Home Wizard is a personal home manager that makes it easier for you to take care of your home, so that you can save energy, improve safety, and more. Home Wizard creates a personalized home care program for your particular home based on the specific features of your home, your goals and priorities, your local climate, and your current level of knowledge about home care.

The Home Wizard app is designed to only take a few minutes to set up, and if your home care program doesn’t turn out to be perfect, it is very easy to later tweak your personalization choices.

Home Wizard was developed by Applica Solutions, which specializes in applied customer loyalty solutions. Home service providers (such as realtors, home inspectors, contractors, and builders) give Home Wizard to their customers to show them that they really care about helping them to take care of their homes, and to build their personal brand with them.

If you are a home professional (realtor, home inspector, contractor, builder, etc.), learn how you can use Home Wizard to grow your business and build your personal brand: www.applica-solutions.com/ForHomeProfessionals

Entering a ‘Promo Code’ in your Home Wizard iPhone or Android app unlocks bonus features of the Home Wizard app. Promo codes are given out by home professionals to their customers.

Home Wizard is designed for home professionals (realtors, home inspectors, contractors, builders, etc.) who really care about their customers, and who want to help make it easier for their customers to take care of their homes, save energy, improve safety, and more. With a promo code, a user can see special offers, announcements, etc. from their home professional.

Your promo code can be put in when the Home Wizard app is initially setup, or it can be added later by clicking on the ‘Promo Code’ link that is in the “Admin” section of the app.

The Home Wizard personal home manager creates a personalized monthly home care program for you based on the type of home that you live in, your home features, local climate, your goals, knowledge level, and priorities.

Every home is unique, and everyone has their own unique goals and needs for caring for their home. For example, someone living in in a single-family house who only cares about keeping it safe will want a very different personalized home care program than someone who is living in a leased condo that is concerned about saving energy and being more green.

Over years of research, Home Wizard has created a large, comprehensive database of recommended tasks, tips and home improvement ideas for every home feature and twelve possible goals . . . and has analyzed how each of these are affected by a variety of important conditions. When Home Wizard calculates a personalized home care program for you, it takes into account your input on 6 different factors:

1. Dwelling Type: The possible features for a single-family home, for example, are very different than for an apartment or a vacation condo for winter use. When you select your dwelling type, Home Wizard automatically adjusts the possible choices of home features to match the type of dwelling that you live in.

2. Home Features: You can select the specific features that apply to your particular home. For example, the type of HVAC systems that you have, your appliances, the structural elements of your home, outside features, furnishings, and safety & other features. The recommended maintenance tasks for these features are calculated by Home Wizard, along with the appropriate helpful operating tips and home improvement ideas . . . but before these get included into your final home care program, the Home Wizard calculations also take into account other factors which are described below.

3. Local Climate: Your personalized home care program is adjusted for the climate, timing of seasons, length of seasons, etc. for where you live.

4. Goals: Your personalized home care program is customized for you based on which of 12 possible goals that you pick, and the importance that you put on them. For example, you may have certain goals that you pick as your top goals, but others you may consider as only secondary goals. And there may be some of the 12 goals that you do not want included at all.

5. Knowledge Level: Someone who has lived in their type of home for 20 years and is very handy has completely different needs from someone who has just bought their first summer vacation townhouse, or is living in their type of home for the first time. Home Wizard allows you to choose your particular knowledge level, so that your personalized home care program is consistent with your needs.

6. Priority: Home Wizard scores each task, tip and idea based on its benefits and costs. The ones that are rated as “five stars” are the ones that have the highest benefits relative to the cost of doing this task, tips or idea . . . and therefore have the highest priority score. You can select which level of priorities that you want to receive.

Home Wizard’s calculations takes all of these inputs and then uses proprietary algorithms to create an optimized schedule of the specific maintenance tasks, helpful tips, and home improvement ideas that are recommended for your specific home features, and your particular goals and needs.

For example, some maintenance tasks that are recommended for the particular features of your home are due during certain seasons of the year, some are due once a year, whereas some are only once every 5 years. The proprietary algorithms in Home Wizard spread these tasks out so that you are not swamped with tasks one month, and then have nothing the next month. But since certain tasks are seasonal, such as changing air conditioning filters for the summertime, these get assigned to specific months. Also, tasks that require tools, skills or contractors that are similar are factored to be grouped together. And of course, potential tasks are screened by the Home Wizard algorithms to ensure they are completely consistent with your selected goals and priorities.

Similarly with helpful tips and improvement ideas, Home Wizard has a database of over 4,000 tips and ideas, but the ones that get included in your personal home care program are only the ones that are consistent with all of the criteria that you have input. And they get included in the months when they are most appropriate for you, given your seasonal local climate, home features, goals, and knowledge level.

You can also put in your own Custom Tasks, and Home Wizard will automatically include them in with your monthly reminders for the months that you assign them to, and can even allow for Custom Tasks that have multiple year cycles.

Properly taking care of your home can save you money on energy, improve safety for your family, help avoid unscheduled repairs, and the other goals that you may have.

But let’s face it, doing routine home care tasks isn’t typically fun, and changing behavior for helpful operating tips or planning home improvement projects is not easy. And if you get your monthly lists and think to yourself “wow, these are great, I should really do them” . . . but don’t take any action . . . then this isn’t really helping you to achieve your goals. So how does Home Wizard overcome these challenges?

Home Wizard applies 6 principles to help motivate, inform, support and encourage you to actually do the specific tasks, tips, and improvement ideas that will help you to achieve your goals for your particular home. These 6 principles are:

1. Make it easier: The easier it is to do, the more likely it is that we will do the right things. So to make it easier to do the recommended home care program for your particular home, Home Wizard gives you the information you need at your fingertips, and gets it to you right when you need it. The app also gives you easy access to additional helpful information, and makes it easy for you to keep track of what needs to be done, and what items have already been completed.

2. Personalize, personalize, personalize: Personalization is one of the most important principles of Home Wizard. It’s much more likely that we will be motivated to do things when we have the confidence that the advice we are receiving applies exactly to our specific situation and needs. So the Home Wizard app calculates the tasks & tips that are specifically recommended for your particular home, local climate, features, goals, priorities, and knowledge level.

3. Increase the transparency of benefits: The more clear are the benefits, the more likely it is that we will be motivated to take action. This is why when you get your monthly Home Wizard list of personalized tasks & tips, each of them is shown with an at-a-glance rating of one to five “stars” for their relative priority based on their benefits relative to their costs. And in the details screen for each of them, it gives a description of the benefits and costs of doing this particular task, tip or idea.

4. Provide timely reminders: We are all busy, and even if we know everything that there is to possibly know about home care for achieving our specific goals for each and every feature of our particular home . . . it’s easy to forget what exactly needs to get done and when. This is why Home Wizard provides automatic monthly reminders, and allows custom tasks to be added to these reminders as well.

5. Give how-to information: For some people, all they need are reminders. But for others, another barrier to getting things done is to better understand what is involved . . . regardless of whether they plan to do it themselves, or to hire a contractor. So this is why the Home Wizard app includes links for “Even More Information” which takes you to the appropriate pages of the Home Wizard “Home Care Library,” which have detailed how-to information, questions & answers, related articles, and more.

6. Track your performance: And finally, seeing your progress can be a great motivator. Many of us take a great deal of satisfaction by being able to check things off as they are completed, and this is why the Home Wizard app allows you to check off and monitor which tasks are “done” and which ones are still to do.

Routine Care Tasks are things that should be done on a regular basis to achieve your goals for each of the features of your particular home.

Helpful Tips are suggestions for the best ways to use the particular features of your home to achieve your goals, and these typically require only a change in behavior.

And Improvement Ideas are suggestions for home improvements that will help you to achieve your goals for your particular home. These typically involve a capital investment, and provide benefits in the future, such as saving you time and/or money.

So as an example, let’s say you live in a single-family home, and one of your home features is a clothes dryer, and your goals include energy savings and safety. A Routine Care task could be to check once a year that the outside flap on your dryer vent is not stuck open due to link build-up (a stuck flap allows heat in and out of your home, which wastes energy, and it also allows a place for pests to get in). And a Helpful Tip could be to use an indoor drying rack during the winter for some of your clothes (for example towels), to both save energy and add to needed humidity to your home (if you live in a cold climate). And an Improvement Idea could be to install a lint alarm (since lint is very flammable, and dryer fires are one of the leading causes of home fires).

Applica Solutions is a developer of applied customer loyalty solutions, and has developed the Home Wizard app along with a suite of other services, to help home service providers to grow and improve their businesses.

If you are a home professional, you know how important it is to keep in touch with your customers on a regular basis. And by making it easier for them to take care of their home, save energy, improve safety, etc. it is a great way to show them that you really care about them, and a great way to build your personal brand.

By giving your customers a ‘promo code,’ they will be able to see your name, picture or image, contact information, and a message from you on the Welcome screen of their app. And they will also see your name and contact information at the bottom of the most important screens in the app. And they see your name with a link on the Admin screen that will take them to a screen in the app that can be customized with information all about you!

You can learn more about giving the Home Wizard app to your customers, as well as other solutions for home professionals, by going to Applica Solutions at www.applica-solutions.com

There are two ways that you can create your own custom tasks and have them included in with your personalized home care program:

1. You can click on the arrow next to an existing task from your Routine Care task list for any month, and this will take you to the “Task Details” screen for this task. And then at the bottom of this screen you will see a button that says “Customize this Task.” When you click on this button, it gives you a screen where you can choose to change the task, delete the task, or delete the entire feature that the task is associated with. When you click the “Change this Task” button it will open a screen that allows you to change everything about the task . . . it’s name, the months that the task is due, the yearly cycle for the task, the image that is displayed, any of the comments, etc.

2. Or you can go to the “More Features” section of the app and there is a button for “Add Custom Tasks.” When you click on this button, it will take you to a screen where you can see and change any custom tasks that you have already added. And you can click the “plus” button in the upper right-hand corner, which will open a new screen where you can fill in the name you want for a new custom task, the months that the task is due, the yearly cycle for the task, the image that is displayed, any of the comments, etc.

On the “Admin” screen there is a button for “Turn-Off / Delete” that takes you to a screen which shows all of the homes that you have added to your Home Wizard app. If you delete a home, it will erase all of the personalization choices that you have made for this home, as well as all past tasks & tips that you have received for this home. And you will no longer receive any future tasks & tips for this home.

But let’s say you have moved, and don’t want to receive any future tasks & tips for this home, but still want to keep a record of your past tasks & tips and which ones that you had marked as “done.” Then you can move the slider for this home to the “off” position, and this will stop new tasks & tips from being downloaded, but will keep all of your past tasks & tips, and will still indicate which ones have been marked “done.”

Another time you might want to use the “Turn-Off” feature is if you are going to be away from a home for a while, for example for a winter vacation home. During the off-season for this home you won’t have routine care tasks, but you if don’t want to receive helpful tips and improvement ideas during the off-season, then you might consider using the “Turn-Off” feature for your vacation home.

Or maybe you just want to suspend receiving tasks & tips for your home if you are going to be away from this home for a while, or are temporarily too busy to keep up with your tasks & tips.

Once you have setup Home Wizard on any iPhone, iPad, Android device, or even the web version online . . . you will be able to access your Home Wizard account on any other device simply by getting your login info from your original device (or web version), and then selecting ‘Existing User Login’ on the additional devices that you setup.

A guide for getting your login info from your device can be found at: www.home-wizard.com/GetLoginInfo

There are several advantages of being able to do this:

1) If you like the convenience of having your smart phone with you during the day, and using a desktop computer or tablet in the evenings . . . you can have Home Wizard on all of them, and they are automatically synchronized with all of your preferences and all of your home care histories.

2) If you get a new phone, or lose your current phone, you can easily get all of your Home Wizard data back onto your new phone.