Software FAQ
Free timebanking software for communities that trade in care, skills, and reciprocity. Learn how the platform works, why it matters, and how to get started.
We believe in Open Innovation (Think 'open source' but in a corral!) We implement the best ideas of our members and coordinators. This broad based co-production model of development affords us all the best tools for sustaining our local communities!
We believe in removing ALL the barriers to time banking that we can. Access to the hOurworld® platform is and will remain FREE. It's easy for new members to join and learn, and easy for coordinators to manage and report on their members and activity.
We believe in supporting local diversity while maintaining a central cooperative organization to provide accessible support, training, and communications.
We believe that every member should have control over their own privacy and content. (You own your data.) We operate on private secure servers on HIPPA compliant data centers where all information passing between users and clients is encrypted before going out on the internet.
We believe that time banking is one spoke in the wheel of the Solidarity Economy. We foster local community organizations drawing together to create powerful Movements moving Together: Local economies integrating CSA, Food Co-op, Buy Local, Transition Town, BALLE, CAP and others. The opportunities to provide and support our interdependence are profound!
My name is Stephen Beckett. I joined Hour Exchange Portland, our local time bank in Portland, Maine back in 2006. At that time Community Weaver and Time Keeper were not adequately meeting their needs so I offered to write new software! Watch this short 3 minute video about the history of Time and Talents, the web platform with free access that supports timebank communities like yours.
Access to Time and Talents is and will remain FREE. There are no annual dues or fees of any kind, and conversion from your existing software to the hOurworld Time ane Talents platform, support and training are also free!
If you'd like a tour we're happy to Zoom with you. You may want to watch a few of the more recent (2022) videos on our YouTube hOurworld TNTv1 playlist. TNTv1 users: let us know if you would like to evaluate TNTv2. We have a migration engine to copy your data there so you may evaluate the new system and make a decision about moving your timebank to the new platform!
For a much improved user experience and better mobile support we suggest you move your existing or start your new timebank on the v2 platform YouTube hOurworld TNTv2 playlist. To learn about the differences between v1 and v2 see the entry below.
Time and Talents is home to over 400 timebanks with over 35,000 happy members in 39 countries! Together we are co-creating the largest active timebanking system on the planet! We're home! Our inclusive network allows inter-time bank transactions and communications.
We've written a Community Weaver 4 conversion engine. (We have one for CW-3 too.) We can pull over your offers and requests, member profiles, and full transaction history. We can have you up and running in a day! Conversion doesn't change your existing Community Weaver data, so you are free to try out Time and Talents before you move for keeps.
We've written a Community Forge conversion engine and have moved a few of their timebanks into hOurworld. We've even converted timebanks that were all on spreadsheets!
Over 100 timebanks have converted from Timebanks.org Community Weaver and other platforms to hOurworld's Time and Talents!
Your timebank will appear on our World Map, and in the hOurworld Timebank Directory.
Hear from former Community Weaver Coordinators now enjoying the many benefits of Time and Talents:
'Kudos to a wonderful innovative team there at hOurworld, ON TOP of the latest technology, blazing trails.... but more importantly listening to your users. You are wonderfully responsive and I am really happy to work with you all.'
De Raynes, Sussex County Hour Exchange, DE
'The new feature on the software where people receive a weekly update has literally changed the way our Time Bank is being used! We have seen a huge influx in exchanges, and the best part is that they are between people who haven't exchanged with one another before.
Jennie A Weakley, Unity In Our Community, Detroit, MI
'The short of our coordinator experience in Columbus (I'm one of them, so I know first-hand) is that the software issues went away, for the most part, once we made the conversion to TnT. We found that the conversion caused more work of a different kind, though. We no longer had software as an excuse to occupy our time instead of growing our time bank through member development and community engagement. The enthusiasm people have for time banking has prompted new member enrollments, hence, a 20% increase!
Steve Bosserman, Care & Share Time Bank, Columbus, OH
The hOurworld® Team
From a member's perspective, the following is a brief summary of what I think are the most important differences:
Whether you are setting up a brand new Timebank, or converting from your existing software, Time and Talents® offers simple, intuitive and user friendly tools to help you manage and grow your organization!
If you are using TimeBanks.org Community Weaver 3 or 4, we have coded a conversion engine for your existing data.
Conversion is a relatively simple process at your end. You notify your members of a cutoff date. We'll hold some training to get your admins up to speed with using the new system, and that will be ongoing via email and zoom as needed.
We obtain Admin Role credentials from you to your CW-3 Instance. We download ALL your transactions, ALL your offers and requests, ALL your members from all Roles, in any state (enabled yes/no, Applying Member, Russian bot accounts, all of it.) In the case of CW-4 you will be provided with a link to download your data in json format. We pre-process your data in 'holding tank' tables, then use our conversion engine to filter the silver from the dross, and load all of your data into the Time and Talents database. This will include members' profile photos, bios, attributes, transaction histories, offers and requests. We perform the conversion in a half a day.
You let your members know when they may log in to the new platform and provide them with links to a few of the videos (basic intro, recording hours) and together we manage the fallout as it happens! A few members will continue to use the old system regardless of what you have told them, so it will be important to have Timebanks.org take the old platform offline (for members) and remove it from their Directory of Timebanks.
Access to hOurworld, supported by Time and Talents® is and will remain FREE!
| Language | Member Area | Admin Area |
|---|---|---|
| Arabic | no | no |
| Czech | yes | no |
| German | no | no |
| Greek | no | no |
| English USA | yes | yes |
| English UK | yes | yes |
| Spanish (Castilian) |
yes | yes |
| Estonian | no | no |
| French | yes | yes |
| Hebrew | no | no |
| Italian | yes | yes |
| Korean | yes | no |
| Macedonian | no | no |
| Spanish (Mexican) |
yes | yes |
| Polish | yes | yes |
| Swedish | no | no |
| Thai | yes | no |
| Ukrainian | no | no |
| Chinese | no | no |
(v1) Report Types (listed by frequency of use):
| Contact List (*may be mapped) | Accounts Receivable |
| Transactions by Provider (*may be mapped) | Email List |
| Applicant Pool | Newsletter Recap |
| Transaction Count Between Members | Transactions by Service |
| Hours of Service Provided by Category | Services Provided by Hours |
| Transactions by Receiver | Count of Services Proviced by Category |
| Services Offered by Member | Services Offered by Service |
| Last Member Year Transaction Hours | Donations Report |
| Birthday List | Members Without Services |
| Services Provided by Count | Mailing Labels |
| Members Without a Bio | Member Attributes |
| Services Offered by Count | Members Without Photo |
| Members Without Contact Info | Members Without Attributes |
| Ebuddy Report | No Attribute in a Categroy |
| Members Without Groups | Members Without Address |
Our service provider, Top of Third, manages our servers at secure data centers in New Jersey, USA.
Backups: Daily/Weekly/Monthly backups of files and databases with roll over archiving of daily backups for two weeks.
Servers: All servers are RAID 1, mirrored storage, with multiple processors. They are providing us with a Virtual Server up to date with standard OS and web server LAMP stack upgrades.
Upgrades and New Features are available to all exchanges immediately when pushed from the
developement platform to the live system via a private GitHub repository for version control, etc.
The source code is proprietary and written in PHP, MySQLi, HTML5, JS, Ajax, CSS, Bootstrap 4.6
We operate in an arena of 'open innovation': co-producing and implementing our members and
coordinators best ideas! Think 'open source', but in a corral!
Easy integration of Time and Talents® into your existing web
site, so navigating between the two is transparent. (Though no website is required for startups.)
hOurworld® derives funding from trainings, personal investment, brokered agency software, RPF research data access, grant funding and member gifts. Access to hOurworld® for local 'mom and pop' timebanks is and will remain free.
Linda Hogan, Terry Daniels and I (Stephen Beckett) co-founded hOurworld® in 2010. We have member helpers and consultants that are participating in software development projects, training and research. John Saare, a 'Silcon Valley Refuge' and Enterprise Software Developer has become a co-founding member of hOurworld® and together we are creating a new software platform TNT 2.0 which will be ready for early release mid 2023! We expect the two versions will live sisde by side for some time. There will be no push of users from one platformt to another.
They'll share honest reports about their conversion process and how they are doing now.
Once logged in there is context sensitive help throughout the admin side of the system. Click [Help] for help about where you are in the software.
Searchable Help (Knowledge Base) built from answered support tickets and an original more verbose copy of the help system is available throughout.
[Contact Us!] button in the footer of every member page to activate the member help ticket system.
[Contact Support] on the admin side to activate the admin help ticket system. Many responses are archived and searchable.
We're here! Contact Us!
The user will login..., which is required to determine the identity of the user agreeing to the TOS. Before they are permitted to do anything else, they are prompted with the TOS agreement page.
This page will always refer to the hOurworld TOS and Privacy agreements/pdfs. If the specific timebank has provided its own TOS..., that will be presented as well.
The user must check the two (or three) checkboxes and click [I AGREE] before they are permitted functional access to the system.
Whenever any of the 2 or 3 docs are updated, the affected users will be required to 're-agree' to the affected terms.
If the user clicks [I DECLINE]..., nothing is done, the session is terminated, and they are redirected back to the login page.