Privacy policy

The short version

• Parents can create a Principlanner account on this website. Most of the planner is still being built. This policy explains how this website handles information today, and how the app and its free tools will handle your family's information as each part opens.
• Principlanner is for parents. Only a parent signs in. Children never have an account, and there is no screen made for a child to use.
• Your family's records belong to your family. A child's records leave your family only when a parent chooses to share them.
• There will be no ads and no third-party advertising, tracking or analytics code in Principlanner or on this website.
• Parents can download everything at any time, even after a plan ends, and can delete a child's records or the whole family account.

Who we are

Principlanner is operated by Hausbound, LLC, 1300 Rt 17 North Ste 1, Ramsey, NJ 07446. You can reach us by email at support@principlanner.com or by phone at (201) 785-7309. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean Hausbound, LLC.

Principlanner helps parents who homeschool plan lessons and keep attendance, hours, grades, portfolios and transcripts for their children. Parents use it; children do not. Because it holds information about children that their parents enter, we follow the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and this policy is also our notice to parents under that law.

This website

Parents can create an account and sign in on this website. Anyone else can read it without an account or a form, and it has no analytics and no ads.

Cookies: when a parent signs in, we set one cookie that keeps that parent signed in, and signing out removes it. While a parent is signing in with Apple or Google, a short-lived cookie protects that step. We set no cookie for anyone who does not sign in.

Like any website, our hosting provider receives the technical details your browser sends to load a page, such as your IP address. We do not use them to identify you. They are kept for up to 30 days.

Who will use Principlanner

• A parent creates the family account and manages everything. A parent can invite a second parent, who has their own login.
• Children are profiles that a parent adds. They never sign in and never type anything into Principlanner.
• A portfolio evaluator or umbrella school can view records only through a read-only link a parent creates. They do not get an account.
• Anyone can use the free state pages and free tools without an account.

Why we may hold your children's information

The records you enter about your children, such as attendance, grades and transcripts, are held to provide the service you sign up for, under our agreement with you as the parent.

Before you add your first child, you sign in with an email address you have confirmed, read this notice and accept it by ticking a box. We keep a record of which version you accepted and when. A second parent accepts it for themselves before joining the family.

Principlanner has no screen a child uses directly. If we ever add one, we will ask for a parent's verifiable consent under COPPA before any child can use it, and we will update this policy first.

The only information we handle under COPPA's exception for supporting our internal operations is crash reports that carry no identifier of any kind (see below).

Principlanner is offered only in the United States, so the European GDPR does not apply. FERPA, the federal law on school records, does not apply to homeschool families.

What we will keep about children

Only a parent adds a child, and we keep the minimum the records need:

• A nickname and a grade level.
• If the parent chooses: an avatar from a set of pictures we provide, the child's legal name and birth date. We ask for the legal name and birth date only when a parent first builds a transcript or report card, and the form says why.
• The school records a parent enters: lesson plans, daily logs of attendance and time, notes, assignments, grades, test scores, courses, report cards and transcripts.
• Portfolio items a parent adds: notes, files and photos of the child's work. Location details are removed from a photo on the phone before it is sent and again on our server before it is stored.

A child never gives us any information. The child profile has no place for a photo of the child, a school, contacts or a location.

What we will keep about adults

From parents:

• Your email address, whether you confirmed it, and your name as shown on the records you write. You can change your name.
• How you sign in: an email link, a password (stored only in scrambled form, never as you typed it), Sign in with Apple, or Google. From Apple or Google we receive your email address, whether it is confirmed, your name if you share it, and the sign-in codes they send us. We do not keep the profile photo they offer. If you use Apple's Hide My Email, we receive a private address from Apple and send our emails through it.
• While you are signed in: a random session code. We do not keep your IP address or device details with it.
• Your consent records: which version of this notice you accepted and when.
• Your family's settings, such as your state, time zone, grading scale and the start of your school year.
• Plan and purchase records: the plan, its status and renewal date, the amount and where you bought it (our website, the App Store or Google Play). For purchases on our website, our payment processor collects your address to calculate sales tax. We never see or store your card number.
• If you enter a referral code from an evaluator, umbrella school or support group: which one referred your family, and when. No cookie or tracking code is used for this.

From people who sign up for state change alerts: an email address and the states chosen, with no account.

From people who join our email list: an email address, confirmed by a link we send before anything else is sent.

From evaluators, umbrella schools and support groups that join our referral program: their name, kind, website and a contact email.

Free tools and imports

• The free transcript maker and its course descriptions and school profile keep everything you type in your own browser. Nothing you type is sent to us.
• The free year planner is built in your browser and sends us nothing you enter. State trackers download without an email address.
• When a parent imports records from a spreadsheet or another tool, the file is read in the browser. Only the rows that match a known kind of record are sent to us; the file itself is not stored, and columns we do not use are dropped. An import can be undone for 30 days.
• When our public pages count visits, they will count only totals per page and day, with no cookies.

How we will use information

• To run your family's planner and records on the website, the iPhone app and the Android app, and to keep them in step between devices.
• To send the emails the service needs: sign-in links, invitations to a second parent, notices that an export is ready, renewal reminders, and notices and confirmations about deleting an account.
• To send state change alerts and list mail only to addresses that confirmed them. Every alert has a one-click unsubscribe link.
• To keep the service secure and to find and fix errors.

We will never show ads and never build advertising profiles. Our emails carry no tracking pixels, and open and click tracking is turned off.

Who can see your family's records

Inside Principlanner, only the parents in your family can see your family's records. Our server checks this on every request. Our own staff can technically reach the database that holds them.

A child's records leave your family only when a parent chooses one of these:

• Export: a parent downloads everything as PDFs, spreadsheet files and the original files.
• Calendar link: a parent can turn on a private link that shows planned lessons in a calendar app. It is off until you turn it on. It shows each child's nickname and the subject; lesson titles appear only if you turn them on, and it never shows a legal name, birth date, grade, note or file. Anyone who has the link can see it, so you can turn it off or replace it at any time.
• Evaluator link: a parent can create a read-only link for an evaluator or umbrella school, for the children, dates and sections the parent picks, and must tick a box naming who it is for and until when. It shows nicknames; a legal name or birth date appears only if you tick it. It always expires (30 days unless you choose another date, at most 90 days), it has an access code by default, and you can turn it off at once. Every open, view, download and wrong code is logged for you to see, without storing an IP address. Downloads are off unless you allow them, and a copy that was downloaded cannot be recalled.

On a phone, the app keeps a copy of recent records so it works without a connection. The home-screen widget shows only counts, and children's nicknames only if you turn that on.

No ads, no tracking, and crash reports

There will be no ads in Principlanner. The apps and this website contain no third-party advertising, analytics or tracking code.

If this website or an app crashes, it sends a short report to one error-monitoring service, Sentry, so we can fix the problem. The website sends these reports now; the apps will when they open. A report holds only the app or browser version, the kind of device, the type of error, the place in our own code where it happened and the names of the screens visited. It never includes the error's message text, anything you typed, an email address, a name, an account or family id, a sign-in or link code, or your IP address, and the service is set not to keep IP addresses or the location they would reveal. Because reports are not linked to a family, they cannot be exported or deleted for one family.

Companies that help us run Principlanner

We use a small number of service providers. Each receives only the information it needs to do its job for us.

• Hosting and server functions through Vercel, which deliver this website and the apps' data.
• Database and private file storage through Supabase, where your family's records and files are kept.
• Email delivery through Mailgun, for the emails described above.
• Sign in with Apple (Apple) and Google sign-in (Google), only if you choose them. They confirm who you are and send us the details listed above.
• When plans go on sale: payments through Stripe, which also calculates sales tax, and through the Apple App Store and Google Play for purchases made in the apps.
• Crash reports through Sentry, an error-monitoring service, which receives the crash reports described above.

Apart from the sharing a parent chooses, we disclose information only when the law requires it. If Principlanner is sold, we will tell parents first and give them the chance to delete their family's information, and any buyer must keep it under this policy. If Principlanner closes, we delete all family information.

How long we keep information

• Your family's records are kept while your family has an account.
• Sign-in links work once and stop working after 15 minutes; password reset links after 1 hour; invitations to a second parent after 14 days. Signing out ends your session.
• If a plan ends, your records become read-only. They stay, and you can still download all of them. A plan ending never deletes anything.
• An export file you request is deleted after 7 days.
• A state change alert sign-up that is never confirmed is deleted after 7 days. Unsubscribing deletes the sign-up at once; our email provider keeps the address on a do-not-send list so that no more mail goes to it.
• After an account is erased, we keep only the store's subscription reference, with no family id, email or child information, so that a later notice from the store can be matched. We also keep a record that the family was erased and when, so that restoring a backup can never bring the family back.
• Deleted information may stay in backup copies for up to 30 days, and then it is gone. This means a backup copy can outlast the 30 days described below.

Deleting your family's information

• A parent can delete a child at any time. The child's records and files are removed right away, and you see how many were removed. Any evaluator link that includes that child stops working.
• A parent can ask to delete the whole family account. Everything, including files, is erased 30 days later unless the request is stopped; signing in during those 30 days lets you cancel it. Evaluator links stop working as soon as the request is made, and the calendar link stops once the account is deleted.
• No single parent can delete the whole family while another parent has a login. The other parent gets an email and a notice at every sign-in, and can agree or stop the deletion. The family is erased only if no one stopped it and each other parent agreed or was told at least 30 days earlier.
• Any parent can always remove their own login and personal information. The family's records stay with the other parent, and records you wrote show "Former parent" instead of your name.

A subscription bought on our website is canceled for you, and our payment processor's customer record is deleted. For a subscription bought through the App Store or Google Play, we show you whether it will renew and link you to the store's page to cancel it. When the erasure is done, we send you a confirmation email and then delete your address.

Your rights as a parent

• Review: see all of your children's information in the app, and download everything at any time, even after a plan ends.
• Delete: delete a child's records or the whole family account, as described above.
• Stop: only a parent adds information about a child, so nothing more is added unless you add it, and deleting the child's profile removes what is there.

You can also ask us to do any of these by email, mail or phone (see Contact us below). To protect your family, we confirm that a request comes from a parent: a parent can make it while signed in to the app, or reply from the email address on the family account. For a request by mail or phone, we confirm it by email to that address.

How we will protect information

Passwords are stored only in scrambled form. Invitation links to a second parent use long random codes that we store only in scrambled form, and each works once. Files are kept in private storage that only our server can reach. When you open a file, you get a link that works for a few minutes. Every request is checked against your family. Calendar and evaluator links use long random codes that we store only in a scrambled form, and an evaluator link locks for an hour after 5 wrong access codes.

Our state pages are not legal advice

Our state pages show what each state's official sources say, with links to those sources and the date we last checked them. They are general information, not legal advice. Your family is responsible for reconfirming the requirements with your state and for following your state's law. Records Principlanner prepares are records prepared by your family, not a filing.

United States only

Principlanner is offered only to families in the United States.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we will post the new version here. If a change affects what we collect or how we use it, the version gets a new effective date and parents will be asked to accept it in the app. Smaller clarifications only update the "Last updated" date.

Contact us

Hausbound, LLC, 1300 Rt 17 North Ste 1, Ramsey, NJ 07446

Email: support@principlanner.com. Phone: (201) 785-7309.