Set Up Your Organization

After creating your account, you’ll be guided through a setup wizard that helps you configure your organization. An organization is your shared workspace in Penmate — it holds your classes, students, tasks, and credits.

Step 1: Choose Your Organization Type

The first thing you’ll see after logging in for the first time is a choice between two organization types:

Institution — choose this if you work at a school, language centre, or any educational organization where multiple teachers will use Penmate together.

• Shared credit pool — all teachers in the organization draw from the same balance
• Multiple teachers can be invited to the same workspace
• Starts with 100 trial credits

Personal — choose this if you are an individual teacher or tutor working on your own.

• Single-user workspace
• Starts with 30 trial credits

If you are a school teacher, always choose Institution. You can start using it on your own and invite colleagues at any time later. Personal is only intended for tutors and teachers working fully independently.

Step 2: Complete the Setup Wizard

Once you’ve chosen your organization type, Penmate walks you through the initial setup:

1. Name your organization — e.g. “Springfield High School” or “Ms. Johnson’s Classes”
2. Set your timezone — this determines how deadlines are displayed to your students
3. Create your first class — add the name of your class group
4. Add students — enter student names and email addresses, or import from a spreadsheet
5. Create your first task — generate a writing assignment

You can always change these settings later from your dashboard.

Organization Settings

To update your organization settings at any time:

• Organization name — the display name for your workspace
• Timezone — affects deadline display across the platform
• Country — for billing purposes
• Billing details — needed when purchasing credits (tax ID, address, etc.)