Everything your PTO runs on, in one place families actually use.
Roster, payments, fundraising, communication, and the treasurer's books — beautiful, mobile, and free. No parent logins. No per-family fees.
Free platform One transparent ~2% fee Set up in a weekend
100%
of the sticker goes to your PTO
0
logins parents have to create
1
tool instead of five
~2%
fee — published, never hidden
What is PTO Homeroom?
PTO Homeroom is free software for parent groups — PTAs, PTOs, HSAs and booster clubs. It combines the roster, communication, volunteer signups, online payments, fundraising campaigns and the treasurer's books in one place, so families never create a password and boards stop paying for three separate tools. There is no subscription; a published 2% platform fee applies to money processed through Homeroom and is shown at checkout.
Last updated . Competitor pricing on this page is cited from vendors' own published rates.
PTO software has been stuck for a decade.
Every board knows the drill: the tool is clunky, the fees are murky, and half the families never see it. Here's what you're really fighting.
Parents never log in
Login-gated tools stall at a fraction of families — so announcements, sign-ups, and payments never reach the people they're for.
Fees you can't explain
“Free” platforms can take a large cut at checkout. Families feel it, boards field the questions, and nobody can say where the money went.
Two tools, twice the work
Comms in one app, the books in another — treasurers re-key every transaction by hand and hope it reconciles.
A yearly rebuild
Rosters get wiped each fall. Parents re-enter grade and teacher. The new board inherits a tool nobody taught them to run.
It looks like 2010
Clunky, cramped, desktop-first. Volunteers dread opening it, so adoption dies and the PTO falls back to paper and group texts.
Money you can't trace
Cash envelopes, no receipts, no audit trail. Reimbursements live in a shoebox and reconciliation costs a lost weekend.
Built for the way PTOs actually work.
Parents never make a password
Every email carries a magic link. Families RSVP, sign up, and pay in two taps — so your reach isn't capped at the few who made accounts.
One honest fee, published up front
The platform is free. A transparent ~2% shows on every checkout, and your PTO keeps 100% of the sticker price — no surprises.
Comms and the books, together
Every payment auto-posts to a real treasury — budget vs. actual, receipts, reimbursements, audit trail. No second tool, no re-keying.
Survives every board handoff
Reversible year rollover, roles you control, and a full audit log. Next year's board inherits a system that just works.
Every school runs a different fundraiser. So does Homeroom.
Start from a ready-made setup and just fill in the details, or build your own structure from scratch. Flat gifts, per-lap or per-minute pledges, or both — it's a setting, never an assumption.
Goals and prizes at every level
- StudentA page per child — auto-made from your roster
- Teacher / RoomClass totals and classroom-vs-classroom races
- GradeGrade-level goals and bragging rights
- SchoolThe one number everyone is watching
Set a target and a prize ladder at any level you use — or turn levels off entirely. Running a simple direct ask? One goal, one page, done.
One platform. Every job your PTO does.
Real payments, honest fees.
Card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay at checkout — no account required. The 2% and processing show as line items, so families see exactly where every cent goes and your PTO keeps the full sticker.
- Funds settle to your PTO's own bank
- Partial refunds, cash and checks in one ledger
- Receipts emailed automatically
Every dollar tracked, automatically.
The headline number reconciles to Stripe and the bank by construction. Budget vs. actual by committee, a reimbursement queue, and a one-click audit packet — the treasurer's whole job, finally sane.
- Budget vs. actual, live
- Reimbursement approvals with receipts attached
- Export a clean audit packet in a click
No more shoebox of receipts.
Room parents snap a photo as they shop; it uploads to secure storage tagged with who bought it and for which room. The treasurer exports one tidy ZIP — every receipt named by person and classroom, plus a manifest.
- Snap-and-submit from any phone
- Named by submitter and room for the treasurer
- Approve → paid, with a full trail
Reach every family, no app required.
Beautiful, branded emails targeted by grade, room, or the whole school — each one carrying a magic link. Your PTO's name and colors on every message, sent from your own domain.
- Target by grade, homeroom, or school
- Per-PTO branding from your own domain
- Google Calendar and Meet built in
The roster that updates itself.
Grades, home rooms, and teachers as first-class structure — never a flattened spreadsheet. Parents keep their own family current by magic link, and rollover promotes everyone with one reversible click.
- Grade → Home Room → Teacher, kept intact
- Families self-update — you approve
- Reversible year rollover, nothing destroyed
Most PTOs don't buy one tool. They buy three.
A platform for dues and the store. A separate vendor for the big fundraiser. A third tool for the books. Three subscriptions, three sets of fees, and nobody adds them up. Here's the whole year in one number.
$22,000
$12,000 (55%)
One tool
Homeroom
- Subscriptions$0
- Fundraiser fee (2%)covered at checkout
- Dues, store & events (2%)covered at checkout
- Bookkeepingincluded
Lands in your bank
$22,000
Three tools
The typical stack
- Comms + dues platform · PTBoard Premier−$130
- Bookkeeping · MoneyMinder−$299
- A-thon vendor · no subscription — takes a % instead—
- A-thon fee · 15%−$1,800
- Dues, store & events · 0.7% + card−$427
Lands in your bank
$19,345
$2,655 gone to tools and fees
Same $22,000 raised. With Homeroom your PTO keeps
$2,655 more a year
Roughly $221 a month — teacher grants, field trips, the things you're actually raising it for.
How we calculated this — and where the numbers come from
The stack: PTBoard Premier ($129.99/yr, 0.7% + 20¢ on payments) for dues, store and events; a dedicated a-thon vendor at 15% for the big fundraiser (Boosterthon's MyBooster rate — Get Movin' applies a 15% donor credit, pre-checked); MoneyMinder ($299/yr) for the books. Card processing of 2.2% + 30¢ — the nonprofit Stripe rate PTBoard itself cites — applies to the non-a-thon portion. Average gift $36.67.
Homeroom: no subscription, 2% platform fee plus card processing, both shown at checkout and covered by the payer by default — so the PTO banks the sticker price. A PTO that chooses to absorb our fees instead would net about $20,742.
Swap in a different stack and the total moves, but the shape doesn't: Givebacks Pro is $499/yr and takes 7.5% on percent-model fundraisers; Membership Toolkit is $550–1,150/yr. Rates verified 22 Aug 2026 from PTBoard, Givebacks, Membership Toolkit, MoneyMinder, and Boosterthon. Pricing changes — check each vendor for current rates.
The published rates, side by side.
Notice the fundraising column. That's the one that hits your biggest event of the year — and it's the number hardest to find on a pricing page.
| Platform | Subscription | Fee on payments | Fee on fundraisers | Processing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homeroom | $0 | 2% | 2% | Your own Stripe · fees shown at checkout |
| PTBoard | $65–400/yr | 0.7% + 20¢ | 5% | Your own PayPal/Stripe |
| Givebacks | $499–599/yr* | 1.05% + 65¢ | 7.5% | Stripe only · *free for partner-state PTAs |
| Membership Toolkit | $550–1,150/yr | 0% | 0% | LumaPay 2.89% + 30¢ · text add-on extra |
| Cheddar Up | $0–420/yr | blended | blended | 3.95% + 95¢ free · 3.59% + 59¢ paid |
Why this is hard to check yourself: one leading platform's pricing page says only that “a transaction fee applies,” and its terms note it takes “a percentage of each monetary transaction.” The actual rates — 0.7% + 20¢ on payments, 5% on fundraising campaigns — appear only inside its own training site. We'd rather just print ours.
Published vendor rates as of 22 Aug 2026; tiers, add-ons, and processing options vary and change. Percentages exclude card processing except where noted. Check each vendor for current pricing.
What the a-thon vendors actually take.
This is the event that funds your year, so it's the fee that matters most. Watch for “0% platform fee” — it often means a donor surcharge switched on by default.
- 2%HomeroomPublished platform fee, shown at checkout. No subscription, no donor tip prompt.
- 15%Boosterthon — MyBoosterHelp centre: “the Total Fees Withheld will always be 15% of the Paid Donations.”
- 15%Get Movin'A 15% “donor credit” surcharge, pre-checked at checkout. Gross platform rate not published.
- 0% + 10% tip99PledgesNo platform fee — but a 10% tip to the vendor is pre-selected at checkout, plus 3.49% + 49¢.
- 35–50%Boosterthon — full serviceSliding scale on gross collected, plus a $2,000 non-refundable base cost (2021 executed contract).
The gap worth knowing: one managed vendor markets that “schools keep 95%,” while its own help centre states the baseline is 85% — the rest only comes back when donors volunteer to cover the fee. We'd rather publish one number and keep it.
Verified 22 Aug 2026 from vendor pricing pages, help centres, and live checkout pages; Boosterthon full-service figures are from an executed program contract published in a Kentucky school-board record (2021) and may not reflect current terms. Card processing applies on every platform, including ours. Check each vendor for current pricing.
The others each do a slice. You end up buying all of them.
That's why the real cost isn't one platform's rate — it's the stack. Homeroom is the whole column in one tool.
| Homeroom | Comms + dues platform | A-thon vendor | Bookkeeping tool | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Announcements to every family | ||||
| Roster, classes and directory | ||||
| Membership dues | ||||
| Store and spirit wear | ||||
| Event tickets and volunteer signups | ||||
| Fun run / a-thon with student pages | ||||
| Goals and prizes at every level | ||||
| Receipt capture and reimbursements | ||||
| Budget vs. actual and the books | ||||
| One subscription, one fee |
Covered Partial or add-on Not coveredCompared by category; individual products vary — check each vendor.
The things you'd want to know before switching.
Is it really free? How do you make money?
The platform costs nothing — no subscription, no per-family or per-admin fees. We take a published 2% on money that moves through Homeroom, shown as a line item at checkout and covered by the payer by default, so your PTO banks the full sticker price. That's the whole business model; there's nothing else to find.
Do parents have to create an account?
No. Every email carries a magic link, so families RSVP, sign up, and pay in two taps without inventing a password. Accounts are optional and progressive — which is exactly why reach doesn't stall at the handful of parents willing to register.
We're a PTA / HSA / booster club, not a PTO. Does it still fit?
Yes. Nothing in Homeroom assumes a particular kind of parent group — roles, dues, fundraisers, and the roster are all configurable. The name is just the name.
Can we run our fundraiser the way we already do it?
That's the point. Start from a ready-made setup — fun run, color run, walk-a-thon, read-a-thon, giving day, class challenge — or build your own from scratch. Flat gifts or per-lap and per-minute pledges, and goals and prizes at whichever levels you use: student, classroom, grade, school.
How does the money reach our bank?
Card payments run through Stripe and settle to your PTO's own account. Cash and checks get recorded alongside them, so the treasury reconciles in one place instead of two.
What happens when our board turns over?
Roles are data you control, the year rolls over without destroying anything, and every privileged action is in an audit log. The incoming board inherits a working system rather than a mystery — that's a design goal, not an afterthought.
Is our families' information safe?
Every row is scoped to your organization and enforced by the database itself, not just by careful queries. The directory is opt-in per family, families can be hard-hidden for safety reasons, and card details never touch our servers — Stripe hosts the payment fields.
How long does setup take?
A weekend, comfortably. Create your PTO in about two minutes, add grades, rooms and teachers, invite your board, then share a join link so families add themselves. No onboarding call, no data-migration ticket.
Still wondering something? Start free — you can look around before inviting anyone.
Bring your PTO home.
Set it up in a weekend, invite your board, and give families a tool they'll actually open. Free to start — no card required.
Free platform · transparent ~2% · your money, your bank.
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