Trauma Ledger
A private, local-only way to build, view, and share a structured timeline of a client's trauma history — and the protective factors that sit alongside it.
Overview
A focused tool for a difficult task
Trauma Ledger helps clinicians assemble a client's trauma history into a single, clear picture. Instead of scattered notes, each event becomes a dated, categorised, rated entry on a timeline — with defences, context, and protective factors captured alongside. It is deliberately narrow in scope, entirely local to your computer, and built so that sensitive information never has to travel.
Features
Everything the history needs, in one place
Capture the detail that matters clinically, then see it as a timeline you can explore, refine, and hand over.
Structured event capture
Record each event with a title, category, the client's age (single age or a range), an optional date or year, an impact/significance rating, notes, and a dedicated defensive-process field.
Chronological timeline
Events are laid out on a clear vertical timeline ordered by age — adverse events on one side, protective factors on the other — so a client's history reads at a glance.
Impact-based colour coding
Every item is coloured by its 1–10 impact/significance score on a calm low-to-high scale, giving an immediate visual sense of weight across the history.
Detail information panel
Selecting any item opens a side panel with its full background — category, timing, impact, defensive process, and clinical notes — with edit and delete in place.
Protective factors
Capture strengths and supports — safe caregivers, stable periods, community and treatment — alongside adversity, for a balanced, resilience-aware picture.
Defensive process
A purpose-built field to note the defences and coping observed around each event, keeping formulation-relevant detail attached to the moment it belongs to.
Clinical categories
Ready-made categories for both adverse events (abuse, neglect, loss, separation, medical, accident, and more) and protective factors keep entries consistent.
Print & save as PDF
One click produces a clean, professional print layout — the visual timeline plus a full written summary — suitable for the client record or supervision.
Security & privacy
Two layers of protection
Confidentiality is built into how Trauma Ledger works. The first layer is design — where the data lives. The second is encryption — how a saved file is locked.
Privacy by design
The strongest protection is that sensitive data never travels in the first place.
- Local-only by design. The app is a standalone program installed on your computer. There is no server, no account, no cloud storage, and no analytics.
- Nothing leaves the machine. No internet connection is used, so there is no network to intercept and no database to breach.
- Codes, not names. The reference field is built for initials or a code, so even a saved file need not identify anyone.
- Kept out of the cloud. On-screen guidance reminds you to save outside cloud-sync folders such as OneDrive, Dropbox, or iCloud.
- The encrypted file is the only copy. Nothing is stored silently in the background; an unsaved-changes indicator and a close warning keep you in control.
Strong encryption
When you choose to save, the file is locked before it ever touches the disk.
- AES-GCM, 256-bit. Modern authenticated encryption — an altered file fails to open rather than returning corrupted data.
- PBKDF2-SHA-256, 250,000 iterations. Your password is stretched through a quarter-million rounds, making guessing attacks slow and costly.
- Fresh salt and IV every save. A new random 16-byte salt and 12-byte IV each time, so identical data never encrypts to the same output.
- Standards-based platform cryptography. Built on vetted cryptography provided by the operating system — no third-party libraries to trust.
- No stored password, no backdoor. The password is never saved and cannot be recovered; if it is lost, the file cannot be opened by anyone.
Encryption at a glance
A saved file is a small container holding only a version number, a random salt, a random IV, and the encrypted data. Everything needed to open it — except your password — lives in that one file, and that file stays on your computer.
How it works
From blank timeline to finished record
Five steps, no setup, nothing to learn.
Launch
Open the Trauma Ledger app on your computer — no browser, no sign-in.
Enter a reference
Label the client with initials or a code rather than a full name.
Add events
Add adverse events and protective factors with age, impact, and notes.
Review
Click any item to open its full detail panel; edit as the picture develops.
Save / print
Save an encrypted file to your computer, or print / export a PDF.