Guides
Working out what your school actually needs
Each guide names the schools we are the wrong answer for. We sell one of the products in these tables, so every source is listed at the foot of each guide for you to check. Pricing across all guides last verified September 2026.
Founder's guide
How to start a microschool
Most of what you need is not national. Here is the sequence that applies everywhere, the money picture from the only census that counts these schools — and then the part that decides everything, which is which state you are in.
About 11 minutes · updated
Buyer's guide
Microschool management software
Fourteen options small schools actually shortlist, what each really costs at three school sizes, and — since we make one of them — the sizes and situations where ours is the wrong answer.
About 12 minutes · updated
Pricing guide
What a student information system really costs
Every published price we can source, at three school sizes — and the five costs that never appear on a pricing page.
About 9 minutes · updated
How-to
Importing your roster from spreadsheets
The mess is never the import itself. It is a spreadsheet's habit of being loose, carried into a record that has to be exact. Here is how to tighten the file before it goes in, what a good importer will catch for you, and what no importer can decide on your behalf.
About 9 minutes · updated
How-to
Migrating off spreadsheets without losing records
Records almost never go missing during the import. They go missing in the weeks around it — in the binder nobody listed, in the month when two systems were both being written to, and in the one delete that had no undo. Here is the plan that guards those, sized for a school that does not have a project manager.
About 10 minutes · updated
Practice guide
Records and transcripts a receiving school accepts
A family leaves in March and the receiving school wants records in ten days. Everything that makes that easy was decided months earlier, by keeping the record as you went rather than assembling it at the end. Here is what to keep, what the packet contains, and what happens to it if the school closes.
About 11 minutes · updated
Practice guide
Adding a second campus
Most advice on this question is a list of software settings. The settings are the easy half. The half that decides them is whether the second site is the same school in a new building or a second school wearing your name — and three different authorities get a vote.
About 12 minutes · updated
Practice guide
Documenting project work for parents
Parents at a project-based school are not really asking what their child made. They are asking whether their child is learning, and how you know. Here is a way to answer that every week without documentation becoming a second job.
About 10 minutes · updated
Buyer's guide
Platform or a stack of general tools?
A spreadsheet, an invoicing tool, a form and a group text will run a school of eight. The question is what breaks first as it grows, and which features are worth paying for before that happens. Here is the order to rank them in, and where the stack is still the right answer.
About 8 minutes · updated
Buyer's guide
All-in-one, or a pile of add-ons?
You want one login, one bill, and one place the child's record lives. Almost every vendor says that is what they sell. Here is how to check the claim, and where the honest answer is still two systems.
About 9 minutes · updated
Practice guide
Consistent grading in a hybrid school
Grading drifts in a hybrid school for four reasons: the work was done in two places, it was recorded in two systems, it was graded by two people, and where it was done leaks into what it was worth. Consistency comes from one record and shared standards, not from identical teachers. Here is the sequence, and where software helps and where it honestly does not.
About 11 minutes · updated
Practice guide
Home-day communication without the back-and-forth
A parent teaching at home on Tuesday asks three questions: what is my child supposed to do, how long should it take, and what do I need to have out. Answer all three in one place before Monday and the texting stops. Here is what that page holds, and where software helps.
About 9 minutes · updated
Buyer's guide
What a hybrid school needs from its software
A hybrid school buys the same modules as any other school and then discovers the seam: the days a parent teaches. Most systems handle four days out of five and fail at the fifth. Here is what to require, how to test it in a demo, and which systems are honestly built for which job.
About 9 minutes · updated
Compliance guide
Seat time, attendance and audit-ready records
Rules written for a building have to be answered by a school that uses one two days a week. Here is how hybrid schools decide what counts, what to write down before the year starts, and what someone checking the records will ask to see.
About 11 minutes · updated
Admissions guide
Opening enrollment: the admissions process
A microschool opens enrollment with twenty seats, one or two adults, and no admissions office. The process that works at that size is short, published in advance, and staged so that nobody — the family or the school — finds out what they agreed to in October.
About 13 minutes · updated
Practice guide
Attendance when the schedule is flexible
A project-based day resists the register: there are no periods to mark, and the work that proves learning happened arrives days later. The answer is not a cleverer attendance system. It is two plain records kept side by side, and knowing which one your state actually asks for.
About 8 minutes · updated
Troubleshooting guide
When a new family can't get into the portal
Before you create another account, find out which of two things your portal actually is — a system that provisions accounts, or one that matches the address already on the child's record. The checklist is different, and half the usual advice applies only to the first kind.
About 8 minutes · updated
Buyer's guide
Questions that uncover hidden limitations
A platform can look perfect in a demo and still leave you with manual work, data you cannot get out, or a bill that grows faster than enrollment. The trick is to ask about failure modes, not features. Here are the questions, and our answers to all of them, checked against our own code.
About 18 minutes · updated
Founder's guide
The microschool website checklist
A microschool is not running a marketing funnel. It is trying to get ten or fifteen families comfortable enough to walk through the door. That is a different job, and most website advice is written for the other one.
About 11 minutes · updated
Buyer's guide
What to require from a vendor on student data
Most vendor privacy advice is written for a district with a lawyer. A school of thirty has neither, and the question is narrower: what do we require, in writing, before student records go in? Here are the requirements, the rules that actually apply to you, and our own answers to every one.
About 12 minutes · updated
Practice guide
Late fees and payment reminders
Most advice on this question is a collections ladder built for four hundred accounts. A microschool has two or three families behind at any one time and the head of school knows all of them by name. That changes what is worth automating and what should stay with a person.
About 11 minutes · updated
The detail behind the guides
These guides compress work that lives in full elsewhere on this site. For the long version of any single claim, start here.