Warranties & Big Purchases

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Purchase sweep runs monthly · 1st, 8am and keeps the Still covered dashboard fresh. Monthly — reads the order confirmations, files each purchase over the line with its receipt, and lists what is running out.
• What is captured lands in the Purchase register dataset, which lives at Data/Purchase Register in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Repair log dataset, which lives at Data/Repair Log in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The Still covered dashboard reads from the dataset and shows, at a glance: every big purchase · cover running out next · inside the window · on the register · spent in the last 12 months · where cover stands · spend by category · where repairs stand · repairs on record, by item · how this board works.

The wiring, in one breath: Purchase capture writes to Purchase register · Purchase register shown by Still covered · Still covered kept fresh by Purchase sweep · Purchase sweep run by Acorn · Acorn holds Purchase capture · Acorn holds Claim draft · Acorn holds Purchase research · Acorn holds Purchase file · Purchase file records Repair log · Acorn holds Home inventory.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Let the first sweep read two years of order confirmations, then answer the one question only you can — how long each thing is covered for. A standing rule is enough: "two years on the appliances unless the receipt says" is applied to every blank row and remembered for the next sweep. A purchase whose term nobody has stated shows as unknown, never as covered; those are the rows to settle first.
• Open Still covered when something breaks, not when the sweep runs. Every big purchase has the receipt's vault path beside the date the cover ends — ask Acorn "where's the washing machine's receipt?" and the answer is a path, not a search back through two years of mail.
• Read Inside the window on the first of the month, after the Purchase sweep has been through. It is soonest first and judged against a sixty-day window, so a thing on that list is a thing to test properly this month while a claim would still be honoured.
• Say a purchase the way you'd say it at the kitchen table — "bought a sofa from Larkspur, five-year guarantee" — and Purchase capture files it; drop a photo of the shop receipt in the same message and it is saved under Receipts/Sofa. That is the correction that keeps the board true between sweeps for the things no email ever mentioned.
• When something fails, tell Acorn what is wrong before you ring anyone. Claim draft reads the receipt, writes the letter from what the receipt and you say, and saves it beside the receipt — with the serial number from the register where it has one, a bracketed gap where it has not, and any earlier repairs from the Repair log named as facts. It builds on what the guarantee itself says, names a statutory right only if you ask for one and only from an official source it has just read, and never sends; check it, fill the gaps, and send it yourself.
• Tell Acorn the standing facts once — what counts as a big purchase for you, which retailers to read and which never to, where receipts tend to land — and every sweep works to them. "Anything over $150, and never the office account" is worth saying.
• The week something arrives, say what goes with it. "Northwind's page says 30 days from delivery", or a photo of the rating plate, is all Purchase file needs: it works the return date out where you can see the day it counts from, reads the serial number off the photo, and keeps the manual and the registration steps beside the receipt. A date nobody has given stays blank, and so does a serial number it could not read plainly.
• When something is repaired, say so. Purchase file puts it on the Repair log with what went wrong in your words, who did the work and how it ended, and the board shows which purchases keep coming back. A repair changes nothing about where cover stands, and a later claim names the earlier repairs as facts.
• Before a big purchase, tell Acorn what you are weighing up and what matters to you. Purchase research writes your criteria down in your own words and sets out the options you name side by side, with where each fact came from and the day it was read, as a note under Research/. A cell it could not source stays empty, and it never says which to buy. Whether an extended warranty is worth taking is yours to decide: ask it what the plan's own page states.
• Ask for a home inventory before you renew your contents insurance. Home inventory makes a document in your vault from the register: each thing by kind, with its make and model, serial number, what you paid and where the receipt is, and a list of what is missing. It shows what you paid, never what things are worth or how much to insure them for; that is for you and your insurer.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, datasets and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• What counts as a big purchase — the line the sweep reads above — and a standing warranty rule for the things whose receipts print no term.
• Which retailers or senders to always read, and which never to (an office account, a marketplace you buy gifts on).
• How much warning you want — the window is sixty days unless you say — and whether receipts go into the vault at all or stay where they are with the register just saying where.
• When the monthly sweep runs, or turning it off and keeping the register by hand.
• What goes in a home inventory — everything, one kind of thing, or only what cost over a figure you give — and which country's official pages Acorn uses whenever it explains consumer rules.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. Adding the Kit offers the first sweep right away: connect your email on the same screen, start it with one tap, and watch Acorn read back through two years of order confirmations and receipts over your threshold — appliances, electronics, furniture, bikes, tools — file each purchase with what it cost and where, save the receipt into your vault under Receipts/⟨item⟩/, and record the day the cover ends wherever the receipt printed a term. A term the receipt did not print is left blank rather than guessed. Prefer not to connect email? Tell Acorn about the big things you've bought instead, and the register builds by hand.
2. When that first sweep finishes, Acorn leaves a short note in your 1Presence inbox saying what it filed — how many purchases, from how many retailers — and invites two minutes together to fill what an order email could not show: how long each thing is covered for (an order email gives the date and the price but rarely the term, and a standing rule will do, applied to the blank rows there and then), anything that isn't yours (a gift, a return), the things the mailbox never saw, such as what a shop handed you over the counter, and where the big-purchase line should sit. Acorn starts from what 1Presence already knows, in your memory and in files you have put in your vault, offers it for you to confirm, and asks only for the gaps.
3. Whatever is still blank waits on the Kit page with a way back to Acorn, and Acorn offers it once the next time you talk. Tell it a part does not apply to you, or that you have finished setting up, and it stops asking.
4. From then on the sweep runs on the first of each month: it files what arrived since the last run with its receipt, recomputes where every purchase's cover stands, and raises a card only when cover entered its sixty-day window or ran out, when an order might count and it could not tell, when a receipt could not be saved, or, once, when it filed a purchase with no end date, saying where the term will be (the receipt, the guarantee card or the box, or the maker's own page).
5. Mention a purchase, a warranty term or something you no longer have any time and the register keeps up without waiting for the month; drop a receipt in and it is filed where you can find it; and when something fails, Claim draft writes the letter into your vault for you to send.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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