Yearbook MoneyBook a conversation

Yearbook Money · the plain-money side of the book · Open for the first school to claim

The plain-money side of the book: what it costs, who has paid, and what it raised

Every yearbook is also a small budget, and the money is where a program gets into trouble. Yearbook Money keeps it in plain view: what the book costs to print, how many families have ordered and paid, and how much ad and sponsor money has come in — all set against the print bill. Orders tie to real students from the roster. The platform never skims a gift or a booster’s ad; only the payment processor’s own fee applies. The address is open for the first school to claim — no live checkout, no signup today.

Print bill vs. proceedscopies times per-copy cost, tracked against every recorded order and payment
Add-only, not tamper-proofa correction is a new entry, never a rewrite of one already posted
No platform skimfee-off-gross-first — only the payment processor’s own fee applies
Free to startthe school sets the price and keeps the proceeds

The ledger

What the ledger actually tracks, and what it does not

Five facts, labelled honestly: what is built engineering today, and what is described plainly as not yet enabled for a real, live school.

A running count of orders, payments, and ad income against the print bill

The print bill is the one number every yearbook program is quietly measured against: copies ordered times the per-copy cost to produce them. Yearbook Money keeps that bill on one side of the ledger and every recorded order, family payment, and piece of ad or sponsor income on the other, so an adviser can see at a glance whether the book is ahead of its own cost or behind it. The ledger math — the running total, the exact-cent reconciliation, the fee accounting — is built and production-ready. The entries it totals come from elsewhere in the platform (family ordering, ad sales), and those charge rails are honest-off today, so there are no live numbers for a real school on this page yet.

Ledger math built · live order/ad feeds honest-off

Add-only by design — and that is a narrower claim than "tamper-proof"

Every entry booked to the ledger is a new row. A correction — a refunded order, a mis-entered print bill, a reversed ad payment — is booked as its own new entry pointing back at what it corrects; nothing already posted is edited or deleted in place, so the running history is never quietly rewritten. That is an honest, narrower claim than it might sound: it describes how our own application code is written (the write path exposes no update or delete of a posted entry), not a cryptographic or blockchain-style guarantee. There is no hash chain here and no outside notarization service checking the ledger's back. "Add-only-by-design" and "tamper-proof" are different claims, and this page only makes the first one.

Add-only entry model built · not a tamper-proof claim

The platform never skims a gift or a sponsor's ad — only the processor's own fee applies

Ad income, sponsor money, and family payments that land in the ledger are not quietly reduced by a platform cut. The only deduction the ledger ever applies is the payment processor's own fee, taken off the gross amount first — the same fee-off-gross-first, largest-remainder accounting used across the platform's other money surfaces, so every cent is accounted for and nothing is silently rounded into a margin. An adviser can see exactly what a given order or ad sale nets the school before a single dollar moves.

Fee-off-gross-first accounting built

The adviser sets the print bill; the ledger tracks it, not us

The print bill itself — copies ordered and the per-copy production cost — is a number the adviser or business office enters and can revise as a print quote firms up. Yearbook Money does not set a school's price, does not negotiate with a printer, and does not decide what a book costs; it only holds the number the school gives it and measures orders and income against that number as they are recorded. The obligation-tracking model (copies, per-copy cost, firm-vs-estimated status) is built.

Print-bill tracking built

Free to start; the school sets the book price and keeps the proceeds

There is no subscription or per-student fee to run the ledger. The school sets its own book price, and the proceeds from every order are the school's; the platform's only involvement in the money is the honest-off charge rail described above and, when it is enabled, the processor's own fee. No school has claimed the yearbook.money address and run a live ledger yet — it is free and open for the first program to do so.

Free to start · no school has claimed it live yet

What is built and what is honest-off — plainly

The ledger math is built. Add-only is not the same claim as tamper-proof.

Built and production-ready today: the running total that sets the print bill against recorded orders, payments, and ad income; the exact-cent, fee-off-gross-first reconciliation that keeps every deduction to the processor’s own fee and nothing more; the add-only entry model, where a correction is booked as a new entry and nothing already posted is edited or deleted; and the print-bill tracking that holds the copies-and-per-copy-cost figure the school sets.

Said as precisely as we can say it: add-only-by-design means our write path does not expose an update or delete of a posted entry — a correction is always a new row. It does NOT mean the ledger is cryptographically tamper-proof, hash-chained, or notarized outside our own system; it is not, and this page never claims it is. Honest-off today: the live order feed from yearbook.direct and the live ad-income feed from yearbookad.network, both of which are honest-off on their own pages, so there are no live orders or ad payments flowing into this ledger for a real school yet. No school has claimed the yearbook.money address and run a live ledger today. There is no live checkout here. No billing. No subscription.

Connected to the school platform

Money in from two places. One ledger to total it against the print bill.

Yearbook Money is the accounting layer inside the school publishing platform. homeroom.software is the platform: the yearbook, newspaper, newsletter, and literary magazine engine the book is built on. yearbook.direct is the ordering mechanism — the link a family uses to order the book directly, with no rep and no contract. yearbookad.network is the ad-sales storefront — where a business or family buys an ad or tribute. yearbook.fund is mission-giving: a donor underwrites a book for a student who cannot afford one, with no advertising expectation. yearbook.marketing is the active sell-through engine that targets only the families who have not ordered yet. Yearbook Money does not sell the order, the ad, or the gift; it is where those records get totalled against the print bill, in plain view.

Open for the first school to claim · Advisers and business-office staff

Book a conversation to see the current state honestly

No school has claimed yearbook.money and run a live ledger yet. We do conversations that show the current state honestly: how the print bill is entered, how the ledger totals recorded orders and ad income against it, and how the add-only entry model works in practice. There is no pricing commitment and no signup.

To book: email [email protected].

FAQ

Common questions

What is Yearbook Money?

Yearbook Money is the plain-money side of a school yearbook program in one view: what the book costs to print, how many families have ordered and paid, and how much ad or sponsor income has come in against that print bill. It is an accounting and cost-tracking ledger, not a checkout and not a fundraising campaign — it is where the numbers a program already generates elsewhere get totalled against each other in plain view.

Is the ledger tamper-proof or immutable?

No, and we are careful not to say so. The ledger is add-only by design: a correction is booked as a new entry, never an edit or a delete of one already posted, so nothing in the running history is quietly rewritten. That describes how our write path is built, not a cryptographic guarantee — there is no hash chain and no outside notarization checking the ledger. "Add-only-by-design" is the honest claim here; "tamper-proof" would be a different and stronger claim we do not make.

Does the platform take a cut of orders, gifts, or ad sales?

No. The only deduction the ledger ever applies is the payment processor's own fee, taken off the gross amount first. The platform inserts no margin of its own between what a family or sponsor pays and what the school's ledger shows it netted.

Who enters the print bill, and can it change?

The adviser or business office enters it: the number of copies and the per-copy cost to produce them. It can be revised as a print quote firms up, and the ledger tracks whether that number is still an estimate or is firm. Yearbook Money does not set the price, negotiate with a printer, or decide what a book costs — it only holds the number the school gives it.

Is the checkout or payment collection live on this page?

No. This page runs no checkout and takes no payment. The order and ad-sale charge rails that would feed live numbers into the ledger are honest-off today, so there are no live numbers for a real school shown here.

How is this different from yearbook.fund?

yearbook.fund is mission-giving: a donor underwrites a specific student's book, at no advertising expectation, because the student could not otherwise afford one. Yearbook Money is plain cost and revenue accounting for the program as a whole — the print bill against orders and ad income — with no mission framing.

How is this different from yearbook.marketing?

yearbook.marketing is the active sell-through engine: it targets the families who have not ordered yet so a program hits its sales goal. Yearbook Money is the ledger that results from those sales — the running total of what has come in against the print bill — not the engine that drives the selling.

How is this different from yearbook.direct and yearbookad.network?

yearbook.direct is the ordering mechanism itself, the link a family uses to buy a book directly. yearbookad.network is the ad-sales storefront where a business or family buys an ad or tribute. Yearbook Money does not sell the order or the ad; it is where the order and ad records those systems produce get totalled against the print bill.

Has any school actually run a live ledger on yearbook.money?

Not yet. The address is open for the first school to claim. The ledger math is built and production-ready; what is honest-off is the live order and ad-payment feed from the rest of the platform, so there are no real numbers to show for a real school today.

How is family and order data handled?

Order, payment, and ad records are owned by the school and are never sold. This page describes a money and accounting surface only; it does not describe or depend on any photo, roster-matching, or biometric feature.