A family asks for a transcript. You hand them a PDF nobody can check.

It usually happens in the spring. A family in your microschool is applying to a college, a scholarship, or a summer program, and the application asks for a transcript. You open a document, type the courses from memory and a spreadsheet, put your name at the bottom, and export a PDF. The family attaches it. The office that receives it has no way to check it beyond calling you, and the same courses will be typed again into the next form and the next state filing. This page walks through the other way: you declare each course once, the teacher who taught it co-signs from a link, the family claims the record and holds it, and any receiver checks it at one public link with no account.

Start as a founding issuer

Checked against the live Records tab, the witness page, and the verify page. Requirements on this page last reviewed September 14, 2026. The product as it runs today is always the source of truth.

Why the PDF is the problem

The PDF cannot be checked. A reader who wants to know whether it is real has to find your phone number and call, and some readers do not call. They set the file aside.

The PDF has no witness. One person typed it, and nobody else has put their name on any row. The teacher who actually taught the course is invisible to the reader.

The PDF lives in your files. If the family moves, or you close in three years, everything you knew about that learner stays behind in a folder, and the family starts over.

And the PDF is typed again next time. The same courses go into the next transcript request, the next state filing, and the next scholarship form, by hand, from memory, each time a little differently.

The rail, in four moves

1. Declare

You create an organization account, open the Records tab, read the founding terms and tick the box. Then you import your roster: one learner per line as name, family email, and grade, or a CSV export pasted whole. You can email every family a claim link in the same step.

Now you declare a course. Describe it once, with the title, the term, the grade, and the credits, and pick the learners who took it. Every one of them gets a signed course row on their record. On the public verify page that row reads “Declared by” followed by your school’s name, never as the family’s own claim. A course you declare is the same kind of row a family would make for the same course; the only difference is a note saying it came from you.

2. Co-sign

Add the teacher’s email when you declare the course. The teacher gets one link that opens to exactly what they are being asked to sign, writes what they saw in their own words, and signs. No login, no account, no document to upload. A signature says the teacher was there and this is what they saw. It does not grade, compare, or certify anything, and the teacher is asked once and never chased, though declaring the same course again with the same teacher address sends the email again.

Next to each signature the verify page says how far the signer’s identity was checked, as a plain fact: an email address only; a school or organization address (automatic when the invited address is at a .edu, .gov, k12, or similar institutional domain) or a professional license that Eformogi staff looked up; an identity document checked by staff; or a history of earlier signatures. A teacher invited at a personal address, or at your school’s own .org address, reads as an email address only. That is the honest default, and it is still a named person who signed.

3. Verify

Every course row, and the Witness Transcript™ the family issues from it, has a public link of the form eformogi.com/verify/ followed by the receipt id. A college, an employer, or a scholarship program opens it with no account and sees what was issued, when, by whom, who co-signed, and the hash that proves the bytes have not changed since they were sealed. A reader who does not want to trust our page can download the proof file and run the published verifier with no Eformogi server in the loop. We wrote a page for that reader: reading a Witness Transcript.

4. The family holds it

The claim link you sent binds the record to the family. They hold it on their own device and in an encrypted cloud copy, and your rows fold into the transcript they issue. They can add to it, export it, share it, and revoke a share. You are the issuer and they are the holder, and that does not change if they leave you or you stop issuing. Once a family has claimed a learner, you can archive that learner on your side, but you cannot delete their record.

Start as a founding issuer

A sample you can open

Both samples are fictional demos. Open one declared course from Sample Microschool (Demo) for a learner named Avery Sample, and the sample family transcript that shows what the whole record looks like to a receiver. A silent recording of the path above, on the live site, is embedded on the issuer page.

What it costs

The record is free for the learner, forever: capturing, witnessing, issuing, exporting, and verifying never cost the family anything. Schools, microschools, and counselors who issue on the record get a free founding year through June 30, 2027, then pay $49 per learner per year, billed to the issuer and never to the family; founding issuers keep that price for as long as they issue, and if an issuer stops paying, its learners keep the record and its export. Receivers verify a single link free, forever; an office that wants a hosted verification service at volume can ask us. Families who want their state paperwork rendered and filed can add Family Pro for $99 per year, which is included for every learner an issuer enrolls; the enrollment and service-hours letters cost $12 each, the good-student letter is free while insurers are new to family-issued records, and the record itself is never behind any of it.

The whole price list is on the pricing page, and the terms are on the founding terms page.

What this does not do

It does not accredit you. A signed record says who taught what and who witnessed it. It does not make your school accredited, and no page of ours will describe it that way.
It does not decide for a receiver. Whether a record satisfies a college policy, a scholarship rule, or a state requirement is that receiver’s decision. Where it matters we quote the receiver’s own published policy, and we never speak for it.
It does not grade or compare learners. A record is a sum of what happened. There is no comparison of one learner to another anywhere on the learner’s surface.

Frequently asked questions

Does the family need an account to claim the record?

Yes. The claim link you email from the roster step binds the learner to the family's own sign in, and from then on the family holds the record on their own device and in an encrypted cloud copy. You keep issuing into it; they keep holding it. If they have not claimed it yet, your declared rows still exist and still verify. A claim link is good for thirty days, and you can send a fresh one from the Records tab at any time.

What happens if a teacher never signs?

The row stands as declared by your school, with no co-signature, and the verify page says exactly that. The teacher is asked once by email and is not reminded, because a witness page never pressures anyone to sign; declaring the same course again with the same teacher address does send the email again. A row with a named teacher's signature carries more for a reader than a row without one, and the reader can see which is which.

What if the teacher's grade differs from the one I declared?

Both are shown. Where a co-signer's signed grade differs from the declared grade, the verify page renders the two side by side with a small marker and never picks a winner. The reader sees the disagreement openly, which is the point.

Can I correct or remove a row?

There is no withdraw action in the Records tab today. A declared row is content addressed, so the fix for a wrong row is to declare the corrected course, which creates a new row, and to tell the family. Once a family has claimed a learner, you can archive the learner on your side, but you cannot delete their record.

How long does the first hour take?

About an hour for a small school, and a few minutes per teacher per term after that. Creating the organization account is a one tap sign in link and two fields. Enrolling is reading the terms and ticking a box. Importing the roster is a paste. Declaring the first course and inviting its teacher is one form. The three steps are written out on the start page.

The school is the witness, not the owner

A microschool is small on purpose, and a record that lives inside a small institution inherits its fragility. The conviction underneath this rail is plain: a record of learning belongs to the learner, and the school that taught them is its witness and its issuer, never its owner. When the learner holds the record and takes it with them, nothing is lost except the filing cabinet. The format is published at eformogi.com/spec so that this stays true whether or not we are in the room, and the promises behind it are written down in the sovereignty contract.

Start as a founding issuer