Homey glossary

Homey is a mobile app that will help your family manage chores and allowance, while teaching your kids about goal setting, delayed gratification and financial responsibility.

A Household is the top level unit within Homey. I contains all your family members, chores, goals and all the other good stuff.

A Family Member is a user of Homey within a Household. Family Member can have a Parent, Teen, Child, or Custom User Role

A User Role is a set of permissions for a family member within Homey. There are three main User Roles: Parent, Teen, and Child, all with a different set of permissions, but the permissions can also be tweaked for each user, to create a Custom User Role.

Permissions are sets of rules contained within a family member's User Role. They can represent different things from the ability to creating Goals to managing other Family Member’s Permissions.

A Household Owner is a special Family Member within a Household. Usually the one that created the Household account, unless you requested a change. They will always have all the Permissions and can’t be kicked out of a Household.

A Parent within Homey is a Family Member with a User Role that grants them all the permissions within the app. If they are not also the Household Owner, their user role can be changed by the Household Owner.

A Teen within Homey is a family member with a User Role that grants them less permissions than that of a Parent, but more than Child. For instance teens can create and edit Chores and Goals, but they can’t manage other Family Member’s Permissions.

A child within Homey is a Family Member with a User Role that grants them the least permissions. Generally they can complete the Chores assigned to them and post in the Family Chat, but can’t set manage their allowance and similar.

A Unique Family Name is the name of your Household that identifies your household account. It’s generated from the name you choose for your household. As a lot of families use their last name, there might be a number attached to it, as there might already be families that have used the same last name. For instance “smith25”.

A Family Password is a password that you share with all your family members. It allows you to log into your household alongside your unique family name.

When you create your household a special link is generated for your household. Clicking it on your device will open Homey and log into your Household directly. Keep in mind that you should store it somewhere safe and not share it outside of the family.

A Personal Password is password for an individual Family Member. It is used when logging into a specific family member account. Personal Passwords are optional for all except the Household Owner, but it’s advised that at least Parents have them and keep them secret from children.

A Device is smart device like smartphone or a tablet that runs Homey. They can be either Apple devices like an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, Android smartphones and tablets or Amazon Fire devices. Homey also runs great on shared devices, as it allows easy switcing between Family Members.

Like in real life a chore in Homey is any task that needs to be completed within a household on a regular or irregular basis. Chores in Homey are further divided into Responsibilities and Jobs.

Responsibilities are chores that must be completed by a certain user usually on a recurrent schedule. They aren’t paid but they can be used to unlock allowance and privileges, once enough of them have been completed in a week.

Jobs are usually irregular chores that still need to be completed around the house. They differ from family to family and can range from picking up dog poop to cleaning the pool. They don’t have to be assigned to a specific user and they always have a $ value associated with them.

A chore that isn’t assigned to any family member and is free for grabs by anyone. Only Jobs can be Free For All.

An Assigned Chore is a Chore that is assigned to one or more Family Members. It appears in their list of daily chores and must be completed by them. Responsibilities must always be assigned.

A Shared Chore is a Chore assigned to more than one Family Member and must be completed together.

A Rotating Chore is a Chore assigned to more than one Family Member, but must be completed by only one of them each time. Once they completed it, it transfers to the next Family Member in rotation.

Cloned Chores are Chores that are assigned to multiple Family Members at creation, but set as cloned. Each assigned Family Member gets their own instance of the Chore that has a separate lifecycle.

A Due date is the date and hour by which a chore must be completed by. It can be set at chore creation or when editing a chore.

Chore Recurrence is a set of rules on when a certain chore must be completed through the days. Chores can have a daily, weekly, monthly, or even more specific recurrence.

One Off chores are chores that only have to be completed once. After they are completed they are removed and no longer appear on users lists of available chores.

Chores that are Always Available have to be completed multiple times, but on as needed basis. These chores will stay in user’s list, even after completion, but will never become late. This setting is appropriate for chores like “Empty dishwasher if there’s anything in it”.

Overdue chores are chores that should have been completed by a certain past due date, but haven’t been marked as done yet.

Completed chores are chores that have been completed in the past, but aren’t available any more. They can be found via the “Completed” filter in the chores screen, where you can edit them and reactivate them.

Chore availability helps you set when a chore is available for completion. It is only available when a chore has a Due date set. So a chore might be available for completion prior to the due date, only on a due date or even after a due date.

Chores marked with Early availability are available for completion anytime up to and on a specific due date.

Chores marked with On due date availability are available for completion only on the due date set for the chore.

Chores marked with Late availability are available for completion on the set due date, but will remain available even after that date if they weren’t completed. They will be marked as Late.

Photo completion is a setting on a Chore. Chores with Photo completion will require Family Members to take a photo when they mark a chore as done.

Chores marked with Completion Confirmation will require a confirmation when completed by kids. Kids will not progress towards their goals or receive any $ until the completion is confirmed by parents.

Extra jobs don’t progress family members towards allowance or daily goals, but have a direct $ amount associated with them. Whenever someone completes a Job the money goes directly to their wallet. Make sure you set up the correct Recurrence, Availability or Completion confirmation.

Chores can have a different Difficulty setting. It will be taken into account when calculating daily and weekly progress for family members.

Completion history is a list of all the Chore completions by date and family member. Chores that require completion confirmation and haven’t been confirmed or denied yet have an option to do both of those actions. All chore completions can also be undone here if the completion was a mistake.

The list of all family chores can be filtered to only display chores due today, completed chores, sorted by family member and similar.

A pack of chores is a group of chores, that is created when chores are imported from one of the preset Chore Packs available in Homey. You can also create custom packs and move chores between them.

A wallet is one of the main views within Homey. It shows all the money made in Homey through Allowance and Jobs that hasn’t been used yet. The money tracked is an IOU – it hasn’t been paid from the parent to the child yet. It also displays settings, progress and history for Allowance and Privileges as well as Goals represented by jars.

Allowance is a sum of money paid on a weekly basis when family members complete their responsibilities. It can easily be set and kept track on within Homey Wallet.

Allowance for a Family member can only be payed out when Responsibilities have been completed by a Family member in a given week. The amount of Responsibilities completed needed to unlock Allowance in a given week can be set by Allowance Strictness.

Allowance strictness is a setting that represents how much of the weekly Responsibilities must be completed by a family member to unlock weekly Allowance. It is represented as a percentage value, where the Difficulty of each Responsibility is taken into account.

A Jar represents a savings Goal within Homey that works similar to a piggybank. Kids can deposit their available money into Jars and track progress towards reaching them. Jars can be created for rewards like new bikes or deposits to savings accounts opened at any bank or credit union in the US. It is used as a system that teaches proper goal setting, saving and delayed gratification. Jars can be found within Homey Wallet.

An Empty Jar is a Jar that has been created and no money has been assigned to it yet. To progress towards a filling a jar a Parent or Child should click on it and slide up to assign available money to the Jar.

An active jar is a jar, that has been partially filled and turns into a Full jar, when completely filled.

A Full Jar is a Jar that has been completely filled. The savings goal has been achieved and the parents should buy or pay out the agreed reward.

A Daily Privilege is usually an activity like Screen time that is unlocked when all the Responsibilities set for the day have been met (in the required Strictness). It can easily be set and kept track of in Homey Wallet.

A goal is something to work towards. Savings goal in Homey is a product or service your children wish to purchase in the future. They might not have the means to right now, but they can dedicate to put an amount of allowance aside each week until they save enough to claim the goal and you make the purchase or transfer the agreed amount to them.

This is a process of helping children focus their time and energy towards a specific activity and goal. With kids it’s often associated with positive reinforcement, honest communication and encouragement. Homey is a tool that will help you motivate your kids to contribute at home and achieve their goals, but your involvement as a parent is crucial.

Ability to resist the temptation for an immediate, but often smaller reward in order to receive a larger more enduring reward later. This skill is of great importance for achieving goals and is the best predictor that a child will become successful later in life.

Financial literacy refers to a set skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make informed and effective decisions with all their financial resources.

The value of contributing can be described by an internal comfort achieved when a person knows that they helped fulfill a shared goal of a group. In settings of a family it can mean helping out with chores. We all need to feel needed and to know that we’re making a contribution – even kids – and sharing the responsibility for housework is a great way to do that.

The value of making money can be described by the intrinsic joy experienced when knowing that your invested time and energy generated added value and resulting in a payout.

The value of a dollar can simply mean the amount of products or services someone could purchase with a given amount. It should also be noted that kids should understand how much time and energy went into making that $ amount, that directly translates to the purchased product or service. Kids who grow up getting paid for chores will have a better concept of the value of money than kids that don’t get paid for chores.

We can simply define Needs as things you have to have to survive. So anything beyond a roof over your health, healthy food and water, basic health and hygiene products, basic clothing and education are needs. Everything else are Wants. Read more about wants versus need on our blog.

A want is something you would like to have, but don’t really need in order to survive and function in today’s world.

Personal finance is the act or ability of an individual or a family unit to budget, save and spend monetary resources over time, taking into account various financial risks and future life events.

Saving is the act of regularly putting money aside in order to grow one’s wealth. Savings accounts with compounding interest rates and investments such as stock can speed up the growth of the said wealth.

Piggy bank is a traditional container normally used by children for savings purposes. Various electronic piggy banks now exist, and you can use the wallet feature in Homey as a piggy bank as well.

A contract is a voluntary arrangement between two or more parties that is enforceable by law as a binding legal agreement.

A national banknotes is a promissory note recognised as legal tender. It means these are pieces of paper recognised by a legal system to be valid for meeting a financial obligation.

Digital money exhibits properties similar to paper money, but allows for instantaneous transactions and borderless transfer-of-ownership. It is represented as balance or a claim stored electronically with a private bank and other financial institutions or balance on stored-value cards.

IOU is an agreement of how much money is owed. Homey wallet is tracks IOU until the money is payed out either in cash or by a bank transfer.

Checking account is a deposit account held at a bank or other financial institution. It is available to the account owner “on demand" and is available for frequent and immediate access by the account owner.

A savings account is a deposit account held at a retail bank that pays interest but cannot be used directly as money, as deposits are generally “locked” for a certain period of time.

Family chat is a feature in Homey where all the changes like new chores, completions, allowance payments and similar get posted. You can directly respond to some, like confirming completions and you can also post messages here.

You can simply post your comments or messages to the chat by typing your message in the field below and pressing the arrow. Your family members will get a notification and see the post in their chat.

If you press a chore on the list of chores you will go to the Chore details screen. On the bottom you will see comments that other family members have posted. Press comment to post your own. You can also add a message when completing a chore.

A notification is a message that gets pushed on your or your kids’ devices, when a family member completes an action that relates to you. If you are a parent you will see notifications when kids complete chores, their allowance is due and similar.

A weekly report is an email that Homey sends out once a week on Sundays. It outlines the progress your family has made in the past week like how many chores each family member completed, how much money they earned and what goals they may have redeemed.