How Homebook works

On this page: The office · Teachers · Families · Students · Words Homebook uses

Before you start: who signs in where

• The office (Director, office manager, principal) sees the whole school and sets it up.
• Teachers see their own classes and children — roll, grades, messages, records.
• Familiesuse the family portal — their child’s grades, attendance, messages, money. Parents sign up from a link the office gives them. Older students (6th grade and up) can also have their own read-only login on a school computer.

When a new version of Homebook is released you’ll see a green bar at the bottom of the screen — tap it and the page refreshes. Nothing you typed is lost.

The office

Setting the school up (first week)

1. Settings → School. Name, city, school type, the time the school day starts (a child checked in after it is marked tardy), and the contact email families see.
2. Settings → Your terms. Enter your grading periods with dates. Attendance percentages and report cards count by date, so undated terms go wrong quietly.
3. Settings → What your school uses.Turn on only what you run: lunch, tuition, classes, periods (a bell schedule), check in / out, merchandise. Screens you don’t use never appear.
4. Students → Roster → Import roster, or add children one at a time. Each child needs a guardian name and, for messages to reach home, a guardian email.
5. School setup → Classes.One class per room or subject with its teacher. “Set up many classes” builds a whole grade band at once. Open a class to tick the children in it and, if you co-teach, the other teacher under Co-teachers.
6. School setup → Periods (only if you run a bell schedule). Add the periods that take attendance and put each class on its period. A class on no period never asks anyone to take roll for it — the dashboard tells you when that happens.
7. School setup → Staff. Invite teachers; set who is an admin, who can add students, and who receives discipline notices.
8. School setup → Calendar.Add holidays and closure days. On a day marked “no school” nobody is nagged to take attendance, and families see it as a day off.
9. Settings → Share links. Give families the sign-up link (or print Reports → Family sign-up slips, one per child). You approve each family request under Students → New enrollments before they can see anything.
10. Ask families to fill in Who can pick up in their portal. The front-desk sign-out screen checks names against that list.

Every day

• Dashboard.The numbers first: enrolled, present today, out right now, plates today, owed to the school. Below them, anything that needs a hand — classes with no roll call yet, families waiting to be approved, absence reports from families, and a “Things to do” panel. Post a note puts a message in front of every staff member when they sign in; Email families sends to every family or one class.
• Attendance → Take attendance. The whole-school day sheet: P / T / A / E per child, or Mark all presentand fix the exceptions. Teachers take their own class roll calls; the day sheet is the school’s word on the day.
• Attendance → Check in / out. Who is in the building and who left early or arrived late, with who collected them. Start the family sign-in screen turns a front-desk iPad into a kiosk (it asks for your PIN to leave kiosk mode).
• Messages.Every conversation with a family, newest first; replies go to the child’s record and by email. Staff is a chat for the team.
• Money. Lunch charges and payments, fees and field-trip money, tuition. Families can pay online from the portal if Homebook Payments is on.
• Compliance. EFA deadlines and to-dos, assessments, benchmark testing.
• Reports.Grouped as Attendance · Grades & records · People & safety · Money & lunch. Every report prints or exports to a spreadsheet.

End of a term

• Grades → Concluding a term locks a term so nobody can change a grade in it. Do this when report cards go out.
• Reports → Progress reports (mid-term, one page per child) and Report cards — everyone (one per child, the whole school in one print).
• Settings → End of year promotes every student to the next grade (Pre-K → K … 11 → 12) and graduates the seniors. Do it once, after the last report cards.

When something is wrong

Tickets(in the top menu). Every message reaches Sam directly; you’ll see the fix noted on the ticket. Teachers and families can send them too. The Fix it page lists the problems schools actually hit in their first weeks, with the fix for each.

Teachers

The first thing you’ll see

Your dashboard: how many of your children are present today, absence reports families have sent, and My classes with three buttons per class — Roll → (take attendance), Gradebook, and Report card.

Taking roll

• Attendance → Take attendance is the day sheet for your children: P present, T tardy, A absent, E excused. Mark all present, then change the exceptions.
• If your school runs periods, Attendance → Roll callslists the classes you need to mark today, in order, with what’s already done. Use the arrows to go back a day.
• A class that never appears in your roll calls is not on the schedule yet — ask the office to put it on a period (Tickets reaches them).
• Families can report an absence from their portal; it shows on your dashboard so you know before the roll.

Grades

• Gradebookis the grid: one row per child, one column per assignment. Click a column heading to edit the assignment; click a child’s name to open their sheet for that class (printable, with a parent signature line).
• Categorieson a class set weights (tests, homework, participation). If you don’t set any, every assignment counts equally.
• Enter one assignment scores a single assignment for the whole class at once — the fastest way after a quiz.
• Import scores takes a Google Classroom or spreadsheet export.
• Grades(the tab) shows every child’s grades and GPA in one place. K–8 schools can use a standards scale instead of letters — the office chooses.
• Terms can be concluded by the office; a concluded term is read-only.

Talking to families

• Messages → Families.Every conversation about your children. Replies go to the child’s record and are emailed home.
• Email a class (under Messages) sends one message to every family in a class. You can schedule it.
• Families can only see what the school has shared: grades, attendance, messages, report cards.

Your children’s records

• Open a child from Students for their profile, guardian contacts, documents, photo, notes, and schedule.
• You see the children in your classes and the ones the office assigned to you. Documents and photos follow the assignment.
• Co-teaching:if the office adds you as a co-teacher of a class, you get it exactly as its teacher does — roll, gradebook, messages, records. Only the office or the class’s own teacher can change the class itself.

Reports you can run

Attendance summary, Who wasn’t marked, Absences by day and period, Grades, Progress reports, Report cards, Family sign-ins (which parents have actually logged in), Emergency roster, Class lists, Sub sheet.

Time off and hours

• Calendar → Request time off files a request; the office approves under Attendance → Time off.
• Attendance → My hours if your school tracks hours.

Families

1. Sign up from the link the school sends (or the slip they hand you). The office approves your request — usually the same day — and you get an email.
2. The portal works on a phone. At the top: your child, their attendance, Report card, and the tuition balance with a Paybutton if the school takes payments online. Below, one row for each thing: Messages, Report an absence, Report something that happened, Who can pick up, Attendance, Lunch account, Activities & fees, Email alerts, Grades, Classes & teachers, Assessments, Tuition & payments. Tap a row to open it.
3. Español at the top switches the portal to Spanish.
4. Who can pick up — add the people allowed to collect your child. The front desk checks names against this list.
5. Email alerts — be emailed if a grade falls below a mark you choose, or after a number of absences or tardies you set. Leave a box empty to turn that alert off.
6. Something not working? at the bottom sends a note to the office.

You receive an email when a teacher messages you, when an absence you reported is handled, and for lunch or activity notices if your school uses them.

Students (6th grade and up)

The office can give older students their own login using their school email, on a web browser (not the app). A student sees only their own grades, marked work and attendance, and can write to the office with Tell the office. They cannot see other students or message anyone.

Words Homebook uses

• Day sheet— the whole-day attendance the office keeps. It is the school’s record of the day.
• Roll call — attendance for one class in one period. Only schools that run periods have them.
• Period — a slot in the bell schedule. Classes are put on periods.
• Term — a grading period (quarter, nine weeks, semester). Terms have dates.
• Assigned teacher— the teacher on a child’s record; gets the child’s documents, photos and absence alerts. Normally the owner of the child’s class; Homebook keeps that link up to date.
• Co-teacher — a second teacher on a class, with everything the first one has for teaching that class.
• Substitute — a stand-in on a class between two dates.
• EFA— Arkansas’s Education Freedom Account program; the Compliance tab tracks its deadlines.

Something missing here? Say so on the Tickets tab in the app, or email sam@gethomebook.com.