pieces through October are both normal ways to use this, and neither is treated as the incomplete one.
Grading scales, too. The default is letter grades, and you can switch to percentages or a mastery note later in Settings without losing what you have already recorded.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to plan the whole year before I can use it? No. Subjects, terms, breaks and a weekly rhythm are all optional, and none of them are needed before you can record anything. Setting the year up in September and setting it up in pieces through October are both ordinary.
Can I change what I entered at signup? Yes, all of it, in Settings. Your homeschool name, your country and state, your children and their grade levels are all editable, and none of the answers are permanent.
Does the starting goal I picked lock anything? No. It only decides which screen you land on first. Nothing is hidden behind the other three, and the answer is not stored as a setting you have to live with.
Where to go next
Capturing work covers the daily habit. Subjects and your week covers the planning you skipped, whenever you want it.