Thursday, August 8, 2013

Website Spotlight: HomeZada

HomeZada is an innovative solution to help you save money and maintain your home - also helping you save time by keeping you better organized. It's a free tool for the essentials, and extra features like multiple homes, home improvement help, and more advanced maintenance assistance are just $5.95/month. I had a chance to interview co-creator Beth Dodson about the app.

1) What was the inspiration behind launching HomeZada?
HomeZada was started out of personal need.  Having documents in file folders, on multiple computers, on sticky notes and just plain pieces of paper all over my home, I knew there had to be a better way to gain an understanding what is in my home, how to take care of the things in and around my home and how to track and shop for projects that required me to update or fix items around my home, as well as all the finances and budgets associated with my projects, maintenance and home inventory.  But nothing existed. I waited for years for a tool to become available to fit this need. 
 
Working in the technology industry, myself and two other co-founders that have worked together for many years decided that others could also benefit from a tool like HomeZada.  Therefore, we shook hands and became co-founders designing, developing and marketing HomeZada. 

2) What features does it have for homeowners?
HomeZada allows homeowners the ability to track home inventory, home maintenance and home improvement projects.  Tracking everything in and around your house by taking photos, uploading receipts and any kind of document, and adding details that may be important to a homeowner like warranty period and original purchase price can be done within HomeZada. HomeZada also alerts you based on your maintenance calendar on what needs to be done to your home or equipment when to make sure you home and equipment are in great working order and will last for years.  Assigning tasks to others in your home like spouses and children can also be done with an email alert being sent to the appropriate party to know when those tasks need to be completed.  Additionally, homeowners can track budgets, progress, shopping comparisons and more around any home improvement project. 
 
HomeZada also helps homeowners by providing over 150 standard maintenance tasks to choose and add to a calendar and over 50 common home improvement projects with all the details and items needed to conduct that project.  Allowing the homeowner to become better equipped with managing their home.

3) Is it suitable just for remodeling or does it have other uses as well?
HomeZada has full functional remodeling or home improvements feature set that helps manage the shopping comparisons, budgets, status of projects and it can support managing multiple projects over time.  Once a home improvement or remodeling project is completed, then the homeowner has the ability to automatically update their home inventory with the most current home data.  This allows a homeowner to take this updated inventory into their insurance agent and make sure they have the appropriate insurance coverage. Once you have your home inventory updated, a homeowner can track all maintenance associated with the home to make sure they are maintaining the value of their home.  When information is entered into HomeZada, dashboards reveal data like project budgets over time and maintenance costs spent annually as well as the overall value of everything inside the house. 

4) What are your favorite ways to save hassle when remodeling?

Understanding what you need for a project prior to starting the project is crucial to make sure you can manage your funds, your schedule and how to better work with your contractors if you use contractors. With HomeZada prepopulating 50 common remodeling projects with all the items you need for that project to help get you started helps in managing the budgets but also your time and knowledge of knowing what you need to make choices of in order to finish the project.  Making these choices in HomeZada is as easy as using the HomeZada bookmarking tool to grab items on the internet and track and compare them within one central place like HomeZada.  This also helps in the process of making decisions with your spouse or partner because everyone in the family can access the same information in one spot. 

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