HomeConvenience.com™ uses a strict adherence to the Internet's most stringent security protocol - a high assurance Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) with up to 256 bit encryption - to protect your data when interfacing with our application. This, coupled with our fully protected, and secure application servers, insures that your data is safer than even on your own computer!

This sounds great, so what is SSL?

SSL is arguably the safest encryption standard for the Internet. It insures that no one can intercept, or read, the data stream between you and our application server. When you use our website, you can be rest assured that your data is safer than it ever has been! Each interaction between you and our application server is actually safer than using a credit card at your local gas station, local restaurant, or other retail stores. Hence, your information is at greater risk in your other day-to-day transactions than in using our site.

To further protect your data, our application is deployed in a fully redundant storage architecture. This means that we have an integrated array of storage media to insure that even if one device goes down, none of your data can be lost. To further complement this stringent approach, we perform a system back-up on a daily basis.

Finally, we have also engaged the "Hacker Guardian" Service to continuously monitor our servers in order to insure that our application maintains the highest levels of integrity and security by proactively blocking any unwanted intrusions.

Bottom line - you are entrusting to our care some of your important information; and we respect this. Hence, we have taken advantage of some of the latest technology to insure that your data is safe, and available to you. You can be rest assured that we will never resell your information, or provide access to it by any third party not directly associated with us. For more information, please take the time to read our Privacy Policy; as it further explains our commitment to your privacy.

As a standard practice, each user should go into the "My Profile" section of the website in order to make sure that all of their settings accurately reflect their preferences. By correctly updating their information in the "My Profile" section, each user is able to customize their own personal experience. The "My Profile" button can be found in the upper right corner of the site. Please note that these settings are individual to each user; and therefore, each user needs to do this within their own account.

As an aside, there are also some "global" settings (e.g. categories by area) that need to be set by the Family Administrator, or main account holder. This area can be accessed only from the Administrators' account, as they have an additional button available to them called "My Account". Within this area is where the more "global" settings can be set; and/or additional users can be added.

For further information, please refer to the HomeConvenience.com™ User Guide within the application.

This is a matter of opinion, as we have tried to make the site quite flexible in how one uses it. Some people leave their "filters" setting as "on" in their "My Profile"; however, others like the cleaner look of not having the filter showing all the time, but rather using it only as needed. Here are a couple of usability tips that seem to be common amongst most users:

• To find most any item throughout the site, the Site Search feature in the main menu bar does a nice job of finding all those records that contain relevant information. What's nice about using this search vehicle is that the results are summarized by major area of the site which should help you narrow down your focus.
• The "filter" feature for each area of the site is quite valuable; as it lets you customize each view. Please note that you need to choose your filter criteria, and then hit the "filter" button in order for the filter to work properly. Also, please note it can greatly improve results if you take advantage of the "wild card" characters (*) (i.e. both in front of and/or at the end of any phrase that you are looking for).
• While clicking on any given date in the "Month at a Glance" view works really nicely for "jumping" to specific dates, some people find that using the "yearly view" in Calendar is a great way to jump to other dates further out.

For further information, please refer to the HomeConvenience.com™ User Guide within the application.

Not really. There may be other applications out there that do "elements" of what HomeConvenience.com™ does; however, there is no other application that does everything that HomeConvenience.com™ does. Further, HomeConvenience.com™ was built specifically to address all of the needs of a Home and a family in today's world. This family is increasingly mobile with high demands on their time. Hence, this application was built for the mobile world where members can access their core information no matter where they are. They can share information with other family members easily. They have all of their core information - be it their schedules, their shopping lists, their To Do list, or their Wine list - easily accessible. All within one application.

No! Being a web-based application has many advantages over PC-based applications. Most notably, the "always available" aspect of the web allows for access to your application be it at home, on the road, at work, or what have you. Also, it allows for true communication and collaboration amongst your family; as there is a common source of information for everyone - no matter where they are. Not to mention that all software upgrades and enhancements are free and automatic as part of your subscription. There is no need to worry about what system that you are running, or what version of software you have, etc.; as the application is always current, all the time.

Further, with all of the viruses, worms, etc. out there, your personal computer, and therefore your data, is at a much higher risk of infection and loss on a PC than on our fully protected and backed-up servers. With a PC-based application, if you get a virus, you could lose all of your vital household information. However, with our system your data is protected and backed-up. Hence, should a virus infect your computer, just log-on to another browser, and all of the information in your HomeConvenience.com™ account is safe, accessible, and current. No worries.

Not a problem! HomeConvenience.com™ includes a number of "wizards" for uploading information into the system. Our step-by-step wizards will walk you through how to export your data out of your current applications - e.g.; Microsoft Outlook® - and import this data into HomeConvenience.com™. The whole process shouldn't take you more than a few minutes.

When importing data, please be sure to take note of the "required fields" within the HomeConvenience.com™ area that you are attempting to import data into - e.g.; the Address Book "requires" a Last Name field - as if this "required field" is blank within your source file, the application will not import your data. Should you have any issues with the importing of data, you may want to open up your .CSV source file via Microsoft's Excel® application to verify that all required fields are populated.

Given the level of functionality inherent in HomeConvenience.com™, please note that "alarms" do not import with the rest of the information. This is purposely done in order to make sure that the alerting features for the imported information is accurately set by the user for each item.

HomeConvenience.com™ allows you to customize, or filter, to achieve most any view or your information that you desire. Once you have the view that you want to print - e.g.; Vehicle Maintenance history for one particular car - then you can hit the Print button within the application.

Please note that HomeConvenience.com™ uses the Adobe Reader® application for the printing of reports from within the application. We did this so that you can both print and save the view that you have generated in a common format. Hence, you will need to have the Adobe Reader® installed on your computer in order to print reports out of HomeConvenience.com™. Fortunately, most all computers already have this application installed; however, should you need to download this application, please visit www.adobe.com in order to receive a free download of this common application.

For further information, please refer to the HomeConvenience.com™ User Guide within the application.

Each wireless carrier is a little different; however, they all have a set limit for the number of characters that they allow within a text message. This issue is almost never an issue with the Notifications throughout the day for any scheduled appointments; however, if you have your Daily Activities text-messaged to you, then you may run into this issue more frequently depending on the number of items that you have on a given day. Obviously, if this is a common occurrence, then we would recommend that you change your settings in "My Profile" to have your Daily Activities sent to you via Email; and then only have your Daily Appointment reminders sent via text messages.

We have found that there are many different browsers out there on both the PC and the Mac platform. We have tried very hard to accommodate as broad of an audience as possible; however, we have also definitely noticed some nuances between the different options. The following is a listing of some of our findings:

• Some browsers "remember" a given user. We've seen this issue mostly with Mozilla's Firefox; as this application actively offers the user to have it remember them. This issue doesn't effect performance; however, you may have to over-type some information that has been pre-populated in order to get the information to store correctly.
• Our Mac customers seem to have had better user experiences with Apple's Safari browser.
• Sometimes the browser view doesn't look right. Every now and then, some browsers have cache issues; and hence, usually logging back in, or refreshing the screen can help remedy this situation.
• Sometimes when you go to Google via the Quick Links function, you will get a security message. There is no issue here, but rather your browser's security settings are set at a level to let you know that you are leaving our secure site to go to a different browser window. - i.e.; Google. Once you close that window, you are back within our secure environment.

Yes. Given the depth and breadth of information that HomeConvenience.com allows you to keep track of, there may be some areas - e.g.; Financial Records - that you may not want to share with some of the other users. There are two ways to address these concerns within HomeConvenience.com. First of all, you can always make any given record "Private" by selecting the "Private" box at the bottom of every page prior to saving. Obviously, this approach requires the user to specifically choose this option for every record.

Alternatively, the Account Administrator can actually control the "Permissions" of any given user by first selecting the "My Account" button. Then, click on the "Users" tab. Once you select the User, you can then choose the "Permissions" tab. Within this tab, you can provide "None", "View", or "Full" access for any given area of the application for this specific User.

For further information, please refer to the HomeConvenience.com™ User Guide within the application.

Yes. Our HomeConvenience.com™ Sync capability provides full synchronization for most all areas of the site with either your Outlook® or Palm® desktop applications. Of course, you may or may not want everything in HomeConvenience.com™ reflected within these applications, but rather just some elements of the information. For example, many Users like to add their kids' calendars to their Outlook® at work; while others want all of "their" information in Outlook®, and access the "family" information only via HomeConvenience.com™. Finally, most Users like some combination of the two approaches - e.g.; all of "their" information, only the kids' calendars, and none of their spouses' information, etc.

The good news is that our HomeConvenience.com™ Sync capability provides the User with full flexibility to accommodate most any combination that the User desires. First of all, each User can individually set their "Update Outlook/Palm" settings within the "My Profile" area for a truly individual level of synchronization. Further, these settings can either be set and left alone, or adjusted just prior to a synchronization. For example, should someone want to add just the kids' calendars to their Outlook®, they could update their settings to reflect just those Users' (i.e.; kids) calendar for synchronization. Then, they could go back, and select all categories (e.g.; Calendar, Address Book, ToDos, Etc) for their "personal" information to be synchronized. With each synchronization, all of this information will be appropriately updated per the current settings within "My Profile". These settings can be changed as often as you wish.

For further information, please refer to the HomeConvenience.com™ User Guide within the application.

The "Admin" on the account can easily add additional Users to their HomeConvenience.com™ family within the "My Account" area of the website. The standard setup provides for up to twelve (12) Users per account; however, should you need more, please contact us at customercare@homeconvenience.com.

Our free trial is truly free; as we provide you with a fully functional account during your trial. In order to do this, we need to set you up with your own personal account; and let you establish users, passwords, etc,--requesting a credit card is just part of the account set-up process. If you choose to go the Free Trial route, then your card will not be charged until your 30 days are up. Should you want to cancel your subscription so that you don't get billed after your trial month, then go into the "My Account" area of the website, and within the "Billing" tab, please be sure to select the option to not bill you going forward. Of course, please be sure to "Save" your changes.

The process is quite easy. Simply follow these steps:

1. Log into your account using your Username and Password. Should you forget your Password, please take advantage of our "forgotten password" process to reset it.
2. Once signed in, go into the "My Account" area of the site.
3. Within this area, click on the "Billing" tab.
4. Select the radial button next to this text - "Check this box to prevent your HomeConvenience.com™ subscription from being renewed at the end of your current subscription term."
5. Be sure to "Save" your changes.