CheckHome user guide

The app is split into modules — Today, Shopping, Tasks, Calendar, Maintenance, Planned payments, Password vault, Recipes, Activities, Rewards and Family & Circles. You switch between them from the side menu, opened with the icon at the top left.

Most modules have tabs inside them, and their order is the same everywhere: first what you look at, then entry, and management last. Typically List → Entry → Manage. So when you are looking for where something is added, it is the second tab; where categories are set up, it is the last.

Three controls sit at the top right at all times: refresh (pulls fresh data from the server), language and the light/dark toggle.

After installing, you sign in with an e-mail and password or with Google. That creates an account and a household — your family.

The app then asks for a family password. This is not the same as your account password. The family password encrypts the content you put into the app, and it does so on your own phone. It is never sent to the server.

You enter the family password on every device in the family — your phone, your partner's phone, your PC. It is the same everywhere, because without it a second device could not read the data it receives.

The Family & Circles module holds your family code. Send it to someone close; once they install the app and enter the code, they join your family and see the shared data.

These are two separate things and you need to hand over both:

• The family code — says which family to join. On its own it unlocks nothing.
• The family password — unlocks the content. Pass this one on in person, or at least through a different channel than the code.

Example. You text your partner the code and tell them the password at home. They sign in with their own e-mail, enter the code, then the family password — and from that moment they see what you see.

Below the members is a list of family people. These are the names that tasks and points are assigned to. They do not need their own sign-in — a small child without a phone can simply be a name on the list.

Today is the opening screen and the only module without tabs. Nothing is entered here — it collects what is entered elsewhere and shows what is coming.

Today is at the top, Coming up below it. Each row tells you which module it came from and who it concerns — for example Activities · Emma or Tasks · Liam.

You can tick a task off right here, without going into the Tasks module.

An empty screen is not a fault — it means nothing is due today or in the next few days.

Shopping is the in-the-shop mode. The list is split into To buy and In basket; a tap moves an item across. Large type, nothing to distract you.

When you finish, items are archived rather than deleted. That is what lets the app suggest them next time you start typing — the autocomplete draws on your own history as well as a built-in list of everyday groceries.

Planning is where items are added and sorted into categories (Groceries, Household, DIY store…). You edit the categories in the Manage tab.

Example. During the week anyone in the family adds what is running out. On Saturday whoever goes shopping opens Shopping and ticks things off. The others see in real time what is already in the basket and can add something they remembered.

Walking up and down the aisles is a waste of time when the list can follow the route you take through the shop. In the Manage tab you add a store profile — Lidl, Tesco, Aldi — and pick it when you go shopping. Items are then sorted in the order you walk the shop, not alphabetically and not by when they were added.

You do not have to set the aisle order up. The app learns it from the way you tick things off. The first time you walk through Lidl ticking off bread, then dairy, then vegetables and finally household goods, the next list for that shop comes in exactly that order. Each shop keeps its own order, because vegetables are not in the same place in one chain as in another.

Rearranging by hand

When the shop moves something around, or the learned order does not suit you, press and hold an item and drag it somewhere else. You do this while shopping rather than in the settings — that is, at the moment you are standing in front of the shelf and can see how it ought to be.

A task has a name, a due date and a repetition: once, daily, weekly, monthly, or on chosen days (say Monday, Wednesday and Friday only). Once it is done, the app works out the next date itself.

Who should do it

• Nobody in particular — whoever has time.
• One member — the task is always theirs.
• Rotation — you pick several members in order, and after each completion the task moves to the next one. No more arguing about whose turn it was to take the bins out.

To-do is for one-off checklists that recur with an occasion rather than with a date — packing for a weekend away, getting ready for a holiday, moving house. In Manage you create a template (say "Pack for the cottage": sleeping bag, head torch, toothbrush, charger, medicines) and start it from To-do as many times as you like.

An item can be assigned to one person or to several at once. If several people have it, each ticks off their own part and the item is done only when everyone has. Everyone packs their own socks; one person packs the dog's bowl.

Statistics shows a task × member table for the month or the year. It is there to help split the work fairly, not to nag — and with children it pairs with the Rewards module.

List separates events into Coming up and Past, each with its type, date and place. Add to Google Calendar copies an event into your phone's calendar — it is a one-tap export, not a running synchronisation.

Overview is a table by week or by month with ISO week numbers and arrows to move backwards and forwards. Useful when you are agreeing a date "in week 37".

In Manage you define your own event types — School, Doctor, Birthday, Sport — so the list can be read at a glance.

Escort answers the question "who is taking them". On an event you ask for an escort and choose whether you are looking within the family or in another family — a grandmother or an aunt who shares a circle with you.

When you pick another family, the event is shared with that circle automatically, because otherwise the other side could not see it and would have nothing to confirm. The status ("grandma is taking her") shows on both sides.

Maintenance watches everything that expires: inspections, MOT and emissions tests, services, insurance policies, motorway vignettes.

The interval is set in time or in kilometres. A car service after 15,000 km or after a year — whichever comes first. A gas boiler inspection once a year. A vignette to a fixed date.

In Manage you build a tree of assets: categories with specific things under them, nested as deeply as you like. For instance House → Gas boiler → Burner or Cars → Octavia. A job is then pinned to a specific asset and the list shows the whole path.

Each entry can also have a person responsible.

This module is not a replacement for your banking app and deliberately does not track where you spent your money. It does something else: it keeps sight of payments that are coming and reminds you until you confirm them.

A payment has an amount, a payee, a repetition (monthly, quarterly, yearly, one-off) and a due date. The colour of the row tells you whether it is overdue, urgent, or fine.

Monthly payments can skip individual months. The typical case: no gas payment in March, because that is when the annual statement arrives.

The Paid button confirms a payment and moves it on to the next period.

If you fill in an IBAN, the app generates a payment QR code for it. Scan it in your banking app and the transfer is pre-filled — amount, account and the message for the payee.

Variable, constant and specific symbols are filled in for Slovak and Czech payments; banks elsewhere do not use them.

The IBAN is checked as you type, so a typo is caught here rather than at the bank.

Overview is a table of months and categories — a forecast of your costs for the whole year ahead.

Two tabs: List and Entry. A recipe has ingredients, a method and a photo.

A useful link: ingredients can be sent to the shopping list in one tap. You pick what you do not have at home and it lands in Shopping.

A recipe you see in another family's circle can be copied to your own — you get your own version, which you are free to change.

Children's regular commitments: football on Tuesday at half past four, piano on Thursday at three. Enter the activity, the child, the day and the time — and you have the family's weekly timetable on one screen.

The next activity also appears on the Today screen, so in the morning you can see where everyone is going.

Children earn points for completed tasks. In the reward catalogue you decide what those points buy and what it costs — an extra hour of gaming, the cinema, an ice cream.

When a child redeems a reward, the points are deducted and the exchange stays in the history. The leaderboard shows who has collected how much.

A family is closed — nobody outside it sees in. But when you want to share something with a grandmother or a sister who has a family of their own, that is what a circle is for.

You create a circle in Family & Circles. You get a circle code to send to the other families, and you set a circle password — that is what encrypts whatever is shared in the circle. The circle password is different from the family one; tell it to the other families in the circle.

What gets shared

Only what you explicitly send there. What is shared is a calendar event — you tap Share with circle and choose which one. A family's private data (tasks, shopping, payments, vault) is not in the circle and cannot get there.

Members can be hidden too: for each family person you choose whether the other families in the circle can see them.

Reminders are switched on separately for tasks, maintenance, calendar and payments, so you keep only the ones you actually want.

For tasks and payments you set the repeat — how often the app should keep reminding you until the thing is done or confirmed. For maintenance and the calendar you set how many days in advance to warn you, so there is time to book an appointment.

Quiet hours stop it beeping at night.

The Test notification button confirms that your phone's own settings actually let them through.

The Settings module has three tabs.

Feedback — where you write what is broken or missing. The app also sends automatic error reports here: the type of error, the screen and the version, never the content of your family's data.

Cleanup — bulk deletion of old entries, module by module. At the bottom of this tab you will also find account deletion, described in full on the Account deletion page.

The globe icon at the top right switches between 26 languages: every official EU language, plus Norwegian and Icelandic. On first run the app takes your phone's language; once you pick one yourself, your choice wins.

The date format and the names of days and months follow the language.

Next to it is the light/dark toggle.

The Windows version is included in the subscription and is not sold separately. You sign in with the same account, enter the family password and have the same data. It is handy for longer stretches of typing — setting up payments or a tree of assets is quicker on a keyboard.