Patchwork: Time Bank Ledger

Somewhere on your street is a person who can fix the tap you have been ignoring, and they could use the guitar lesson you could give in your sleep. Time banking is a hundred year old answer to that, and it has always died of paperwork. Patchwork is the paperwork, done properly. WHAT IT IS A time bank ledger for a group that already meets: a street, a building, a library circle, a family, a congregation. One hour given earns one hour, and an hour is an hour whoever gives it. There are no prices, no rates and no money anywhere in the app. WHAT IT IS NOT It is not a marketplace and it will not find you strangers. It has no network to find them on. Somebody in your group keeps the book on their phone, and the app is that book: the roster, what each person can do, what each person needs, what has been arranged, and every hour that has actually changed hands. THE BOOK IS THE TRUTH Balances are never stored. They are worked out from the ledger every time you look, so the book cannot quietly disagree with itself. An exchange becomes a ledger line only when both people say it happened, which is the one rule that keeps a time bank honest without anybody policing it. THE NODE FRONTS YOU TWO HOURS Everyone starts at plus two and can go to minus three. An overdraft is not a debt and the app never calls it one: it says the node has you covered, and the way back is to help anyone at all. Below minus three the app asks the exchange to wait, and explains why in plain words rather than refusing. THE BOARD Every person carries what they could do for an hour and what they could use an hour of, sorted into eight kinds of help, each with its own fabric colour. Search it, tap a person, arrange the hour. PASSING THE BOOK ON Export the whole book as a file and hand it to another keeper, who can merge it into theirs. Merging is matched by entry, so doing it twice changes nothing. Export the ledger as a CSV if your group wants it in a spreadsheet. The book belongs to the group, not to the phone it happens to be on. ON THIS PHONE ONLY Patchwork does not request the internet permission. There is no account, no server, no analytics and no advertising ID. The names of your neighbours cannot leave your device unless you export the book yourself. Free and complete. A currency made of hours should not cost money.