How CheckSteady works

Two records, kept apart on purpose: In & out is who passed the door; the 24-hour check-in is who checked in today. Pick what you want to do.

• Sign in with a PIN
• Sign someone in or out
• Record today's check-in
• See who is off site
• Run a drill or evacuation
• Sign a visitor or staff in
• Add or change a resident
• Record an authorised absence
• Print or export a report
• Send the Sunday report
• Set up a tablet
• Something is wrong

Start here

Log in and choose the screen the first time; after that the device opens on the screen it showed last.

1. Enter your email and password.Or skip the password: type your email and tap Email me a sign-in code. One email brings a 6-digit code to type in and a button that signs you in with one tap; both work once, for ten minutes. No password yet? Forgot your password? emails a link that works once, for a day. On your own laptop or phone, tick Keep me signed in on this device for 30 days: that device stays signed in and does not lock itself after the idle minutes. Never tick it on a shared tablet.
2. Answer What are you recording?In & out for the gate tablet, 24-hour check-in for the check-in tablet.
3. From then on the device opens where it was last.It asks only the first time. The switch at the top changes the screen, and the device opens on that one next time. To have the question again, for a tablet moving to a new job: Ask again what this device opens.
4. Fix it to one job: Share → Add to Home Screen, then open it from the icon.No address bar, no tabs. On an iPad, then turn on Guided Access (Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access, set a passcode), open the app, triple-click the side button and tap Start. The tablet stays in the app until the passcode is entered. Managed tablets call the same thing Single App Mode.

• Blue is In & out
• Green is the register
• Hold a tile for what it counts
• The version you are on is at the very foot of every screen — CheckSteady v 1a2b3c4, and in the corner of the self check-in tablet. Screens update themselves after a new version, as soon as nobody is midway through something; two devices showing the same code are on the same version
• ? beside a label explains it

Who can do what

A refusal always says so in words, and names who can.

Sign in with a PIN at the hut computer guards

On the hut computer or the gate tablet, once a supervisor has set it up as a gate terminal: tap your name, type your 6-digit PIN. No email, and everything you record is under your own name.

1. Starting your shift: on Who's on shift?, tap your name and type your PIN.The screen stays open all shift; it does not lock itself.
2. Handing over: tap Switch guard at the top.The next guard taps their own name. Check your name is at the top before you record anything. A roll call that is open must be ended first. With no internet, switching waits: the guard signed in stays signed in, and the handover goes on the paper sheet.
3. Your first time, or a new code: tap your name, then I have a setup code.Type the code your supervisor gave you, then choose your own 6-digit PIN twice. Nobody else ever sees it. Simple PINs like 123456 or 111111 are refused.
4. Forgot your PIN? Tap it on the PIN screen.A setup code is emailed to the hut mailbox. Open it, then use I have a setup code. Your supervisors are told every time, because everyone in the hut can open that mailbox.
5. Fire or alarm and nobody can sign in? Use the printed fire list.Keep a fresh copy at the hut (Roll call → Print the fire list). The no-PIN emergency button is switched off for now.

• Five wrong tries lock you for 15 minutes
• A PIN works only on a set-up terminal
• Never use or share another guard's PIN

Sign someone in or out every staff member

Who is on site right now? Every sign-in and sign-out is a movement with a time and your name on it.

1. Find the person.Type part of a name, a room such as B1, or a building such as Castle. B alone lists every B room.
2. Look at them.The app records that you checked; it does not check for you.
3. Tap Sign in or Sign out on the card.Or swipe it right for IN, left for OUT. The card updates at once.

• Several at once: tick a box, then Sign IN or OUT
• Ticking one family member ticks the family
• Select all shown ticks everyone the search found
• A mistake: remove the wrong movement, or add the missed one, on the person's History

See who is off site, today or any day

Three places, depending on the question.

1. Right now: tap the Off site tile on In & out.Everyone out, with since when.
2. One person: tap the name, scroll to History.Every movement and check-in with date, time and who recorded it. Any range up to a year.
3. A period: the Log tab.Yesterday, This week, This month or two dates; type a name or room to filter.

Record today's check-in every staff member

Has this resident presented today? One check-in per day, midnight to midnight. Being signed in at the door is a different thing.

1. The list opens on Not seen.Residents required today who have not checked in. Type a name to find anyone.
2. Look at them, then tap Check in on the card.Or swipe the card either way, or tap the name and press the button on the sheet.
3. The card drops off the list.A second check-in the same day changes nothing; once seen, the button reads Seen ✓.

• U18 (under 18): listed, not required
• Away until: an authorised absence, not counted
• Missed nights are under Admin → Absences: yesterday, the last 7 or 28 nights, or any two dates

Run a roll call: a drill or a real evacuation every staff member

The Roll call tab on In & out: everyone on the register, room by room. The same list for a practice drill and a real evacuation. Every warden's phone at once.

1. Tap Start roll call.The same button for a practice drill and a real evacuation: you say which it was when you end it. Other wardens' phones show it within seconds.
2. At the assembly point, mark each person Safe.Tap or swipe. Tap a building to see only your block; type a name or room to find one person. If you learn someone is not in the building at all (a parent says the child is at school, you reach them by phone), tap Away instead: the record keeps "found safe" and "confirmed away" apart. The first answer stands.
3. Each room lists everyone assigned to it, not only people the gate has as in.The list goes building, then room, in the order set on the Buildings tab. People recorded on site come first in each room. Anyone recorded out, or never recorded at the gate, is shown under them with a dashed edge and "check the room", because a sleeping person the gate missed may be inside: find them and mark them Safe, or Away once you know. Nobody on the register is left off the roll call. A site without rooms set up sees everyone by building instead.
4. Watch the amber line: how many needing assistance are still to find.Tap it to show only them.
5. Children are marked U18 with their age, and a blue edge on the row. Under the name, each child's parents or guardians are named, with whether each is on site; "No parent or guardian linked" means nobody is recorded for that child. The blue line says how many under-18s are on site, or still to find.Tap it, or the U18 only button beside the buildings, to show only them; tap again for everyone. It works the same in a practice drill and a real evacuation. Supervisors and admins can download the evacuation list as an Excel file under Admin → Reports; it lists the empty rooms too, so they are checked.
6. Until you tap End, the roll call holds the screen.The other tabs, the links at the top, Help and Log out all keep you on the roll call, and the screen does not lock itself. Every other staff screen, on every device, shows a red strip saying a roll call is open, with Go to the roll call; after an hour it says it is still open, so none is left running and forgotten. A roll call started on another warden's phone opens on yours by itself.
7. Print the fire list at the start of each night: Print the fire list on the Roll call tab.Every room, room by room in two columns, each building on its own page, in the centre's own colour code. A manager sets the codes' names, colours, which are used and their order under Settings → Fire list. Pregnant and postpartum residents count as needing help; postpartum ends by itself the set number of months after the baby's date of birth. Each code is also written on the line, so it reads on a black-and-white printer. A box at the bottom for the staff in attendance. Each print is recorded. Supervisors set the medical code and the age-disputed tick on the resident's record; a code only, never details.
8. Tap End roll call, then Practice drill or Real evacuation.The fire safety record keeps the two apart. Add one line for the record first if you like: which alarm, the assembly point, what went wrong. Never about a person. Keep the roll call going backs out.

• Staff and visitors are on the list too
• A tick on one phone shows on the others
• Print the fire list for the fire panel, room by room

Sign a visitor, contractor or staff member in every staff member

The Visitors tab on In & out: anyone on site who is not a resident. A fire officer asks who is in the building, not who lives there.

1. Under Who is this?, pick Staff, Visitor, Contractor or Supplier.Under Staff, the site's own staff list is a row of names: one tap signs them in.
2. Type the name, and the company if useful. Sign in.
3. When they leave, tap Sign out beside them.

Admin supervisors and admins

Residents

1. Add: first name, last name, date of birth.Optionally the ID document, a room and an evacuation need.
2. Or Import a spreadsheet.Columns: Resident ID for someone already here; First name, Last name and Date of birth for someone new; optionally ID type, ID number, Building, Floor, Room, Evacuation need, Family. Download the template.
3. Tap a name to change anything, or mark them departed.Tick the boxes beside a whole family, then Departed, to do them at once.

Authorised absences

1. Open the resident, find Authorised absence.
2. First day, last day, a reason from the list.Holiday, family, medical, IPO interview, education, work, other. A holiday is capped at 14 days.
3. For a child, tick that a parent or guardian agreed.Refused without it.

• Those days never count as missed
• Back early: end today cuts it short
• No destination, no notes are held

Families and supervision supervisors and admins

1. Open Families, a card per household.A family is who shares a household. Suggested families at the top are worked out from who shares a room (or the room next door), surnames and ages, and only groups with a child are suggested: tap anyone who does not belong to leave them out, then Create family. Not a family hides a suggestion on that device, and Undo on the message that follows puts either back. Under the cards, Children with no family lists any child still in none: + Add beside the child finds a family, or an adult to make a new family with. Find by name or room narrows all of it. To put adults together by hand, tick them on Residents and tap Family.
2. Tick parent / guardian beside each of the children's parents on the card.Only a ticked adult is responsible for the children. Any other adult — an adult brother or sister, a grandparent — needs an Appendix 5 arrangement to mind them, like any other resident. Every child should have one: making a family with a child — or adding a child to a family with nobody ticked — first asks Who are the parents?, with the adults old enough to be the parents already ticked. If you do not know yet, save with nobody ticked; the family's card says so in orange until someone is ticked. The tick is also on each adult's own record.
3. To record who is minding the children, open Supervision… on the card.Name the nominated carer — any adult resident who is not one of the children's ticked parents, including an adult of the same family — a from and to time, and whether overnight is approved, as agreed on the paper Appendix 5 form.
4. Or start from the child's own record under Residents: Supervision… in its Household box.A child not yet in a family: choose the parent in Add to the family of… first — Supervision… then adds the child to that family, ticks that person as the parent, and opens the same form.

• Only the parent's emergency number from the form is held, and no free text — the arrangement is the fact the door needs, the signed Appendix 5 form keeps the rest
• Every staff member sees it: on In & out and Roll call a guardian's card says who is minding their children until when, a carer's card says whose children they are minding, and a child's card says who they are with
• A ticked parent or guardian signing out while the household's other ticked parents are already off site and a child is still on site: the sign-out message says who is minding the children, or that none is recorded — a fact, never a block; the sign-out is recorded either way
• A household with children on site, no guardian on site and no arrangement recorded is alerted at the time, and kept in the named Children on site without a guardian report for each night

Buildings and rooms

1. Paste rooms from a spreadsheet: copy your rooms table in Excel or Google Sheets, headings included, and paste it.Room, Single, Double, Cot, Bunk, Max, and optionally Current and Building. Without a Building column the building is the letter at the front of the room number: B-4 is room B-4 in building B, and keeps its name. A line with no room number adds to the room above it. A line naming one room number with a letter added (B-1 & B1a) is one room, B1, with that line's beds and Max. Different numbers on one line (C2 & C15 & C16) are separate rooms; their beds are given together, so set each room's beds and Max afterwards. Check shows what each line will do; nothing is saved until Save rooms. Pasting the sheet again updates the same rooms.
2. Bring the residents in with Import residents on the Residents tab.Its Room column can say the number with or without the building: B-4, or B1a for room 1a in B. Someone in a room behind a shared door goes in with the Room blank, then into their own room from the Buildings tab.
3. Tap a room to open it: the beds with + and −, the contracted Max, who is in it, and what it is for.A single or a cot sleeps one; a double or a bunk sleeps two. When the beds sleep more or fewer than the Max, the room is flagged ⚑ so the two can be put right. Type and For are about the room, never a resident; the Sunday report says "1 bed in K15 is available for a single lady" from them.
4. Archive room takes a room out of use.Its history stays; restore under Add or remove buildings and rooms brings it back.

Reports

1. Pick the dates and give a reason.The reason is logged with the export; an inspector can ask why.
2. Tap a report to open it.CSV, Excel and Print are at the top of the opened report.

• 24-hour check-in
• Attendance
• Movement log
• Out and back
• Absent now
• Absent overnight
• Weekly register update
• Child supervision arrangements
• Children on site without a guardian
• Check-ins recorded while signed out
• Register corrections
• Authorised absences
• Breach reports
• Drills
• Who was marked safe
• Visitors
• Occupancy
• Vacancies
• Evacuation list
• Room history

Send the Sunday report

1. Under Admin → Staff, tick Gets the Sunday report for each supervisor or admin who should have it.Offered only to supervisors and admins, since only they may run the report it summarises. Demoting someone to guard clears the tick.
2. Under Admin → Settings → Weekly register update, tick the switch.Turns the Sunday send on or off for the site. Who receives it is set on the staff record, not here.
3. Tap Send a test to me and confirm.The same email that will go on Sunday, to your own address only and marked as a test, whether or not you are ticked. Send last week's now beside it sends it to everyone ticked. Both are on the audit record, and both work even with the switch off.
4. Keep rooms honest under Admin → Buildings.Mark a room Under maintenance and write the note for the return, e.g. "1 bed free for a single woman". The full report reads it. All lists every room on one list; the cards at the top count what is showing, and tapping Free beds (or another card) lists just those rooms. Type bed counts and Max straight into the list; each saves when you move on.

• Sent at 09:00 on Sunday, site time, for the week Monday to Sunday. That Sunday is counted as it stands when the email goes: anyone not checked in by then is listed as absent that day
• The email carries the six counts and, under each, one line per resident — the same sentences as the Word document, with "please mark as unauthorised absence" on the days not approved; the update also arrives attached as a Word document, on by default — a centre can turn the attachment off under Settings
• The names behind the counts are in the app under Admin → Reports, where they can also be downloaded as a spreadsheet
• Absences come from the daily check-in register: a day a resident had to check in and did not
• Inside an authorised absence: approved
• Absences come from the daily check-in register for adults. Under-18s do not check in, so a child is counted from the gate (In & out): a night they were signed out and not back by midnight, on their own line naming their parent. A child never logged at the gate is not counted
• A child's night away is approved only when an authorised absence covers that night, for the child or their parent: record it as running on to the next day (Monday to Tuesday approves Monday night). A one-day absence approves the day, not the night
• Children left without a guardian: every night a family's children were on site with their parents out and no supervision arrangement recorded is listed and highlighted, in the email and the Word document. This is not allowed and must be followed up
• The week's nights are the seven that end in it: the Sunday night before, to the Saturday night. Sunday night is in next week's email, so no night is missed
• Permitted periods (IPAS) live under Settings; a holiday outside them is recorded with a warning, never refused
• Every one of these emails has an Unsubscribe link. Someone who uses it shows as "Unsubscribed themselves" on their staff card; tick them again to put them back, or they can from the same link

The nightly email

1. Under Admin → Staff, tick Gets the nightly email for each supervisor or admin who should have it.Offered only to supervisors and admins.
2. Under Admin → Settings → Nightly email, tick the switch.Turns it on or off for the site.

• The nightly email goes after the night closes, read from the In & out register: everyone signed out at the gate at midnight, then children away overnight without authorisation, check-ins recorded while signed out, and breaches of House Rules (nights out), each with a link into the app
• Sent on any night with something to count, and every Sunday regardless, so a quiet week is never a silent one
• Named in the email itself: everyone signed out at midnight with their room, when they signed out, how many nights in a row and how many in the House Rules window, and whether the night is an authorised absence; name, age and room for a child away overnight, and whether an adult from the household was out with them or the child was out alone; name, room, the check-in time and when the gate last had them out for a check-in conflict; name, room and which figure, counted in nights signed out at the gate, for a House Rules figure
• Children on site without a guardian are not in this email: they are alerted at the time, when the last guardian signs out
• On seeing a count there: open the report, check the Families tab for the household, and the paper Appendix 5 forms for an arrangement not yet recorded. The app states the fact; the manager judges it
• Send a test to me under Settings sends last night's message to your own address only, marked as a test, so you can see what arrives without emailing anyone else; Send tonight's email now beside it sends it to everyone ticked, exactly as the 00:30 run would. Both go on the audit record and neither stops tonight's
• This one email replaced the nightly House Rules reminder and the overnight safeguarding alert, which were separate emails; an Unsubscribe link from one of those still works and stops the nightly email

Staff

1. Site staff list: paste names, one per line, job title after a comma.Kitchen, cleaning, maintenance. Each becomes a button under Staff & regulars on In & out: one tap signs them in, another signs them out.
2. Regular visitors: contractors, visitors or suppliers who come often, one per line as name, company, car registration.They join the same board on In & out, with their company and car filled in on every visit. A regular visitor still keeps to visiting hours: outside them the guard is asked for the reason. Archive anyone who stops coming.
3. Staff accounts admins: invite by email with a role.They choose their own password from the link. Disable an account when someone leaves. Rename fixes a typo in place; the old name stays on the audit trail.A card that says Unsubscribed themselves means they used the link in an email; re-tick to reinstate.

Self check-in tablet

A shared tablet by the door that lets a resident record their own presence for the 24-hour register — nothing else. Adults only; it has no In & out, no list, no history, no other resident's details. It opens straight on the search: a resident types their name or room and taps themselves.

1. Under Admin → Staff → Add account, pick role Self check-in tablet.Name the account for where it lives, e.g. "Riverbank gate tablet" — not a person.
2. Send the invite to an email you control.The same invite link as any other account.
3. Open the link and set a password.
4. Log the tablet into that account once.It lands straight on the check-in screen and stays logged in for thirty days (set by the service); after that it needs a staff login again.
5. Turn on Guided Access (iPad) or Screen Pinning / Single App Mode (Android) so the tablet cannot be swiped out of the browser.
6. Under Admin → Settings → Self check-in tablet, upload a photograph of the centre.Landscape, JPEG or PNG, up to 4 MB. It shows faintly behind the search; without one the background is plain.

• Can: search a resident by name, room code (e.g. "C09"), full room label or ID number (two letters for a name; a room number can be a single digit, typed as "9", "09" or "Room 9"), then check that one adult in
• Cannot: see a list, a date of birth, an ID number, anyone's history, or any other screen — every other page and API route refuses this login
• Tapping a name checks that resident in straight away. Wrong name? Not me — undo shows for a few seconds after the tick and takes it back
• The register and history mark it at the tablet (self), so staff can see at a glance which check-ins nobody witnessed
• The tablet cannot receive the Sunday report or the nightly email
• To log the tablet out, for maintenance: tap the small version number in the bottom-right corner three times quickly, then confirm. There is no Staff link on the page, so residents do not sign it out by accident

Settings admins

• Register starts on: the go-live day. Load residents and practise before it; no day before it counts as missed or adds to anyone's absences, and the register says it is in rehearsal. Check-ins made during the rehearsal are kept
• Register rules: adult age, the amber hour, the House Rules figures, the holiday cap
• Features: buildings, evacuation, households, visitors, the door switch, the nightly email
• Retention: movements and the register
• Security: idle lock, email codes, home countries

Working offline

• The pill says Offline
• Everything you record is Queued
• It is sent, in order, when the connection returns

Something is wrong

Privacy on one page

• Held about a resident: name, date of birth, ID document type and number, room, evacuation need, household, authorised absences and breach reports, and every movement, check-in and register day.
• Who sees what: guards see names, ages and states; the date of birth is for supervisors and admins; the ID number is on the detail sheet only; the evacuation need is on the roll call and evacuation list only.
• Kept for: movements 90 days, the register six months, both set by the site. The audit trail and the access log follow the register.
• On the record: every change an administrator makes, every export and its reason, every opening of a resident's record, and every login attempt.
• A resident's rights: an admin can export everything held about a person as one file, or erase them entirely, leaving only a proof that an erasure happened.
• Where: one provider, in Frankfurt, in the European Union. Nothing is sent to a third party.

The full statement is in the site's privacy notice and data processing agreement.