Getting Started
How to get the most out of Casabeza in your first week — what to do first, what to leave for later, and how the value builds.
Most systems reward you immediately or not at all. Casabeza is different — the first week is about building a foundation that pays back over years, not hours. The value isn't in adding your fiftieth item; it's in having a record when the boiler breaks down three years from now, or when a tenant asks when the electrics were last certified, or when you can't remember which filter size the extractor fan takes.
That said, week one shouldn't feel like a project. The goal is to get the structure right, add the things that matter most, and leave. The system will give back more than you put in — but only if what you put in is accurate and honestly scoped.
Casabeza is a connected system. Inventory feeds tasks. Items need homes before labels make sense. Bills need items before they connect to anything useful. Getting the foundation right in the first few days means everything added later slots in properly.
This guide covers what to focus on in your first week — not everything the system can do, but what to do first so the rest comes naturally.
Before you add a single item, set up your locations and places.
A location is a building or property. If you own one home, you have one location. If you manage a rental flat as well, that's two.
A place is a room or zone within a location: kitchen, bathroom, garage, loft, under-stairs cupboard. Places are where items live. The more specific you are here, the more useful the system becomes when you're looking for something.
You don't need every room on day one. Start with the areas you'll inventory first and add more as you go. Places take thirty seconds to create and can be reorganised freely.
Pick one area of your home and inventory it properly. The kitchen, utility room, or garage are usually the most productive starting points — dense with appliances, consumables, and things that have maintenance histories.
If that feels like a daunting place to start, the inventory library makes it much easier. It covers 63 household systems and asset types — kitchen appliances, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, outdoor equipment, vehicles, and more — and each entry comes with pre-built maintenance tasks already attached. Add a dishwasher from the library and it arrives with tasks for filter cleaning, door gasket inspection, and drain maintenance, each with its own cadence and step-by-step instructions. You don't need to know the right intervals or what to check — the library already does. Each library item also arrives with the correct nature already set, so there's no categorisation to think about.
For items outside the library, decide which nature applies:
Add as much or as little detail as you have. At minimum, a name, nature, and location is enough to make an item useful. Add purchase date, model number, and serial number when you have them — these become valuable when something needs servicing or replacing.
Don't aim for completeness in week one. A partial inventory that's accurate is more useful than an exhaustive one that you've lost confidence in.
Once you have appliances in the system, connect them to maintenance tasks.
The task library is a good starting point if you haven't used it before — it contains templates for common jobs: boiler services, filter replacements, annual checks. Browse it and apply relevant templates to your appliances.
For anything not in the library, create a task directly from the item record. Set a frequency if it's recurring. Set a window if there's a season or deadline involved.
After this step, the maintenance calendar starts working. You'll see what's due, what's upcoming, and what's overdue — across your whole home — without having to remember any of it.
If you have NFC tags, QR code labels, or barcodes, now is the time to start placing them.
Labels work best on things you interact with regularly: appliances you maintain, storage areas you stock, consumables you track. The point of a label is that scanning it takes you directly to that item's record — no searching, no navigating.
Start with high-value placements:
Don't try to label everything. Labels add value where scanning saves time or provides information you'd otherwise have to look up.
If tracking household running costs matters to you, start here.
Bills connect to your appliances and fixtures. Recording electricity, gas, and water bills against the relevant items builds a consumption history over time. After a year of entries, you'll have a real picture of what your home costs to run.
Price tracking connects to consumables. Log what you paid for coffee, cleaning supplies, or air filters each time you buy them. Over time, you'll see which vendors are consistently cheaper and what inflation is actually doing to your household costs.
This section can be deferred entirely if it's not relevant to your household. Nothing else depends on it.
If anyone other than your immediate household ever needs information about your home — tenants, guests, tradespeople, letting agents — set up a Share View.
Pick the relevant items and locations, decide what to include (inventory, maintenance history, upcoming tasks), and add any notes written for the external audience. Then share the link.
The link doesn't require an account on the recipient's end. You can set an expiry date, regenerate the slug at any time, and see when it was last accessed.
The real value of Casabeza accumulates slowly. A single maintenance record isn't particularly useful. A complete service history for a boiler over five years is genuinely valuable when you need it — whether for a sale, a warranty claim, or understanding a recurring fault.
The habit to build is simple: when something happens to an item, log it. Service completed — mark it done. Problem noticed — add a log entry. Price paid — record the bill. The overhead per event is small; the compound value is high.
If you get stuck or have a question, contact us. We respond personally and we're happy to help you set things up in a way that fits your household.