Getting started: set up your school

This guide takes a new school from an empty account to a running one. Work through it in order the first week. Each step is a few minutes, and you can stop and come back at any point.

You do all of this as an administrator. Teachers and parents get their own, smaller set of tools once you invite them.

1. Create your first school

When you sign in for the first time you have no school yet. Click Add New School (the plus in the top bar) and fill in your school's name. That creates the school and makes you its owner and first administrator.

Everything else in this guide lives inside that school. If you run more than one school, repeat this step for each and switch between them from your avatar menu.

2. Set your most important school settings

Open the School Settings tab. The General sub-tab is where your school's identity lives:

• Name, address, and phone appear on invoices, the public application page, and emails to families.
• Time zone controls how every date and time displays for everyone at your school.
• Currency sets what families are billed in. Set it before you create any products or invoices.
• Logo shows on your dashboard, the application page, and report cards.

Two more settings matter early:

• Curriculum (its own sub-tab) lets you pick your framework and define the curriculum areas and competencies teachers plan and assess against. Set this up before teachers plan lessons.
• People (its own sub-tab) is where you manage administrators: invite another admin by email, promote a teacher to admin, or deactivate someone who has left.

3. Add your teachers

Go to the Teachers tab and use Add Teacher to invite each staff member by email. They receive a link to set a password and join. Until they accept, they show as pending.

Invite assistants the same way. Roles decide what each person sees: teachers and assistants get the classroom tools, not the billing or admissions screens.

4. Create your classrooms

Open the Classrooms tab and create a classroom for each room in your school. Give each one a name, an age range, a capacity, and a level (infant and toddler, primary, lower or upper elementary, or adolescent). The level controls which competencies and tracking options show up for that room.

5. Assign teachers to classrooms

Open a classroom and use its Teachers tab to assign a lead teacher and any assistants. The lead teacher is who attendance and records are attributed to.

A teacher can lead one room and assist in another. Assign every room a lead before you start taking attendance.

6. Set up your application form

Open Application form from your dashboard. This is the public page families use to apply, at a URL you can share or link from your website. You can set the form title, a welcome message, and a thank-you message.

The form has a library of starter questions you can turn on, and you can add your own custom questions: short text, long text, single select, multiple select, and more. Reorder them to match how you want to read an application.

Publish the form when it is ready. You can unpublish or edit it any time.

7. Import your existing parent list

If you are moving an existing school onto FutureNerds, you already have a list of families. On the Children tab, open the Invite Parent button and choose Invite Several Parents.

Paste your list, or drop a CSV file. One email per line works, and so does a CSV with an email column (a name column is fine, it is ignored). The dialog shows how many parents will be invited and skips any line without a valid email. Each parent gets an email to join and add their own children.

For a single family, the same button's Invite a parent option sends one invitation.

8. Assign children to classrooms

As children are added, place each one in a classroom. Open a child's profile and set their classroom, or add children to a room from the classroom's Children tab. A child's classroom is what puts them on the right attendance sheet and progress grid.

9. Handle inbound applications

When a family applies, their application appears on the Applications tab. Open one to see the guardians, the children, and the answers to your form, including your custom questions.

Move the application through its stages as you review it, schedule a tour, and decide. Accepting an application enrolls the child; once you assign them to a classroom they become active.

10. Create a lesson plan

Open a classroom and choose Plan Lessons. The planner is built around your curriculum: pick competencies from each area, assign them to children for the morning or afternoon work cycle, and add any free-form activities alongside them.

As children work, teachers record mastery (not yet presented, presented, practicing, mastered) right from the planner and the progress grid.

11. Post a message to the whole school

Open the Posts tab and write a post. Posts are announcements that everyone at the school sees, with an optional expiry date so old notices clear themselves.

For a conversation rather than an announcement, use Messages: direct messages and classroom channels, with attachments, polls, and reactions.

12. Add a calendar entry

Open the Calendar tab and add an entry for anything families should know about: a closure, a field trip, picture day, a parent evening. Calendar entries and events show on every parent's dashboard and update live.

13. Upload this week's cafeteria menu

If your school serves meals, open School Settings, then the Meals sub-tab. Turn the meals program on, set your snack and meal offerings per classroom, and upload the week's menu. Parents see the menu and, where you allow it, manage their child's meals.

14. Create an after-school club

Open the Clubs tab and create a club: chess, soccer, art, whatever you run after hours. Set the schedule, whether it is free or has a fee, and whether joining needs your approval. Parents subscribe their children from their own Clubs tab, and staff approve any requests that need it.

15. Configure invoices and Stripe payments

To bill families, connect Stripe and set up what you charge. In School Settings, open Products to create your tuition and fee products with their prices and frequency, then connect your Stripe account so parents can pay online.

Stripe handles the card payments; FutureNerds creates the invoices and records what is paid.

16. Send out your invoices

Open Invoices and create one. Pick the family, add line items from your products, and send it. The parent gets the invoice on their dashboard and pays it with a card through Stripe. You can see what is outstanding from the Payments tab.

That is the full lifecycle. From here, your week settles into a rhythm: teachers take attendance and record observations, you handle applications and billing, and families stay in the loop. The rest of this help center covers each area in depth.