How it works

Every chore runs in one of two modes:

When your kid does a chore, they mark it in the app and the request lands in your Approvals.

• Every day. Due daily.

• Weekly. You pick the exact days it is due (the bin only on Tuesday and Friday, say).

• Start with three chores, not ten

  Three well chosen ones teach the rhythm. Ten is just a list that gets ignored and frustrates both sides.

On every chore you can set a bonus for doing it, a deduction for skipping it, or both. Both values are optional and you decide how big they are.

• Feel free to leave the bonus empty

  Plenty of families use the deduction alone: doing a chore is the normal state, no extra coin for it, but skipping it costs something.

When the day ends (for a weekly chore, the chosen day) and the chore has not been sent, the automatic nightly check takes off the deduction you set. These rules apply:

Your kid knows about the risk up front: the tile of an unfinished chore shows how many coins are at stake (in the web app as the sentence “You lose X coins if you do not make it by the end of the day.”, in the iPhone app as a red minus label). After a deduction they find a negative “Deduction” row in History.

• At most once a day per chore. No stacking punishments.

• A chore that was sent but not yet reviewed never triggers a deduction. It waits for your decision.

• In History the deduction is filed under the day it belongs to, not the day of the check.

• When a chore cannot be done today, turn on “No deduction today” for it. You find it in the Calendar, in the chore's detail, for a specific kid. It applies to today only and the day is bridged in the streak just like a free day.

• Deductions only start after your kid's first sign in. Until your kid opens the app, skipped chores take nothing off.

• Explain the logic to your kid

  A short family chat at the start about why chores are different from tasks and why the deduction exists. When your kid understands the rules, it is not a punishment.

JARVIS does not wake you in the evening. Deductions come as one morning summary notification around 7:05 (“Deduction applied”). You tap through to the detail in the app.

You can forgive any deduction: in your kid's Activity, open the deduction row and tap “Forgive the deduction”, on the web and in the iPhone app. The coins go back to your kid and the deduction stays in the Activity as forgiven.

• Use free days for illness and trips

  Free days never trigger a deduction at all and the day is bridged in the streak. Forgiving is for a one off slip, where the deduction already landed and you undo it afterwards.

• Forgiving is a repair after the fact: the coins come back, but the deduction already happened. For illness or a trip, free days are the better tool, no deduction is taken on them at all.

A few typical chores and why their deduction is the size it is.

• Make the bed · every day

  The classic. A small deduction, a bed is not the dentist. But if Adam forgets it daily, he notices it in his balance.

• Teeth in the evening · every day

  A health thing, so maybe a slightly bigger deduction than the bed. JARVIS does not judge how thoroughly a kid brushes, only whether they confirmed it in the app.

• Pack the school bag · every day

  No panic breakfasts. Forgotten textbooks set off a domino effect for the whole day, and the deduction can reflect that.

• Take the bin out · weekly (Tue, Fri)

  A weekly chore on picked days. The deduction can only happen on a day the chore is actually due.

Every task has a name and a value in coins. Your kid finishes it, taps the tile, and the request lands in your Approvals.

Coins are added only after you approve, JARVIS never adds anything on its own.

When your kid is holding a streak, an approved task automatically gets a bonus for days in a row on top, more on that in The coin economy below.

• Multiple times a day. No cap, your kid can send the request several times a day.

• Every day. One request a day. You can limit which weekdays are allowed (weekdays only, no weekends, say). Outside the allowed days the request cannot be sent.

• Every week. One request a week. Just like with daily tasks you can set the allowed days (practice only on Tuesday and Thursday, say). Outside the allowed days, or over the cap, the request cannot be sent.

• Every month. One request a month, with no day restriction.

• Reading 20 minutes · Every day

  Adam sits down with a book in the evening on his own, not for school. After twenty minutes he taps it in the app and you approve it in Approvals.

• Practice · Every week (Tue, Thu)

  Football, basketball, ballet, what gets rewarded is turning up, not the result. Set the allowed days to the days practice really happens.

• Helping a sibling

  The hardest task, usually you only spot it by chance. When you catch it and it is not on the list, add the coins by hand.

• React by the next day

  Approve or decline, but do not leave a request hanging for a week. Uncertainty undercuts motivation and the task loses its link to the act.

• Never use it as leverage

  A task is not “do this and you get that”. It is “when you do it willingly, I recognise it”. Use it as a bribe and you lose both channels.

• There is no one off task in the catalogue. Tasks are only for things that repeat. When you want to reward something one off (helping with a move, a great school report), add the coins by hand with “Extra coins”, more in The coin economy.

A goal trains patience and decision making. It has a name, a goal amount in coins and optionally a date.

When the balance reaches the goal amount, your kid taps “Claim reward” and the request lands in Approvals. After you approve it, the coins come off. You hand over the thing itself (you buy the LEGO, not the app).

Your kid can also propose a goal themselves: they pick a name and a category, you set the price when you approve the proposal. An approved proposal shows up among their goals.

• Coins are never locked to a goal. Your kid has one balance and saves toward every goal at once. Each coin saved moves all the progress bars together.

• The star picks the main goal. That is the one they then see on their home screen.

• A shared goal is a separate track for each kid. When several kids can see a goal, each of them reaches and claims it on their own: their own celebration, their own entry in “Completed goals” and their own request in Approvals. One kid claiming it does not close the goal for a sibling.

• A goal has one price for every kid. There is no per kid price on goals. Per kid you only control who sees the goal.

• A LEGO set · 1,500 coins

  A big set at 1 to 2 months of saving, long enough that Adam has to wait and short enough that he can see progress.

• A cinema trip · 500 coins

  An experience goal: “save up and I will pay for everyone's tickets”. It teaches planning and has a social side to it.

• Set the goal together with your kid

  A goal your kid did not choose is not a goal, it is one more chore. A short chat (what would you want, what does it cost, is that a fair price?) creates ownership.

• Check the price against the monthly potential

  A good goal takes 1 to 3 months. The hint right inside the goal form shows how long your kid would need to save for it at full completion of the rules.

• Celebrate when it lands

  A real moment, not just an icon in the app. “You went after it for weeks and now it is yours” locks in the pattern of planning ahead.

• The date is only your plan. JARVIS calculates no pace from it and sends no reminders. It is not a commitment or a nudge, just a rough date for you.

Badges come in nine series (Flame, Chores, Tasks, Saver, Shop, Goals, Early bird, Perfect week and Full days), and each series has three to six tiers. Badges never give coins, they reward effort.

The level goes up one step with every approved chore and task, and a saved-up goal adds 5 steps. Level 2 takes 5 steps and every next level takes 5 more, so level 10 means 225 steps. The level never goes down, even if you undo an approval.

• The celebration comes right after approval

  Your kid celebrates new badges and levels right after you approve, and at night both the celebration and the notification wait until morning.

How the whole thing holds together: where coins come from, where they go and why holding out pays.

The Shop (in the parent app Rules → Rewards) is for quick wins: 30 minutes with the tablet, pizza night. Goals are the long game. The whole economy rests on one dilemma: “do I spend now, or wait for something bigger?” The same dilemma real money brings, only somewhere safe.

The streak grows for every day your kid sends a task and you approve it. The day it was sent is the day that counts. Only tasks hold it: a finished chore does not lift it and a deduction does not break it. Chores have their own counter: for you it is Days without a slip, for your kid Full days. While the streak holds, approved tasks earn more and the bonus lands as its own row in History (“Bonus” for your kid, “Streak bonus” for you).

With a manual adjustment you add or take off coins for any kid. The buttons “Extra coins” and “Extra deduction” are on the kid's page, on the web and in the iPhone app. You pick what they are for, such as Praise or Bad behaviour, or write your own reason. A note is optional. A deduction may take the kid below zero. It fits one off rewards and one off deductions that have no rule of their own.

Typical task. For each kid we work out their usual reward from their tasks and chores. The Saver badge grows with it, so a younger kid with rewards in single digits earns it as easily as an older kid with rewards in the hundreds. You find it in Settings → Family → For the whole family → Badges.

Deleting a rule rewrites nothing retroactively: the history stays. Old tasks and deductions remain visible in your kid's history.

• Bonus for days in a row: how much extra your kid gets for a long streak. You change the three default steps on the web and in the iPhone app in Settings → Family → Bonus for days in a row.

• ×1.25 from 7 days. A week without a break and an approved task earns a quarter more.

• ×1.5 from 14 days. Two weeks and it is half as much again.

• ×2 from 30 days. Keep it up for a month and a task earns double.

• Keep the quick win to goal ratio at least 1 : 5

  When a goal costs the same as two quick wins, it is not a goal. When it is 5 to 10 times pricier, your kid starts doing real arithmetic.

• Never cut prices under pressure

  “I am short, discount please” is a test. Holding the price holds the economy. Make an exception once and you will be dealing with it forever.

• The bonus for days in a row applies to earnings only. Never to deductions, no matter how long the streak is.

A week is perfect when your kid skipped no chore, nothing was rejected or is still waiting for approval, at least one day was actually done and there were at most three free days.

• A reward for the week. You reward a perfect week once a week, in the iPhone app with the “Give a bonus” button.

• A promise for days without a slip. You can promise your kid a reward in advance, say a trip to the zoo for 14 days without a slip. A promise carries coins or a reward of your own, applies once or repeatedly, to the whole family or one kid.

• Where to set it. In the iPhone app in Settings → Family → Perfect week, on the web in Settings → Family → Perfect week.

• You confirm the reward. Unless you turn on “Add automatically”, JARVIS only reminds you of a promise that came true and you confirm the coins yourself.

• “No deduction today” or a forgiven deduction does not spoil a perfect week. More than three free days in a week does.

It helps most when you are pricing a goal. JARVIS adds up the values of all your kid's regular rules by how many times they can be completed in that month.

For every kid, JARVIS works out these three numbers for the current month.

Where to find it: the summary card at the top of the Goals page (one row per kid) and the hint right under the goal amount in the goal form (“≈ N months at full completion”).

What it is for: a quick check that the price of a goal is set sensibly.

• Tasks with the “Multiple times a day” frequency are not counted. They have no ceiling, so they cannot be projected into the potential.

• The bonus for days in a row is not counted.

• Free days are not counted.

• Manual coin adjustments are not counted.

• “LEGO at 1,600 coins · potential 800/month”

  ≈ 2 months at full completion: a good price. A goal at 4,000 coins would take half a year even in the ideal case. Cut the price, or split it into smaller goals.

• The ceiling is a theoretical maximum, reality will always land lower. It counts regular rules and perfect completion only, with no exceptions and no off days in it.

By default a rule has one value for all kids. When you need to tell them apart (a big age gap, a special situation), open the rule, choose “Different for each kid” and set an amount for each kid. It works on the web and in the iPhone app, there is nothing to turn on in Settings.

The option only shows for families with two or more kids. Choose “Same for everyone” to give the rule one shared value again.

• Chores. For each kid you set both the bonus and the deduction.

• Tasks. For each kid you set the value in coins.

• Rewards. For each kid you set the price they see in the Shop.

• Goals have no price per kid. A goal has one amount for everyone. For each kid you only control who sees the goal.

• We recommend keeping it the same for everyone. Siblings compare, and “why do I only get 5 and my brother gets 8?” is a predictable question. If you really do need different values, have the explanation ready in advance, kids will tell each other the prices.

Mark the days your kid cannot do their chores as free and stop worrying about it.

You set free days for one particular kid as a date range from and to (the same date means a single day) with a reason of Illness / Trip / Holiday / Other and an optional note for yourself.

It works retroactively too: enter a range in the past and JARVIS automatically returns the deductions that already landed on those days. The confirmation tells you how many right away, something like “Free days saved. 5 deductions were returned.”

• No deduction on the covered days. JARVIS bridges them as if the day never existed.

• Your kid's streak is not reset. A free day bridges a day with no approved task: it does not count toward the streak, but it does not break it either. Forgiving a single deduction is a different thing, it only returns coins and never touches the streak.

• Where to set it. With the Free days row on the kid's page, on the web and in the iPhone app. In the app also with the “Day off” pill on a day in the Calendar.

• Entering it late is worth it

  Forgot to mark the illness? No problem. Enter the range retroactively and JARVIS returns the deductions for those days automatically, and the confirmation tells you the exact count.

• Deleting a range recalculates nothing retroactively. Coins returned by a retroactive entry stay with your kid.