Terms of service — YeshivaSync

1.Who this agreement is between

These terms are between YeshivaSuite LLC, trading as YeshivaSync ("we", "us"), and the school or institution that signs up to use YeshivaSync ("the school", "you").

YeshivaSync is operated by YeshivaSuite LLC, a New York limited liability company. What we do and do not commit to on availability and support is set out in "Availability, and what we do not promise" rather than left to be assumed.

Our contact details for anything to do with these terms are: YeshivaSuite LLC, 418 Broadway, Ste N, Albany, NY 12207, privacy@yeshivasuite.com.

By creating a school account, or by letting your staff use the service, you agree to these terms on behalf of the school. The person who signs up confirms they are authorised to agree on the school's behalf.

These terms, the privacy policy, and the school data addendum go together. The addendum is part of this agreement, and where it says something more specific about how we handle school data, the addendum is the one that governs.

2.What the service is

YeshivaSync is a web application for running the day-to-day operations of a yeshiva. Schools use it to record attendance across sedarim, record test and quiz marks, score a school-defined rubric, track follow-ups and fines, record student leave, and produce reports for the hanhala and for parents.

It also includes a parent portal, where a parent can see their own children's information, and a staff messaging and task area.

The service is provided as software you access over the internet. There is nothing to install, and we host it for you. We may add, change, or remove features over time.

The service is a record-keeping tool. It does not make decisions about a student, and it is not a substitute for the school's own judgement, its own records, or any reporting the school is required to do by law or by its accrediting body.

3.Who may use it

Accounts are for schools, and for the staff and parents a school invites. Every person who uses the service needs their own login. Logins must not be shared.

Staff accounts are created by invitation from the school's own administrators. The school decides who gets an account and what each person can see.
Parent accounts are created by a parent, and are linked to their children either by the parent adding a child, or by matching an email address the school already had on file for that parent.
Students do not get staff or parent accounts, and the service is not sold to students. A school may switch on an optional read-only portal that lets a bochur see his own attendance and marks; the school decides whether to use it and for whom, and it is off until the school asks for it.
You must be an adult to create an account.

The school is responsible for keeping its list of staff accounts current, and for removing access when a staff member leaves. We give the school the tools to do that; we do not monitor it for you.

4.The school's data, and what we will and will not do with it

The data the school and its staff and parents put into the service belongs to the school. We hold it and process it on the school's behalf, on the school's instructions, so that we can provide the service. We claim no ownership of it, and using the service gives us no licence to it beyond what running the service requires.

These are commitments, not descriptions. They hold whether or not a particular law requires them of us:

We do not sell student, family, or staff data. Not to anyone, for any price, in any form, including as part of a sale of the business except where the school's whole account transfers with it under section 21.
We do not use student data for advertising, and we do not target advertising at students or their families. There is no advertising anywhere in the service.
We do not build a profile of a student for anything other than showing his own school its own records. No behavioural profile, no scoring across schools, no research dataset.
We do not use school or student data to train machine learning models, and no student record is sent to an artificial intelligence service by the software's own operation. There are two places where a member of staff can deliberately send text out. The in-app Help assistant passes the question a staff member types to Anthropic so it can compose an answer from our own manual, and a question can name a boy; nothing is kept — there is no chat log — and a person who would rather not send anything simply does not use it. And the microphone button, where a browser offers one, uses that browser's own dictation, which in Chrome means the spoken words go to Google; we neither store nor transmit them ourselves.
We use the data only to provide and support the service for the school that entered it. We do not use one school's data for another school's benefit, or for our own purposes beyond keeping the service working.
We do not disclose the data to anyone else, except to the companies listed in the privacy policy that we need in order to run the service, and except where we are compelled by law — in which case we will tell the school first unless we are legally forbidden to.
We will return or delete the school's data at the school's direction. Section 18 says how, and how long we take.

We will not change these seven commitments in a way that reduces them without the school's agreement. That is a deliberately higher bar than the rest of these terms, which we can change on notice.

5.What the school is responsible for

Because the school controls what goes in, the school is responsible for:

The accuracy of its records. Attendance, marks, rubric scores, notes and fines are whatever your staff enter. We do not check them, correct them, or verify them.
Having the right to collect and hold the information it enters about its students and their families, including having whatever permission or notice its own rules and local law require. This includes date of birth and medical information, which the service is built to hold because schools need it.
Deciding what its staff may see. Access levels, roles, and per-class assignments are set by the school, not by us.
Deciding what gets sent to parents, and when.
What its staff write. Free-text notes about a student are records. They are stored, other staff with access can read them, some are shown to parents once published, and nothing removes them on a timer.
Telling families what the school does with their information. The school has the relationship with the family; we do not.
Keeping its own contact details with us current, so notices under section 19 reach somebody.

The privacy policy explains what data the service holds and who can see it. The school data addendum is a shorter summary written for a board or a vaad.

6.Free trial

A new school gets its first 30 days free, counted from the day its account is created — not from the day it enters a card. During those days it has the full service.

When the school subscribes it chooses a plan and enters card details. If its free days have not run out yet, nothing is charged until they do, and we email before that first payment is taken. If they have already run out, the first payment is taken when it subscribes. After that the subscription renews once a month on the same date, at the plan chosen, until the school cancels. Cancel before a payment is taken and nothing is charged at all.

If a school cancels, or a payment stops going through, the account becomes read-only rather than closed — and its data is kept. It is not deleted and it is not held back from you.
Staff can still sign in and look at everything already recorded, and print or export it.
Attendance cannot be marked, marks and rubric scores cannot be entered, and parent reports cannot be sent.
Automatic emails, such as parent reports and the weekly digest, stop going out.

We will never delete a school's data because it has not paid. If the school subscribes later, the account goes back to normal with its history intact.

⚠️ The read-only state described here is the intended behaviour and it is what we will honour. The part of it that restricts an account is not built yet, so no school is currently restricted for any reason. This is a promise about what happens when it is built, not a description of code that already runs — and we would rather say so than let a school assume otherwise.

7.What it costs, and how renewal works

After the free trial, the service costs one fee per school, set by how many bochurim the school has. There is no charge per member of staff, per class, or per report, and adding more of any of them does not change the price.

1 to 69 bochurim — US$70 a month
70 to 99 — US$85 a month
100 to 149 — US$100 a month
150 to 199 — US$125 a month

A school with more bochurim than that should ask us and we will quote it. The bands are read exactly as written: a school with 69 bochurim pays US$70, one with 70 pays US$85. No size falls into two bands, so a school never gets two different prices from two conversations.

A school that would rather pay once a year instead of every month can, at twelve times the monthly price — US$840 a year at the entry band. That is the same money, not a discount, and we would rather say so than imply a saving that is not there. What it buys is one invoice and one approval instead of twelve.

Only active students count — not archived, withdrawn, graduated or former ones. The count that sets the band is taken when the school subscribes and then once a year, not every month. A school that grows during the year is never re-billed for adding a boy, and crossing a band boundary changes the price only at that yearly check.

The term: A monthly subscription runs a month at a time, paid at the start of each month. A yearly one runs twelve months from the day it starts, paid in advance. Either way the school is paying ahead of the period it covers, never behind it.
It renews on its own: Unless the school cancels first, the subscription renews by itself — each month for a monthly plan, each year for a yearly one — at the price then in force, and payment is taken on the renewal date. Cancelling any time before that date stops the next renewal.
When we will remind you: For a yearly subscription we email the school's administrators 30 days before each renewal, with the date, the exact amount and how to cancel. For a monthly subscription we do not send that email every month — it would be twelve reminders a year for a charge that does not change. But we will always email before a monthly price changes for any reason, including when an agreed introductory rate comes to an end, so that a charge never goes up without the school being told first.
Currency and tax: Fees are in United States dollars and do not include any sales, use, or similar tax that may apply. If a tax applies, it is added to the fee. Many yeshivas are tax-exempt: send us the exemption certificate and we will not add tax.
Card details: When paid card payment is switched on, it will be handled by a third-party payment processor. Card numbers go to the processor, not to us: we never see, hold, or store a full card number. Until then, invoicing is arranged directly with the school outside the software, and no payment mechanism exists in the service at all.

We may change the standard price. If we do, we will tell the school at least 60 days beforehand, and the new price takes effect only from a renewal that falls after those 60 days — never in the middle of a period already paid for. If the school does not want to continue at the new price, it can cancel before then and owes nothing further.

If a payment fails or is late, we will contact the school. If it is still unpaid 30 days after it was due, we may make the account read-only, on the same terms as the end of a free trial. We will not delete the school's data, and we will not sell or withhold it to force payment. If we have to chase an unpaid invoice, the school covers our reasonable costs of collecting it.

No payment is taken through the service today and no payment processor is connected. The renewal reminder described above has to be sent by hand until there is a billing system. It will be sent.

8.Cancelling, and refunds

The school can cancel at any time by writing to privacy@yeshivasuite.com. We will confirm in writing that the cancellation is recorded, and if we do not confirm within five business days the school should assume we did not receive it and chase us.

Cancelling stops the next renewal. The school keeps the full service to the end of the period it has already paid for — the rest of the month on a monthly plan, the rest of the year on a yearly one — and nothing goes read-only before that date.

Our position on refunds is that a period already begun is not refunded in part, because the month or the year is the unit being bought. On a monthly plan that is rarely worth arguing about: the most a school can lose by cancelling at a bad moment is the rest of one month. Two exceptions we will honour:

If the school cancels within 30 days of its first paid period starting, we refund that first payment in full and the school keeps read-only access to its data.
If we end the agreement for our own reasons under section 18, or we stop offering the service, we refund the unused part of whatever has been paid for.

After cancelling, the school can ask us for a copy of its data, and can ask us to delete it. Section 18 explains how deletion works and what is kept.

9.Acceptable use

Use the service for running your school. Do not:

Try to reach data belonging to another school, another family, or a student you have not been given access to.
Share a login, or leave an account active for someone who has left the school.
Try to break, overload, probe, scrape, or reverse-engineer the service, or get around any access control in it.
Upload anything unlawful, or any malicious code.
Put information into free-text notes that the school would not be willing to stand behind. Notes about a student are records, and a parent or a court may one day read them.
Use the service to send anything to a family that the school is not entitled to send.
Resell the service, rent it out, or give access to anyone outside the school without our agreement.
Use the service to hold information the school has no business holding, or to hold records for an organisation other than the school on the account.

If we find serious misuse, we may suspend the account. Except where the misuse is causing immediate harm, we will ask the school to put it right first. Either way we will tell the school why, and we will keep its data.

10.Availability, and what we do not promise

We work to keep the service running and to keep it correct, but we do not promise that it will always be available, or that it will always be free of faults.

In particular, we do not promise:

That the service will be available at any particular time, or for any particular percentage of the time. There is no service level agreement and no uptime credit.
Any support response time. Support is by email, we aim to reply within two business days, and we would rather say that honestly than promise an hour.
That a report, average, or percentage the service produces is fit for any official purpose. Check anything that matters before you rely on it.
That an email the service sends will arrive. Email delivery depends on the receiving mail provider, which is outside our control.
That data the school entered incorrectly will be caught by us.
That the service meets the requirements of any particular law, regulation, funding body, or accreditation standard. If the school has obligations of that kind, the school should check for itself, with its own advisers, whether the service fits them.

We rely on other companies to run the service — for hosting, for logins, for sending email. The privacy policy lists them. An outage at one of them is an outage for us too, and we have no more ability to fix it than the school does.

11.Backups, exports, and keeping your own copy

We keep the service's database with a hosting provider that takes its own backups. We do not promise a particular backup frequency, a particular retention period, or that any specific piece of data can be recovered after it is deleted.

The school should keep its own copy of anything it cannot afford to lose. Being straight about what the software can do for you today:

Reports, class views and parent progress reports can be printed or saved as PDF from inside the app.
The test gradebook has a button that downloads a spreadsheet file.
Everything else — the full roster, attendance history, rubric scores, notes, follow-ups, contact details — we export for the school on request, by hand, in a spreadsheet or database format. There is no self-service button for a whole-school export yet.

That third one is a real commitment, not a courtesy: the school can ask for a complete copy of its data at any time, for any reason, including in order to leave, and we will provide it within 30 days. We will not charge for it, and we will not make leaving harder than arriving.

12.Warranties — what we disclaim

This section takes away legal protections that would otherwise apply automatically, so it is written to be noticed rather than buried.

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE". WE DISCLAIM ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

To the fullest extent the law allows, that disclaimer also covers any implied warranty of title, accuracy, quiet enjoyment, or non-infringement, anything implied by a course of dealing or by trade usage, and any equivalent warranty implied outside those rules by the general law. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free, or that data will not be lost.

In plain words: if the service is down, wrong, or loses something, the school's remedy is the limited one in section 13 and not a claim that we guaranteed the software would work.

Nothing in this section takes away a warranty or a right that cannot be excluded by law. Some states do not allow the exclusion of certain implied warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to your school.

13.Limitation of liability

This section limits what we can be made to pay if something goes wrong. Together with section 12 it is the most consequential part of this agreement for both sides, which is why it is written in plain words rather than buried.

To the fullest extent the law allows, neither side is liable to the other for lost profits, lost revenue, lost goodwill, loss of use, or any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive loss, however it arises, even if it was warned the loss was possible.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability for everything connected with the service, added together across all claims, is limited to the greater of the fees the school paid or owed us in the twelve months before the claim arose, and US$100.

There is one exception, and it is deliberately in the school's favour. For a claim arising from a breach of our security obligations, or of the seven data commitments in section 4, that limit is three times the amount above. Records about somebody's children are not the same as a software outage, and the limit should not pretend they are.

One thing to be clear about, so that it is not a surprise later:

These limits are low in absolute terms, because they are measured against what the school pays us — the fee starts at US$70 a month and rises with the size of the school — rather than against what a loss might come to. That is the ordinary shape of a limit in software of this size, and it is set out here in plain words rather than buried.
A school that needs a higher limit than this should raise it with us before signing rather than after, and we will discuss it.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for fraud, for fraudulent misrepresentation, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law. Nothing in this section limits the school's obligation to pay fees due.

14.Indemnity

An indemnity is a promise to cover the other side's costs if a third party sues them over something that was your responsibility. There are two, running in opposite directions.

The school covers us: The school will defend and cover us against a claim by a third party — a family, a former student, a member of staff, or an authority — that arises from the data the school put into the service, from the school not having the right to collect or hold it, from what its staff wrote in it, from what the school chose to send to parents using it, or from the school's own use of the service in breach of these terms. This does not apply to the extent the claim is caused by our own breach of this agreement.
We cover the school: We will defend and cover the school against a claim by a third party that the service itself infringes that third party's copyright, trade mark, or trade secret. If that happens we can instead change the service so it no longer infringes, or end the agreement and refund the unused part of the year. This does not apply to a claim caused by the school's own data, by the school combining the service with something else, or by the school using an old version we asked it to stop using.

Either way, the side asking to be covered has to tell the other promptly, let them run the defence, and cooperate. Neither side may settle a claim in a way that admits fault or costs money for the other without their written agreement.

The indemnity we give is subject to the cap in section 13. A school that needs it uncapped should raise that with us before signing.

15.Confidentiality

Each side will keep the other's confidential information confidential, use it only for this agreement, and protect it at least as carefully as its own.

The school's data is the school's confidential information. Our confidential information is things like how the software is built and what we charge a particular school.

This does not cover information that is already public, that the receiving side already knew or worked out on its own, or that a law or a court requires to be disclosed. If a law or a court requires disclosure, the side being compelled will tell the other first, unless it is forbidden to.

This section carries on after the agreement ends, for as long as the information stays confidential.

16.Security, and telling you if something goes wrong

We will keep security measures appropriate to the fact that these are records about minors, including health information. The privacy policy sets out what is in place today, and is equally clear about what we do not claim: we hold no security certification, we are not audited by anyone, and we have not had an outside penetration test.

If personal information held for the school has been exposed, we will tell the school without unreasonable delay, and in any case within 72 hours of confirming it. The clock starts when we confirm there was an exposure, not when we first suspect something, because a suspicion that turns out to be nothing is not worth alarming a school over.

That first message may be short and incomplete. We would rather tell the school inside 72 hours what we actually know than wait until the picture is complete. We will keep the school updated as we learn more, including if it turns out worse than the first message said.

Notifying families or any authority is the school's decision and the school's to make, because the school is the one with the relationship to the family. We do not promise a deadline for that, because it is not ours to meet. What we promise is to get the school the facts in time and at no charge.

We will not tell a third party about an incident affecting the school's data before we have told the school, unless a law requires it.

17.Changes to the service and to these terms

We may change the service. We will not remove a feature the school depends on without telling the school first, and we will not make a change that materially reduces the service during a year the school has paid for.

We may change these terms. If a change materially affects the school, we will tell the school at least 30 days before it takes effect, by email to the school's administrators and by updating this page. Smaller changes — a correction, a clarification — we make by updating the page and the date at the top of it.

We will not change how the school's data is handled by quietly rewriting this page. Any change to section 4, section 16, or section 18 is notified in advance and dated, so the school can show, at any point, which version it was operating under and that the handling of its records is under its control rather than ours. That is a deliberate constraint on us, and a school reviewing us should hold us to it.

The date at the top of this page is when it last changed. If the school keeps using the service after a change takes effect, that counts as accepting the new terms. If the school does not accept a material change, it can cancel and we will refund the unused part of the year.

The seven commitments in section 4 are the exception. We will not reduce those without the school's agreement, whatever notice we give.

18.Suspension and termination, and what happens to the data

The school can stop using the service at any time. We can end this agreement by giving the school 60 days' written notice, or immediately if the school seriously breaches these terms and does not put it right within 14 days of being asked. We can suspend an account immediately if it is causing harm, and we will explain why the same day.

When the agreement ends:

The school can ask for a copy of its data. Ask at privacy@yeshivasuite.com. We provide it within 30 days, at no charge.
The school can ask us to delete its data. We will delete it within 30 days of the request, and confirm in writing when it is done. If the school asks us to, we will say specifically what was deleted and what remains.
Deleting a school removes its records from the live database, including students, attendance, marks, rubric scores, notes, follow-ups, leave records, student photos, staff invitations, and staff and parent contact details held for that school.
The access and change log keeps its entries. It holds record numbers, the staff member who acted, and the field that changed — usually the field's name, and for some kinds of change the new value too. It holds no name, address, medical text or note. It is the trail of who did what, which is exactly why it is kept.
Copies may remain in the hosting provider's backups for a period after deletion, and in email that has already been sent. Neither can be recalled.

If the school does not ask us to delete anything, we keep the data so the school can come back to it, for as long as that takes. We do not delete a school's records on our own initiative, and we do not delete them for non-payment.

There is one thing to be aware of before signing. A student record can be archived, and archiving is the normal way a school removes a boy from its lists. Archiving is not deletion: the record and its whole history stay in the database, and stay visible on the school's archived and former-student screens, with no time limit. Real deletion of a student is a separate action, and the privacy policy explains exactly what it removes and the one thing it leaves behind.

Deleting a whole school is done by hand, by running database commands, because there is no button for it in the software. The 30-day window above is achievable that way, and it is written as 30 days rather than 24 hours for exactly that reason.

19.Notices

Notices to the school are sent by email to the email addresses of the school's hanhala accounts, and may also be shown inside the app. A notice sent by email counts as given on the next business day after it was sent.

Notices to us go to privacy@yeshivasuite.com, and count as given on the next business day after we acknowledge them. Anything that has to reach us in a hurry — a security concern, a deletion request, a cancellation — should be sent there and should say so in the subject line.

Formal notices about this agreement can also be sent on paper to YeshivaSuite LLC, 418 Broadway, Ste N, Albany, NY 12207.

It is the school's job to keep at least one working hanhala email address on the account. We are not responsible for a notice that did not arrive because the only address on file was out of date.

20.If we disagree

Talk first: Before either side starts a formal claim, it will raise the problem in writing and both sides will try in good faith to sort it out for 30 days. This is not a formality: almost everything that goes wrong in software this size is fixable by two people reading the same screen.
Governing law: This agreement is governed by the law of the State of New York, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.
Where a claim is brought: The state and federal courts located in New York have exclusive jurisdiction, and both sides consent to those courts. Either side may still ask any court for an urgent order to stop a breach of confidentiality or a misuse of data.
No class claims: Any claim is brought in each side's own name, not as part of a class or representative action.
Time limit: A claim connected with this agreement must be brought within one year of the party bringing it first knowing the facts, or it is waived, except for a claim about unpaid fees.

21.Other terms

Whole agreement, and what wins: These terms, the privacy policy, and the school data addendum are the whole agreement between us about the service, and replace anything said or written before. If they conflict, a separate agreement signed by both of us wins first, then the school data addendum on anything to do with handling school data, then these terms, then the privacy policy.
Transfer of this agreement: The school may not transfer this agreement without our written agreement, except to an entity that takes over the school itself, on notice to us. We may transfer it to whoever takes over this business. Because the school's data would go with it, we will tell every school at least 30 days before that happens, the buyer will be bound by these same terms including the seven commitments in section 4, and any school that would rather not continue can cancel and take a full copy of its data with it.
Sub-contractors: We use the companies listed in the privacy policy to run the service, and we stay responsible to the school for what they do with the school's data. If we add or change one in a way that affects the school's data, we will update that list and tell the school's administrators at least 30 days beforehand, and the school may cancel and take a copy of its data if it objects.
Force majeure: Neither side is in breach for a delay or failure caused by something genuinely outside its control. Because most of what could take this service down is somebody else's equipment, the list is specific: failure or outage of the internet, of a hosting, database, authentication or email provider we depend on, of a domain name system, or of the electricity supply; and natural disaster, epidemic, war, civil disturbance, strike, or government action. If such an event stops the service for more than 15 days in a row, the school may end the agreement and we refund the unused part of the year. This clause does not excuse paying money that is owed, and it is not a way to avoid the data commitments in section 4.
Survival: Sections 4 (the data commitments), 11 to 16 (backups and exports, warranties, liability, indemnity, confidentiality, security), 18 (what happens to the data), 19 (notices), 20 (disputes) and 21 (these other terms) carry on after the agreement ends, as does the school's obligation to pay fees already due.
If part of this fails: If any part of these terms cannot be enforced, it is treated as narrowed to what can be enforced, or struck out if it cannot, and the rest still applies.
Not waived by delay: If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given up the right to enforce it later. A waiver only counts if it is in writing.
Nobody else can sue on this: This agreement is between the school and us. Nobody else can enforce it — including a parent, a student, or a member of staff. That is a statement about this contract only, and it takes nothing away from whatever rights a family has under the law.
We are not partners: Nothing here makes either of us the other's partner, employer, or joint venturer, and neither of us can bind the other to anything. One deliberate exception, because it matters for student records: as to the school's data we act on the school's instructions and under the school's direction, which is the arrangement described in the privacy policy and the addendum. This clause is not intended to cut across that.
Using the school's name: We will not name the school, use its logo, or say it is a customer in any public material without its written permission. If it is given, it can be withdrawn and we will stop.
Suggestions: If the school suggests an improvement, we may build it, with no obligation and no payment, and we will not treat the suggestion itself as the school's confidential information. Most of what is good in this software came from a menahel saying it was wrong.
Where the law applies: The service is operated from the United States and hosted there. The school is responsible for its own compliance with any export or sanctions rules that apply to it, and confirms it is not somewhere US law forbids us to provide the service to.
Complaints, abuse, and copyright: A security concern, a report of misuse, or a claim that material in the service infringes somebody's copyright all go to privacy@yeshivasuite.com, and we will deal with it. There is no public posting and no forum here, but the school and its staff do upload material — photographs, spreadsheets, and their own writing — so a copyright complaint is possible. If we are notified of infringing material we will remove or disable it, and we may end the account of anyone who repeatedly infringes. If the school believes we removed something wrongly, tell us and we will look again.
Getting in touch: For anything about these terms, write to privacy@yeshivasuite.com.