How to use Kept.

Set up once — about two minutes.

The first time you open Kept, it walks you through three short steps — click any step to watch the app do it:

• Pick your stateor province. Kept shows you a plain summary of what it actually asks — sourced to the law, with the date it was last checked. If your jurisdiction isn't summarized yet, Kept says so honestly and links you to the statute instead of guessing.
• Set the year startwhen your school year begins. Attendance, hours and every report count from this date, so pick the one your state (or your own plan) uses.
• Add your childrenjust names. Each child gets their own log, progress, reading list and exports.

Change your mind later in Settings — state, year start, children and subjects can all be edited there any time.

Log the day — about ten seconds.

On the Today tab, after the learning happened — click any step to watch it:

• Tap the childif you have more than one — otherwise they're already selected.
• Tap the subjectKept starts you with the usual subjects; add your own with ＋ New and it stays for next time.
• Set the minutesthe stepper moves in quarter-hour steps, starting at 30. Close is fine — this is a log, not a stopwatch.
• Tap “Log it”done. The entry lands in the timeline and every total updates.

Optional, when the day deserves it: add a short note (“measured fractions into the mixing bowl”) or a photo before tapping Log it. Both ride along on the same entry — no separate filing.

Missed a few days? Step back and fill them in.

At the top of the Today screen, the ‹ arrow moves the date back a day at a time. Whatever you log lands on the day you're looking at — so Saturday morning with a coffee, you can walk back through the week and catch up. The › arrow brings you home to today.

• Watch a catch-upstep back two days with ‹, log the day, and come home with ›.

A past day always shows its entries under the logging form, so you can see at a glance what's already been written down before you add to it.

Photograph the work — especially screen work.

The 📷 Add a photo button on Today takes a picture or picks one from your library and attaches it to the entry you're logging. The photo is stamped with the entry's date and filed under its subject automatically.

This is how work that has no worksheet gets into the record: the finished online lesson on the screen, the LEGO build, the whiteboard of math, the diorama. Snap it, log it, move on — at year's end it's already where the portfolio expects it.

• See a photo entrya lab-report photo sitting on its day in the Timeline, dated and filed under Science.

Star the keepers.

On the Timeline tab, every entry has a ☆. Tap it on the pieces worth showing — the ones that would make an evaluator nod. The portfolio export prints the starred entries and leaves the daily noise out.

A handful of samples per subject, spread across the year, is what evaluators generally want to see — progress, not volume. Starring as you go means the curation is already done the day the portfolio is due.

• Star a keeperscroll the Timeline, tap ☆ on the lab report, and it's marked for the portfolio.

The Timeline is also where you review and tidy: filter by subject, reread notes, and delete an entry if you logged one twice.

Keep the reading list.

The Reading log section at the bottom of Today records books by title, per child — the chapter book on the couch, the read-aloud, the library haul. Add a title when a book enters the rotation; it takes a few seconds.

If your state or province asks for a reading list (Pennsylvania asks for books logged by title), this is where it comes from — the portfolio export prints it. Everywhere else it's simply a lovely record of a year of books.

• Add a titletap ＋ Add a title, type the book's name, tap Add — it's on the list.

Glance at Progress now and then.

The Progress tab shows what your log adds up to: hours so far, days attended, and which subjects have been touched. Where your state or province sets a real hours or days target — or you've set your own annual goal — Kept shows how you're pacing toward it by year-end.

Kept has no red. If the pace is behind, the caption turns a calm amber and says so plainly. If there's no legal target where you live, no line is invented — the screen just reports what you did.

• See the year add uphours against the target, attendance days, and subject coverage — one scroll.

Back up about once a month.

Your records live only on your phone — that's the point, and it's also why the backup matters. In Settings → Backup, tap Save backup and Kept writes your whole year — every entry, child, book title and photo — into one portable file you can save to iCloud Drive, Files, or anywhere you trust.

New phone? Install Kept, tap Restore from backup, pick the file, and the year comes back whole — photos included. Settings shows when your last backup was, and Progress will nudge you gently if it's been more than a month.

• Save a backupSettings → Backup → Save backup. One tap, one file.

Export when something is due.

On the Exports tab, each report is one tap: the attendance record, the hours ledger, the evaluator portfolio (your starred samples, photos embedded, reading list included), and the New York quarterly with editable quarter dates. Each opens as a PDF in the share sheet — print it, email it, or save it to Files.

What stays yours to write: grades, narratives and test results appear as labeled blank slots. Kept fills in only what your log actually knows and never invents the rest.

• Tap Export PDFpick the child, tap the report's Export PDF — on iPhone the share sheet opens with the finished document.