Yes!

Jovial was originally designed for parent-run cooperative preschools. Jovial tracks parent jobs, participation/attendance in the classroom, and more. Jovial also tracks requirements for parents who work in the classroom, such as background checks, CPR training, and more.

Every school is different. Jovial is highly customizable to your school's unique requirements.

Jovial works with any double-entry accounting system, including QuickBooks.

Jovial is not designed to replace your existing accounting system. You will continue to run payroll, pay vendors, track budgets, report out, etc., using all of your current accounting practices. Jovial only replaces "accounts receivable" with respect to the families in your school.

Jovial makes it very easy to transfer your summarized receivables into your existing accounting system on a periodic basis (such as monthly).

Jovial is a collaborative tool designed to help everyone at your school with their job. Jovial provides various levels of access appropriate for staff, teachers, and parents, depending on their job. For example, teachers may only be allowed to view and edit class rosters.

A typical school will have one or more people designated as "administrator" who will be able to manage user access, view and edit all content, etc.

Jovial is easy to use and does not require IT expertise. We will help you set it up to work for your school.

Yes! Jovial has a "Family Portal". The Family Portal can be used to view billing information, make tuition payments (with optional E-payments), submit electronic forms, access up-to-date class rosters, check pending in-class requirements, review contact information, and more.

All you need is a computer with an internet connection and a relatively modern internet browser. Jovial is also mobile- and tablet-friendly and will work well on iPhone and Android devices. Jovial is 100% cloud-based. There's nothing to download, install, or update.

Jovial runs on Google Cloud, one of the world's top cloud-computing providers. Our standards for data safety meet or exceed industry standards:

• We utilize multiple data centers to provide geographical redundancy of all data.
• We backup all data daily. We maintain daily backups for at least 2 weeks, and weekly backups for at least 2 months. In the very unlikely event your account experiences any sort of critical failure, we are able to quickly restore your data from any available previous backup.
• We use an encrypted connection (https://) for ALL access to Jovial. This happens automatically, without you having to do anything.
• We train our employees in data security, audit regularly, and always require the use of multi-factor authentication.
• We require strong passwords, and all passwords are internally encrypted using modern encryption algorithms.
• We never store payment/financial information; all such data is stored & managed separately by financial-industry providers with dedicated expertise and security teams.
• Each school administrator maintains the user access list for his/her school, and each user's access permission is individually customized.

If you decide Jovial is not for your school, it's easy to download your data into an Excel-compatible format (CSV) at any time, and take it with you.

Once we setup your Jovial account, we will hand-hold you through all the initial customization. Everyone's needs are different, but these are the typical things you can either do yourself, or we can help you setup:

• Import a list of your families/students from an Excel spreadsheet
• Configure Jovial with your school's tuition policies, including current rates, and Jovial will automatically calculate all billing for you
• Configure Jovial with your school's requirements -- such as immunizations for students, TB tests for parents, background checks, and anything else -- and Jovial will automatically track all requirements for you
• Upload your school logo, and customize the color-scheme of your account to your school's colors!

Jovial was proudly co-founded by Hermann and Helen Calabria, co-op parents, based in Seattle, Washington. We are on a social mission to support early-childhood education. Jovial is professionally-built, easy-to-use preschool administration software, and it is free to non-profit preschools.

The inspiration behind Jovial started when we volunteered at our local preschool. Only then did we realize and appreciate the overwhelming amount of time & effort required to administer a school! Hermann and Helen felt the little time available for volunteering was better spent building community: Working in the classroom, supporting teachers, meeting prospective families, planning community and social events, fundraising, etc.

Hermann put his software engineering skills to use, and created the very first version of Jovial for his personal use only (as volunteer treasurer). Soon, other co-ops in the area started to show interest in Hermann's pet project. The feedback was so gratifyingly positive, and the need so tangibly felt, Hermann and Helen decided to make Jovial into a professional product, and to make it available to the co-op preschool community nationwide.

Sustainability is important to Hermann and Helen. Jovial is very high-quality software, relying on decades of software engineering experience and our first-hand experiences as volunteers at our preschool. Our first priority is making Jovial useful, user-friendly, and secure.

Hermann and Helen's family have gained so much from their co-op experience. It is their sincere hope Jovial is able to positively impact the nationwide early-education community.

Likely yes! Although Jovial was designed specifically for co-op preschools, we support and believe in all forms of early-childhood education. We will consider all requests, case-by-case, as long as your school is located within the U.S. or Canada.

Please reach out!

We are happy to answer any questions you may have. Please fill out the “Get Started” form below, and we will respond to you by phone or email within 2 business days.