Befundo for parents

A one-minute walk round the screen: where to switch between your own things and each child's, where Tasks, messages and the bell are, and where help lives. It is offered once, at the top of your dashboard, and never starts by itself. Take it again any time from Help or the menu under your picture.

Befundo asks one thing at sign-up: adult or child. Choose adult. The same account can enroll you in classes, manage your children, and run a business later if you ever want to — nothing needs separating.

From your dashboard. Each child gets a name, a date of birth and optionally a photo, grade and interests. The date of birth matters: it decides which classes suit them and whether they can have a login.

Some children already have an account — they made one themselves, or a class invitation set one up. Adding them again is refused, but you can ask the account to join your family instead. Whoever holds the address decides; nothing changes until they agree, and Befundo never tells you whose account it is.

Your address is used to sort classes by distance. Nothing about your children is public.

Add a picture to your own profile on your account page, and to each child when you edit them. It can be a photo or an avatar you build from parts — Build an avatar is the first button for a child, with a photo as the other choice. A photo is drawn as a circle, so center the face — the corners are cut off — and where there is no picture Befundo draws initials in that person's color.

There is one picture, whichever you saved last, and it follows you both ways: the one you signed in with is copied into Befundo, and one you upload here is pushed back to your sign-in account. Removing it takes it off both and leaves initials. Location data is stripped from anything you upload.

Befundo is in English, Spanish and French. Pick yours under Account → Language on the web, or Me → Language in the app. Your notifications, push alerts and emails follow it. The legal pages are translated as a courtesy, and the English version is the one that applies.

Explore classes filters by category, age, format — in person, online or hybrid — and distance. Online classes never appear on the map, and they aren't dropped from a distance search either, since where they are doesn't matter.

The schedule, the price and how payment works, the age range, what the course covers, and who teaches it. Many providers publish an instructor page and a landing page for the business itself.

Only families who actually attended can review a business or an instructor, so what you're reading is from people who were there.

Choose which child — or yourself; nothing is chosen for you, and the button names who it's for. If the class has a capacity or a registration deadline, the listing says so and closes when it's reached. A provider can also invite you by email if you arranged it directly. Got it wrong? Withdraw sits beside each name that's registered, and Cancel request beside one still waiting. Once the class has had its first meeting, it becomes Ask to withdraw: the business decides, and your child keeps the place until they do. Some teachers also take time requests: Ask for a time on their page, on a private lesson or on a class listing in the apps shows their free slots for the next two weeks. Pick one for your child or yourself, and nothing is booked until the teacher agrees.

Some business pages show Established or Trusted, with the list of what we checked: legal registration, the address by post, the contact email, the owner's ID, how long they've been running. It is not a background check, and Befundo doesn't vet anyone to work with children. It tells you a business is real and reachable — not that it's right for your child. A badge is a starting point, not a substitute for asking questions and watching a first class. And no badge usually just means they haven't got round to it.

Open Explore classes. Signed in, it opens on a row for each of your children by age — For Noah (7) — then classes starting soon, this weekend, after school, near your town and online. Each row is a list of facts, never a ranking, and See all opens the same search with its filters set. The filters include age, days, time of day and Has spots. A child with no birthday on file gets no row of their own; add one on their page.

Press the heart on a class to save it. Saved is the first row on Explore classes, and it is your household's list: you see what the other adults who look after your children saved, marked Saved by Sam, and what your children saved themselves. A child with their own login sees only their own. Nobody is told when you save something.

Your dashboard shows Classes for Noah when a child has no classes yet, and What next for Noah? when a class of theirs has just finished — more of the same kind, for their age. Otherwise it shows nothing. Switch it off under Account → Subscriptions → Class suggestions on your dashboard.

Where a business runs camps, its camp page has Register: every week, age band and part of the day on one screen, with a box for each of your children. Nothing is ticked until you tick it — morning, afternoon or both — and a box that can't be ticked says why: full, registration closed, or outside the ages. The camp asks once per child for an emergency contact, who else may collect them, allergies and dietary needs and a T-shirt size, filled in from what you told the same business before (never another), and you can change them until the camp starts. Only the business's admins and your child's teachers see them. Accept the waiver and cancellation policy if the camp has them. Befundo takes no payment: pay the business the way it asks, and it marks your registration paid. Each child's page then shows their camps, with how many days they attended. A child's own login can't register for a camp — a parent does.

The camp checks your child in when they arrive and out when they leave, and you are told who collected them — you, another parent, someone on the list you gave the camp, or someone else, with the reason the camp recorded. A week before and the day before the first day you get a reminder with where, when and what to bring, and on the last day a thank-you with a link to rate the teacher. The camp's documents — a handbook, the waiver, a map — are on your child's camps card, and open only for you and the other adults who look after them, signed in. If the camp sends it, you can get a note when your child is marked present. Each of these has its own switch under Account → Subscriptions.

With more than one person in the house, a calendar of everybody at once is hard to read. Each person gets a color — on the calendar, on the day's list, on their classes — and you can choose it: yours under Account → Your color, a child's in their Edit dialog. Leave it on Automatic and Befundo picks one for you.

It only appears where it tells people apart. On a screen about one person there is nothing to distinguish, so nothing is colored — that is deliberate, not a setting that failed to take. A child with their own login also gets their color as the app's theme on their phone, which is the part they will care about.

Calendar → Create my link gives you a link to subscribe to, and your children's classes then show up in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook beside everything else. It updates itself, so a rescheduled class moves without you doing anything.

The card walks you through each app. One thing worth knowing: Google decides for itself how often to check and can take most of a day — so if a change hasn't appeared there yet, it will.

Anyone with the link can see the schedule, so keep it to yourself. If it gets out, make a new one and the old link stops working.

A routine is something to do regularly — “read for 20 minutes”, “practice three times a week”. Add one from Tasks or from a child's page, and either of you can tick it off; a child with no login of their own is simply ticked off by you.

It stays inside your family. No class or provider ever sees it, and it earns no points — it is a record of what was done, not a score. Whoever set the routine can change it, so a routine you set for your child is yours to adjust and theirs to tick.

The first time you open Tasks it explains a to-do and a routine and suggests a few to start with — reading, an instrument, packing the school bag. A suggestion fills the form in and asks which child it's for; nothing is set until you save it.

Anything not yet done shows at the top of your dashboard, one tap from finished, and disappears once everything is ticked. There is no reminder and no notification: a routine is a thing sitting on a page you already open, not something that should interrupt your evening.

Account → Subscriptions is one page for everything Befundo does for you. The word and fact of the day, the getting-started checklist, the routine nudge, the activity lists, and Ask Befundo itself — each has a switch, and switching one off only changes your own account.

The same page holds the notification switches and WhatsApp. Those answer a different question — the ones at the top decide what Befundo shows you, the ones below decide when it tells you something happened.

Everything there is free. Befundo doesn't charge families for anything, and switching something off never affects a class.

Four of the switches are offered up front, under Make it yours: the word of the day, the fact of the day, your diary and the routine reminders. On the web they are on the page you see straight after signing up; in the phone apps they are a card at the top of your day until you press Done. Either way they change the same switches as Account → Subscriptions.

Payments in the sidebar gathers what your providers say is outstanding across every class, how to pay each of them, and what they've recorded you paying.

Not every provider shares this, and most handle fees with you directly — so an empty page doesn't mean you're paid up. Every figure there is your provider's; Befundo isn't part of the payment and can't see whether one arrived.

When you've paid, I've paid this tells them. They confirm it against their own records, and it appears in your recorded payments once they do.

From Account → Subscriptions you can have a few things sent to your phone: your classes each morning, a class moving or being canceled, and anything waiting on your answer. Press Confirm on WhatsApp, then Send in the message WhatsApp opens with, and that's it — the number is the one you send it from.

One thing to watch: the morning summary is the “Classes starting” notification, and that one is off unless you've turned it on. The card tells you if it's off and offer to switch it on — otherwise your mornings will simply be quiet.

To stop, reply STOP to any message or turn it off on the same page. It stops immediately and stays stopped; turning it back on means confirming your number again. Befundo will never message you about money — anything about fees comes from your provider.

Ask Befundo in the bottom-right corner answers questions about your own classes in plain words — “what's on this week?”, “which classes is she in?” It sees your family and nobody else's, it's free, and it can be wrong, so check anything you'd act on. See the Ask Befundo guide.

At the top of your dashboard: everything coming up across your own classes and all of your children's — classes, events, live sessions and anything due. “This week” runs Monday to Sunday and shows tomorrow onwards, so it never repeats what's already under Today.

Every class, color-coded by whose it is — you, each child by name, and anything you teach. Two siblings in the same class show as two entries, because they're two people attending. It is Calendar in the menu: press a person to hide or show their entries, and select an entry to open its class.

Under the class name: how often it runs, which days, the times and the dates it runs between. For an online class the time is labeled with the provider's zone, so you can work out your own. Its calendar card lists the next few meetings and marks every one of them on the month grid.

Open any class and the first thing on the board is your own child: how they've attended and how many notes their instructor has written, with a link to the full record. You never need the member list to find them.

Progress on a child's page gathers the same thing across every class: every class they've taken including the finished ones, how they've attended each, and every note their instructors have written, newest first. Nothing is averaged across classes and nothing is compared with anyone else — each class carries its own count, and your child can read all of it.

Some businesses teach from Befundo's own curriculum, Quest For Spark; plenty teach their own material. Either way it reaches you the same way — homework, practice, a quiz or a test appears in Tasks and on your dashboard, and you can open it to see exactly what was asked and what your child answered.

Where a business does use it, Befundo picks revision from what your child has shown rather than sending the whole class the same sheet. So two children in one class are often set different questions, and that is working correctly rather than a mistake.

A business using the curriculum keeps a record of what your child understands, skill by skill. You are not shown it, and neither is your child. It stays with their teachers.

That is a decision rather than an omission. A per-skill score sent home reads as a report card, and Befundo isn't in a position to issue one — the observations are a teacher's working notes, taken to decide what to teach next week. What you get instead is the thing that actually tells you something: the work itself, the instructor's notes, and attendance. And no child is ever ranked against another anywhere in Befundo.

Their classes, their friends and their messages, in one place. From there you can open any class board they're in.

Short notes about your family — what your child did today, how a lesson went, something you want to remember. Write one from your dashboard, or from My diary, which is a month at a time and lets you write about a day after it has passed. Sunday's entry filed on Tuesday still sits under Sunday.

Type @ while you're writing and your children come up, so you can tag one without leaving the box. Choose All if it isn't about one child in particular. The @ is only a way to choose — it never ends up in the note itself.

Every entry is Just me unless you say otherwise on that entry. Both parents reaches the other adults who look after the child and not the child; Family reaches them and the child too.

Befundo names the people who will be able to read it, in the line under the control, before you post. Nothing is ever shared by default, and choosing to share today never reaches back and shares what you wrote last week.

Photos follow the entry. A private entry's photos are private with it, and sharing the entry shares them. Where a photo was taken is stripped out before it is stored.

Six reactions — a thumb, a heart, celebrate, applause, happy, thank you — on any entry shared with you.

That is deliberately the whole of what a reader can do. There are no comments on somebody's diary entry: what they wrote stays what they wrote, and anything longer belongs in a message.

On a class or business page you may see Email me about new classes. Press it and that business can email you about new classes; nothing else signs you up, enrolling included. The business never sees your address. Every email has a link to stop, and Account → Subscriptions lists every business you hear from, each with a Stop button.

Open Groups and press New group. Invite parents from your children's classes (where the class shows its roster) or anyone by their Befundo ID. Nobody is in until they accept, children can't be invited, and anyone can leave at any time. Who drives, when and from where is up to you: Befundo doesn't check drivers or cars, so agree on that between yourselves and share addresses and phone numbers privately.

In Messages, under Your family, press Start a family chat. Everyone in your family with their own login is in it — you, your children who have a login, and their other parent. Nobody is invited and nobody else can be added; a child joins the day they get a login. It is pinned first in Messages.

A business can put students from its classes into a group — a team, a show's cast — with its own board, and sometimes a thread just for the parents. You are in it because your child is; it appears in Groups and in Messages. A child with their own login sees the board, never the parents' thread.

Adults can add up to four photos to a group message; children can't attach photos. Anyone in a group can react to a message, and nobody is told. Whoever runs the group can set its picture.

Whoever made a group — or runs it, for a business's group, or a parent, for a family chat — can archive it from the group's menu, or by swiping it on a phone. Archived groups keep their messages and come back from Groups → Archived. Delete is permanent and asks first.

In a class that shows who is in it, press Connect with Ada's family on a classmate's row; the request goes to their parents, never to the child. Or look someone up by their Befundo ID. Once they accept, you can message each other. A connection shows nothing else — not their calendar, their children or where they are.

Account → Refer and share. Share your link with another parent, or with your child's teacher or school if they're not on Befundo. You send it yourself; Befundo emails no one. You'll see how many joined, never who, and it earns nothing.

In Refer and share, every class, business and teacher your family uses has a Sharebutton. A business or teacher link shows the other family their open classes; when they register, it's counted for you.

A class carries its own list of pages, in the sidebar on a computer and along the top on a phone. Board is what's happening now — the next session, anything still to do, and the class's timeline. Messages is the conversation with the instructor. If your child doesn't sign in themselves, you write there for them, and your name shows with who you are to the class — “Ada's parent”, or just “a parent” if the class keeps its member list private. Meetings is every time the class has met. Members is who else is in it, and where you open your own child's page. Course is what the class covers, with a tick beside each part taught so far. Work is what your child has to do.

If the provider uses Befundo's curriculum, the Course page opens with a Course material card. It leads to the course topic by topic, in order, with what each one covers and the links and homework attached to it.

The ticks are about the class, not your child: they say what the group has been through so far, and they read the same for everybody in it. Nothing is locked — you can read ahead — but the written lesson for a topic opens once the class has covered it.

A lesson for a younger reader in math, science or English comes as a few short steps, many with a picture Befundo draws from the numbers in it. Read to me reads it aloud with a voice already on your device; nothing is sent anywhere to be read.

A Join button appears on each meeting when it is time. Some providers run their classes in Befundo's own room and some on their own Zoom, Google Meet or Teams — you will see the same button either way, and it takes you to whichever they use.

If they use their own room and have switched on summaries, a notetaker from Recall.ai joins the call as a visible participant, and you are asked to agree before the link is shown to you. Befundo keeps only the written summary, never the recording or the words. Without summaries, the write-up is the instructor's own. Either way the register is taken by hand, because Befundo can't see who joined somebody else's call.

Ask questions, read announcements and reply. The instructor may limit who can start a topic. It shows the most recent of everything — See all opens the full history of the messages, or of the activities and handouts.

First names and photos, never other families' email addresses. Some classes keep the list to the instructor — if this one does, the tab says so rather than sitting empty.

From Members, click your child's name. You get how they've attended — meeting by meeting, with a percentage over the registers actually taken — any notes the instructor has written about them, and any self-checks they've answered.

Only your own children open. Notes are readable by you, your child and the class's staff, and by nobody else; an instructor can correct one, and it will say so, but they can't delete it.

Each time the class meets gets its own page: what was covered, the material and homework for that day, and your own child's attendance. View all gives you the full history — useful for catching up after a missed week.

Work is the one place, and it opens on a card per child of yours in the class: what is still owed, each with a Start, and what they have finished behind a single line you can open. Two children in one class get a card each, and you answer for each of them separately.

Underneath it are the class's notices — anything put up that asks nothing back — and the material that goes with the work. Nothing is behind a tab: what is owed is the first thing on the page.

It holds every kind: homework and things to hand in, forms and permission slips, and the practice, quizzes and tests your child answers in Befundo. It used to be two places, and which one held a thing depended on how the instructor built it.

When the instructor asks for work done on paper, Hand in a photo sends a picture of it, on the web or in the apps. Only your household, the business's admins and the class's teacher can open it.

Online classes have a Join button on the class page and the meeting page. It opens 5 minutes before the start, and as soon as the instructor presses Start you'll see “Live now”. You can copy the link ahead of time from the meeting page.

Faces, a chat that everybody in the session can read, and whatever the teacher is sharing. Only staff can share a screen — a room holds a dozen children and a screen is whatever happens to be on it, so the control isn't offered to anybody else.

When the teacher puts up the whiteboard it fills everybody's screen. Only the teacher draws on it; for everybody else it is a picture to look at and zoom into. Nothing about the board is kept once the class ends.

Some providers turn on AI recaps. For a class that meets online, that turns the audio and chat into a written summary. You agree separately for each child, and until you do they can't join. The instructor reviews the summary before you see it. In a Befundo room no audio or video is kept; on Zoom, Meet or Teams no video is recorded, and the audio and transcript are deleted once the summary exists. You can withdraw at any time.

A class that meets in a room can send summaries too, and nothing is recorded to do it — there's no call, so there's nothing to listen to. The summary is written from what the class already keeps: who attended, what was set to do, and the instructor's own notes. It never names a child, and it reaches you only after the instructor has read it and pressed publish.

Open Befundo on your phone the way you open it anywhere else. Same address, same account, same classes. Nothing is missing because you are on a phone, and nothing needs installing.

Worth doing once: add it to your home screen from your browser's share menu. It then opens like an app, which mostly means you stop typing the address.

The Android app is on Google Play today. The iPhone app — iPads run the same one — is waiting for Apple's approval. The On every device guide always has the current links, with pictures of each.

Neither is a different product. The phone is a second set of doors into the same rooms: your day, your household, your classes, your messages.

What the phone is good at is the question you ask standing up: what is on, for whom, and where. Today and this week, your children, your classes, your messages and notifications, your to-dos, the diary, and joining a live class — the shared screen and the teacher's whiteboard included.

A few things stay on a computer deliberately. Choosing and paying for a plan is one. If you also run classes, setting one up is another — its price, its description and the day and time it repeats.

Not a junior version and not a separate download. They sign in and see their own classes, their own messages and their own day — without the household controls that belong to you. Their color becomes the app's theme on their phone, which is the part they will actually care about.

You can still add an email address to their profile — for a school account, say — but it won't give them a login. They appear in classes, on the roster and on your calendar through you.

Edit the child, add their email and switch on Allow their own login. They get an invitation to set a password. Until they accept, nothing changes.

You can withdraw the login at any time, which locks them out immediately without deleting anything. You keep seeing their classes either way.

You keep seeing their classes, attendance and messages — but not their diary. There is no parent view of it and no way to ask for one. The only entries you will ever read are the ones they choose to share with you.

That is deliberate rather than an oversight. A diary somebody else might read is a letter, not a diary — a child who suspects you can see it writes a thinner, more careful thing, and you would have gained nothing worth having.

Someone under 13 who signs up alone is told they need a parent, and can't go further until an adult adds them.

Messaging is limited to people connected through a class or an accepted friend request, with daily limits on new conversations. You can see and moderate your child's conversations.

Anything on a class board or in a message can be reported. Class instructors can hide a message; hiding leaves a visible trace and can be undone, and only the author can truly delete their own words.

You pay the provider however you already do. Befundo doesn't take payments, doesn't hold your card, and won't chase you for money — it isn't party to the arrangement and can't verify it. Any payment reminders come from the provider.

Account → Subscriptions controls what reaches your bell: class activity, messages, schedule changes and when a live session starts. Reminders 30 minutes before a class are off unless you turn them on.

Press + beside the message box. Photos is there for adults; Document, a video or a PDF, only in chats with no children in them; Poll in groups, the family chat and, for the teacher, a class's Messages. A child's own login has no +, and nor does an encrypted chat. There is no location, contact, sticker, voice message or camera button, on purpose.

In a group, its parents' thread or your family chat, press + and then Poll: a question, up to ten options, and whether people may pick more than one. Everybody can see who voted for what unless you turn on Hide voter names — then nobody can, you included. Your children vote in the chats they belong to, but never ask one, and never see a poll in a parents' thread.

A business may ask its families' adults a few questions. A survey waiting for you is on your dashboard and under Surveys. Each adult answers once, for themselves; your children are never sent one. If it says Anonymous, your name isn't kept with your answers and the business sees nothing until five people have answered.