An hour for an hour.

Time banking is a hundred year old idea that has always died of paperwork. Patchwork is the paperwork, done properly, for a group that already meets.

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A line is written only when both people say it happened.

That single rule is what keeps a time bank honest without anybody policing it. Balances are never stored either: they are worked out from the book every time you look, so the book cannot quietly disagree with itself.

What it is, and what it is not

A book for a group that already meets

A street, a building, a library circle, a congregation, a family. Somebody keeps the book on their phone: the roster, what each person can do for an hour, what each person could use an hour of, what has been arranged, and every hour that has actually changed hands.

Not a marketplace

It will not find you strangers, because it has no network to find them on. There are no prices, no rates and no money anywhere in it. An hour is an hour, whoever gives it.

The book, the board and the bookings

The board: offers listed with a colour for each kind of help. — Eight kinds of help, each with its own fabric. Search it and tap a person.

A booking waiting for both people to confirm it happened. — An arrangement waits until both sides confirm. Then it becomes a line in the book.

The roster, with each person's fabric colour, what they offer and their balance in hours. — Everyone in the book owns a colour, and it is the colour their patches are cut from.

The quilt

Every exchange that both people have confirmed sews one patch, in the colour of whoever gave the hour, and the newest one is laid in turned. It sits in the corner of the board and fills the top of the ledger. A group that has helped each other forty times has a quilt to show for it, and it is drawn from the book rather than kept beside it.

Made to be read

Hours are hours, never prices. A booking says who gives, who receives, how long and when, and tells you before you arrange it how much the other person can still receive. A date that has gone by says so. Nothing is written into the book by one person alone.

The rules, in full

Two hours to start

Everyone begins at plus two. The group fronts it, and the way to settle up is to help anyone at all.

Minus three is the floor

An overdraft is not a debt and the app never calls it one. Past minus three an exchange waits, and the app explains why in plain words instead of refusing.

The book can be handed on

Export it as a file and give it to another keeper, who merges it into theirs. Merging is matched by entry, so doing it twice changes nothing.

It stays on the phone

No internet permission, no account, no server, no analytics. Your neighbours' names cannot leave the device unless you export the book yourself.