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The diploma years

High School & Transcripts

Plan all four years on one board, and the same courses become the graduation transcript — enter grades any time, even years later.

One board, one transcript

The high school pages are two faces of the same plan. High School › Planning is the board where you map the four years. High School › Transcript opens your first child's graduation transcript, built from the very same courses. The Planning and Transcript tabs inside either page move between the two views. Within one child's record there is nothing to keep in sync. A course you plan for 9th grade is already a transcript row, waiting for its grades.

Each child has their own board and transcript. Switch kids with the picker at the top
The Plan and Transcript tabs on either page jump between the two faces
Grades can be entered the week a course ends or years afterward. Filling things in retroactively is normal here, not a workaround

The Course Bank and Four-Year Plan

On a desktop, the Course Bank sits beside the Four-Year Plan. The bank holds courses you are still considering; the plan shows 9th through 12th grade as four columns. Press Create a course in the Course Bank to enter its title, subject area, and planned credits. Then drag the card into the grade year where it belongs. On a smaller screen, the same two sections stack.

Pick your lens: the view switch offers School year, Semesters, or Quarters columns. Changing the view never moves your courses. It only changes how finely each year is divided.
Year-long courses, the common homeschool case, sit in each grade column's All year lane instead of pretending to be one semester's work
One school year per grade: pick the calendar year once at the top of each grade column. Set 9th grade to 2026–2027, say, and it is fixed for that grade. Every course in the column carries it, and a new course inherits it. There is no per-course year field to keep in agreement (Custom… accepts any wording you use for a year)
Cards carry a subject-area chip, a credit badge, and a small tick once any grade is entered. Click a card to edit everything in place. Grades and credits are dropdown picks with a Custom… escape, and course-title suggestions appear as you type
Each grade column totals its planned credits as you go, so you can see at a glance whether 10th grade is realistic or wishful
The four-year total sits in the summary cards above the workspace. It adds every credit planned across 9th through 12th, and counts anything still parked in Ideas separately, out loud. That is a total you can hold against a planning target without guessing what is inside it
Reuse a sibling's plan: open Copy another child's Four-Year Plan on the destination child's board. Courses, planning notes, planned credits, and grade placement copy; existing courses are skipped. Grades, earned credits, and calendar-year labels stay with the original child.

Prefer not to drag? Every card's edit panel has move-to selects for the grade year and term: the same change, no drag required.

Ideas in the Course Bank

The Course Bank opens to Ideas, labeled Ideas: not on the transcript yet. It is a searchable parking spot for maybes: AP Biology? Photography? That co-op logic course? Keep them here while you decide.

Drag a card from Ideas onto a grade column when you commit, and back to Ideas if plans change
Courses in Ideas never print on the transcript, so brainstorming costs nothing
The Family Bank is reusable across children. It is derived from the courses your family already has. It stays visible when you switch children, and shows a check beside every child already using each course.
Press Add to [child] to place a clean copy in that child's Ideas. The original stays put, and Trellis will not add the same course to that child twice.

Three different guides, in every state

Every state's Course Bank has a Guidance tab named for it. Every one of them holds the same three sections in the same order, so a useful suggestion never looks like a legal rule. In Minnesota the tab is MN Guidance, and it reads:

Required by Minnesota law: home instruction covers communication skills, mathematics and science, social studies, and health and physical education. Minnesota does not assign homeschool credit totals or a per-year sequence (§ 120A.22, subd. 9).
College-prep example: the University of Minnesota Twin Cities course expectations are an admissions-planning reference. Other colleges and majors may ask for something different.
Public-school graduation set: Minnesota's 21.5-credit public-school framework is a comparison, not a homeschool diploma rule or a college-admission checklist (§ 120B.024, subd. 1). It is what the state asks of its public high schools, offered as a place to start.

Both the public-school set and the college-prep list have an Add button. The Add Minnesota public-school planning set button places its editable course cards in Ideas, ready to drag onto the years. Add a college-prep course set does the same with the University of Minnesota list. Pressing a button twice never duplicates cards, and pressing it after deleting a card restores only what is missing. The Electives tab adds one common elective at a time; a course already on the plan has its button greyed out.

Where the two sets overlap, you get one card. Both sets ask for four years of English. The second button you press marks the card the first one placed, rather than adding a second. The card then reads “Also college prep” beside where it came from. Nobody should think they owe math twice in one year.

Keep the labels with the lists: “required by law,” “college-prep example,” and “public-school graduation set” answer three different questions. None is a substitute for the others. A state that requires no high-school courses at all says so plainly in the first card rather than leaving it blank.

Wisconsin's college-prep set, one click

For Wisconsin families the WI Guidance tab offers Add a college-prep course set instead. That set is four years of English and three each of mathematics, science, and social studies. It adds health, two credits of one world language, fine arts, and personal finance. It behaves exactly like Minnesota's: cards land in Ideas, pressing twice never duplicates, and deleting some then pressing again brings back just those.

Why Wisconsin sees no credit target: Wisconsin sets no graduation credit requirement for a home-based private educational program. You decide what graduation means and issue the diploma yourself (Wis. Stat. § 118.165(1)). These cards are the pattern colleges usually look for, so the board offers them as a suggestion. There is no legal number to count toward, so it shows no "X credits to go" line.

Iowa's college-prep set, one click

Iowa families get the same three sections under IA Guidance and the same Add a college-prep course set button. That set is four years of English and three each of mathematics, science, and social studies. It adds two credits of one world language, then health, physical education, fine arts, and personal finance. The first fifteen credits are the fifteen-unit college-preparatory pattern Iowa's public universities describe; the rest are what a strong program usually carries. It behaves exactly like Minnesota's and Wisconsin's: cards land in Ideas, pressing twice never duplicates, and deleting some then pressing again brings back just those.

Why Iowa sees no credit target: Iowa sets no graduation credit total for competent or independent private instruction. Iowa's public-school graduation standards are not the homeschool floor. You write your own graduation requirements, decide when your student has met them, and issue the diploma and final transcript yourself. Since 2026 those documents are recognized under Iowa law in the same manner as a district's. That covers college admission, employment, and licensing (Iowa Code § 299A.13). So the board offers these cards as a suggestion. There is no legal number to count toward, so it shows no "X credits to go" line.

New York: three different planning questions

Under NY Guidance, Trellis keeps three lists separate. The home-instruction card shows the 18.5 cumulative units across grades 9 through 12 in 8 NYCRR 100.10(e)(2)(iv). It applies only while your family has recorded that Part 100.10 covers the student. The optional 22-credit set is New York's public-school diploma framework, not the homeschool floor. The University at Buffalo set is college-preparation guidance, not an admission promise.

No Trellis card creates a New York State diploma. A parent-issued diploma and transcript remain family records. The 18.5 home-instruction units do not reset each year, and the subject distribution matters as much as the total. The required-law card explains that conditional plan. Trellis does not compare the board's ordinary planned credits with New York's 108-hour legal units.

Texas: plan for the next door

Texas sets no home-school credit total or required high-school course sequence. Your family writes its graduation requirements and issues the diploma and transcript, and the planner shows no legal credit target for Texas. The TX Guidance tab still offers two starting sets: the Foundation High School Program, which is what Texas asks of its public high schools, and UT Austin's recommended course list. Neither is a rule for you. Use the four-year board to meet the student's next goal. A college, employer, military branch, scholarship, or license may ask for particular courses or proof.

One age edge matters: do not treat a diploma issued before age 17 as an automatic end to compulsory attendance. The express diploma exemption in TEC § 25.086(a)(5) begins at 17. The earlier case remains unsettled.

What a credit is, and how many your child earned

A credit is the unit a high school transcript is written in. One credit means roughly a full year of high-school-level work in one subject; half a credit means a semester's worth. Nobody hands you a credit. You decide what each course earned, and you write it down. Two ways of deciding are widely used, and both are accepted by colleges, employers, and evaluators.

By hours. The common convention is 120 to 180 hours of work for 1 credit, and 60 to 90 hours for 0.5. Most families use 120 hours for an ordinary course. They use 150 to 180 for a lab science, a studio art, or anything with heavy hands-on time.
By completion. Finish a high-school-level textbook or course, all of Algebra I or all of Apologia Biology, and that is 1 credit, whatever the clock said. This is the simplest route when your curriculum is already built as a year-long course.

Year, semester, or quarter? A year-long course is 1 credit, and it usually splits 0.5 into each semester. That is why Trellis shows 0.5 in S1 and 0.5 in S2 for a full-year course. A one-semester course is 0.5 credit, sitting in the semester it was actually taught. A quarter-long course is usually 0.25 credit, a quarter of a year's work. It sits inside the semester that contains its quarter, so its credit prints there.

How Trellis stores it. Every course is filed in quarter slots. Q1 and Q2 make up Semester 1, and Q3 and Q4 make up Semester 2. A course can also be marked as running all year. The School year / Semesters / Quarters switch on the Four-Year Plan changes only what you are looking through. It never moves a course. Park a course in Q3, switch to the semester view, and it shows under Semester 2 where it belongs. Switch back and it is still in Q3. That is why you can plan in quarters and print a transcript in semesters without keeping two versions of the truth.

A transcript has two grade columns, S1 and S2, because that is what colleges read. A quarter course therefore reports its grade and its credit in the semester its quarter falls in. It does not add columns nobody outside your family would recognise.

How to decide. Pick one of the two methods and use it for the whole transcript. Mixing them course by course is what makes a record look arbitrary. Hours suit the courses you built yourself out of reading, projects, and real life; completion suits the courses that came in a box. If a course is genuinely lighter than a full year, say 0.5 rather than rounding up. A transcript people believe is worth more than a bigger number.

Trellis can do the counting for you. Open the Transcript tab and find Hours logged → credits, above the course list. The transcript keeps all four high-school years, This table reads one selected school year at a time. The same logged hours cannot then be offered for credit in several grades. It lists every course on 9th through 12th grade. Ideas-tray cards are not on the transcript, so they are not in this table either. Each row shows the hours that child logged during the named year in a subject of the same name. It also shows what those hours suggest at 120, 150, and 180 hours per credit. For example: 87 hours in Biology, about 0.7 credit at 120 hours. Matching ignores capitals and extra spaces and nothing else, so Biology I and Biology are two different names.

The period is fixed: the panel always reads the current school year, whatever year the rest of the app is showing. Its heading names that year
Where the hours come from: completed lessons, Learning Log entries, and time split over from lessons whose main subject is something else. That is the same figure the Learning Summary's card for that subject adds up to. That holds as long as the Learning Summary shows the whole of that same year. Filter it to a term or pick an earlier year and its number is honestly a smaller one. It stops claiming to match the panel when it does. Reading-log entries carry no subject at all, so their minutes reach the Learning Summary's headline total but no subject's hours, and never this table
A subject's hours land on one course. Plan Physical Education in all four years and the 60 hours you logged count once. They land on the course in the grade column whose school year matches those hours. While no grade column carries that year, they land on the earliest grade. The other three course rows say which one took them. (Set the school year at the top of each grade column and the hours follow the year you mean.)
A row with no hours means one of three things, and the row says which: a sibling course already holds them. Or a subject you have logged is nearly the same name. The row then names it and its hours so you can make the two match. Or nothing is tagged with that title yet
Nothing changes until you press Use, and that button only ever appears for a course carrying no credit at all yet, planned or typed

The 120, 150, and 180-hour guideposts are a convention, not a law. They come from long transcript practice. New York is the exception Trellis keeps separate: while Part 100.10 applies, one home-instruction unit is 108 hours under 8 NYCRR 100.10(e)(1). The transcript page does not silently treat its guideposts as New York legal units. In states such as Minnesota, home instruction law does not require transcript credits at all. Credits still help colleges, scholarships, and employers read your record; use a consistent, honest method and follow any separate state rule that applies.

Grades, GPA, and courses from before Trellis

Open the Transcript tab and the same courses appear grouped by grade band as calm text rows. Click a row (or its ✎) to edit it. One row opens at a time, and changes save themselves as you type. There is no Save button, no page jump, just a quiet Saved ✓ beside the row. Grades and credits are dropdown picks with a Custom… escape. Grades take letters (A-), percents (94%), printed as letters through your own grading scale, or P for pass.

GPA in one sentence: it's the credit-weighted average of the semester grades on a standard 4.0 scale. A P earns its credits without moving the GPA at all
Credits come from the plan: a course planned at 1 credit for the whole year reads 0.5 in S1 and 0.5 in S2. One planned into a single semester puts its whole credit in that semester. Those numbers wear a dotted underline, and they keep following the plan. Change the planned credit and the semesters move with it. The credit box in the row editor stays empty for exactly that reason. Its blank choice tells you what the plan gives (— (plan: 0.5)). Pick a number there to record your own instead, including a deliberate 0, and that course stops following the plan
The ⚠ mark in one sentence: a graded semester with no credit, nothing typed and nothing planned, can't be weighted, so it doesn't count toward the GPA or credit totals
A credit you pick with no grade records a P: the Cr column on a transcript is what a reader takes as earned, so a credit only prints beside a grade. Rather than let your 0.5 quietly vanish off the sheet, Trellis records P (pass) for that semester when the row saves. It is a real grade, sitting in the box, yours to change to a letter whenever you like. It only ever happens to a credit you picked, and the dotted numbers the plan gives stay untouched. So a four-year plan of courses nobody has taken yet never gains a single grade
Courses from before Trellis: every grade band has an Add a past course row. Enter the title, grades, and credits straight into 9th or 10th grade even if that year is long over. It prints like everything else
A course planned into one semester on the board fades the other semester's boxes here: a visual nudge only, and everything stays editable
Nothing is ever due here. Enter grades as each course wraps up, or sit down senior year and fill in all four years in one evening

Print it: two compact layouts

The printable sheet is Trellis's own design, made to look credible on a registrar's desk: quiet serif type, hairline rules, a touch of deep green. Fill the student and school information in the editor above it, then pick the Academic record layout that suits your record:

By grade year: four grade bands with semester grades and credits, plus a year-by-year GPA and credits summary
By subject: courses grouped under English, Mathematics, Science, and the rest, each with a final grade and credit
Ordinary four-year records are designed to fit on one printed page. A longer course list may continue to a second page without leaving anything out. Print from your browser and choose "Save as PDF" to file it

Names print only what you type. The student-name box shows your child's name as a hint, but the printed sheet contains exactly what you typed. Leave any field blank and it prints a fill-in line, ready for a pen. The certification sentence works the same way.

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