Questions, answered plainly

In a weekly grid — one row per student, with Daily, Quiz and Test columns — then Save. Your grade weights turn the scores into an average and letter grade automatically. On a phone the same page shows one day at a time, so nothing scrolls sideways. Tip: save before switching weeks so nothing is lost.

Yes. The gradebook and attendance pages show one day at a time on a phone — tap the day, and the whole class fits on one screen with nothing scrolling sideways. The save button stays fixed at the bottom, and typing a score brings up the number pad. On a computer you get the full week grid.

Yes. One Default set of weights covers the whole school, and you can add weights for particular grades on top of it — the younger grades often just average everything rather than weighting tests more heavily, and that is a switch rather than a workaround. A grade level can only belong to one set, so two rules can never disagree about the same child.

Only when somebody is away. Every school morning each student is recorded present before the day starts, so on a normal day there is nothing to open and nothing to press. If a child is absent, late or leaves at lunchtime, the teacher changes that one student. It only runs on real school days and never overwrites what a teacher has entered.

Yes — that's the point. A classroom carries a checklist of the grade levels it covers, so a single room can hold K–3 with one teacher. Subjects are scoped to grades too, so a teacher only ever grades the subjects their students actually take.

The office sets up the event types and any school-wide events. Teachers can add their own class events and edit the ones they created. Parents see a read-only view relevant to their child. Student birthdays appear automatically.

Yes. A report card is everything the teacher entered, gathered up and run through your grade weights — no hand arithmetic. Averages are rounded down (a 91.9 is a 91, never bumped up over a grade line), shown as whole numbers by default with a matching letter grade — you can switch to one or two decimals if you prefer. The teacher can add a comment against each subject, which parents see in the portal and which prints on the card. Print one student, a whole class, or every child in the school; parents can print or save their own copy as a PDF. Report cards are included on every plan.

Yes — the other side of the paper card. Your school keeps its own list of items (twelve to start with, taken from the printed card), writes its own wording for the marking levels, and chooses how often teachers mark: each week, each month, or once a term. A period nobody marked prints blank, never a zero. When you use it the report card prints as a folded booklet — grades on one leaf, behaviour on the other — and when you don’t, it stays a single upright page.

Quite a lot, from the Reports page. A class list for a field trip or a fire drill — with your own tick columns ("Leaving school", "Leaving the museum", "Back at school") so a child is counted at every stop, plus blank car sheets a driver fills in. A paper attendance register for the month, and a whole-school attendance summary over any date range. A transcript covering every year a student attended. A certificate of thanks for a teacher at the end of the year. The whole-school conference schedule for the office door, and the volunteer roster for the notice board. Included in every school plan.

Yes — the grade averages report shows the class average for each subject, quarter by quarter, and you click a subject to see every student's own numbers underneath. Included in every school plan.

Yes — the grade trends chart draws a line per subject of a student's weekly averages over a rolling last-twelve-weeks window: every time you open it, the oldest week falls off the back and the current week is picked up, so it always shows the latest picture. A slide in one subject stands out weeks before it lands on a report card. Open it for one student or print a page per child; teachers see their own classroom, the office sees the school. Included in every school plan.

Yes. The grade averages export as a proper table you can pivot — one row per student, subject and quarter, with the class and teacher on every row so you can slice by them. It is deliberately not a pre-formatted report: flat data is what you can pivot, filter and chart. The workbook includes a How to tab that walks you through building a PivotTable with slicers. Included in every school plan.

Yes. The office builds a conference night on a drag-and-drop board — a column per class — or lets it fill itself, and it never books the same family in two rooms at once. A family's conferences all fall on one evening, so nobody comes two nights running. Families are emailed their times with a link to confirm and add topics, and get an automatic reminder the night before. Included in every school plan.

Too big for one evening? Three or four hours is about all a teacher can manage in a night. If a classroom can't fit everyone in that time the board says so before you start, and offers to widen the evening, shorten each conference, or add a second evening — with every family still seen exactly once across the two.

Yes — the Volunteer Organizer runs recurring duty rosters like hot lunch or devotions, sharing the work fairly across your helpers and flagging any gaps in coverage. One-time rosters handle things like field-trip drivers and can count seats for carpools. Volunteers don't need accounts, and a no-login link lets them line up a substitute if they can't make it. Included in every school plan.

By invitation only — from the office or their teacher. The parent gets an email with a private link to set their own password. Parents can never sign themselves up, which keeps a child's information locked to the right adults.

Their own children only: grades, the report card, an attendance calendar, the school events for their child, messages from teachers (with replies), and any permission slips awaiting a response. A parent with several children switches between them with one selector.

Yes. Teachers can email a parent, and the two can go back and forth in a shared message thread inside the portal.

A teacher sends a slip to the whole class or specific students, with a due date. Parents approve or decline online, with a signature and an optional note — no paper lost in a backpack. On the teacher's roster each child then carries a dot: green if it came back, red if it hasn't (naming the slip and its due date), and a red ✗ if the parent said no. So the teacher can catch the child before the bell — "your mum needs to reply to the zoo trip slip by Friday" — with the parent's phone and email right there on the same row.

Yes. When the school sends the schedule, each family gets an email and a card on their portal dashboard listing every child's time and teacher, with a link to confirm they're coming and note any topics to discuss.

Use the "Forgot password?" link on your sign-in page. You'll get a reset link by email that points at your own school's address. The link works for about 48 hours and only sets a new password. This works for every role.

An administrator adds the person's name and email from the Teachers & Staff page — no password is typed. The system emails them a private setup link to choose their own. If the email is lost, the link can be re-sent with one click while the account is still pending. The same page creates teacher, substitute, office and admin accounts alike.

Yes. Every staff member carries the job title your school uses — Principal, Secretary, Board Member, Office Manager — separately from what their account can do. A principal or board member is usually a full admin; an office account runs enrollment, conferences, volunteers and reports while leaving staff management, billing and closing the year to the admin. Office and admin accounts never count against your plan's teacher seats.

No. Every school lives at its own web address with its own separate data. Nobody at one school can ever see another school's students.

A parent's email is their login. The safest path is for the parent to be re-invited to the new email address, or to use the forgot-password flow, rather than an admin editing it in a way that could lock them out. The documentation walks through the exact steps.

A wizard makes sure nothing is lost first: download a backup, optionally export grades, print all report cards, then close. Closing promotes every student a grade and graduates the top class. The old year is archived, never deleted — and from that moment it is view-only, so a past report card reads the same forever no matter what you change this year.

No, and that is deliberate — closing the books is the point. A closed year can be read, printed and reported on forever, but its grades, attendance, comments and behaviour marks can’t be changed. Your window for corrections is the weeks before you close: report cards go home, parents come back with questions, you fix what needs fixing, then you close.

Yes. A new year begins with a copy of your current weights and letter-grade scale, and the two are independent from then on. A teacher who marks differently this year changes it for this year, and last year’s report cards stay exactly as they printed.

Backups run automatically every night, so nobody has to remember. You can also download a full snapshot any time — and the year-end wizard has you take one before anything changes.

Yes. In spring, the "Prepare Next Year" wizard clones this year's classes, subjects, terms and grading setup as a draft you can adjust for teacher and class changes — all without touching the current year.

$16 per student, per year — everything included, with a $160/yr minimum per school. Teachers, substitutes and aides are free and unlimited; the bill simply follows your enrollment at each renewal. A single homeschooling family has its own flat plan at $65 a year. The pricing page has a slider for your exact size.

No — parent accounts and staff accounts (teachers, substitutes, aides) are unlimited and never counted. Pricing is based only on students.

The school plan includes everything — conference scheduling, the Volunteer Organizer, Reports & printables, the gradebook, attendance, report cards, the parent portal, the shared calendar, permission slips, enrollment and the whole-school year report. There is no bigger plan to upgrade to. The homeschool plan skips the whole-school modules (conferences, volunteers, the Reports page), since they're built for a school community.