Audit and inspection management software

 If you work in the construction field or even the mining industry, you have probably come across this major pain:

Transcribing your paperwork into a computer afterwards, is hard. It's hard on your time. You could be doing something so much more better than this.

As an inspector, we have been looking for a while for a real solution.

What Audit and inspection management software should I chose?

Here is a youtube video I found that got me thinking: I need an SQL SERVER and I want to partner with a Microsoft Partner.

Here is a long transcript I was able to find:



might as well start the show my name is

ben gromicko hello everybody I'm from

internachi internachi's the

international association of certified

home inspectors we are the world's

largest organization of residential and

commercial property inspectors and

there's Carl hello aller hello Carl

hello

you sound great I'm going to turn your

microphone off just for the moment we

have George on the other line and we're

waiting for Russell from home gage so

Carl I'm gonna mute your microphone it's

good to see you

Dominic I'm going to give you control of

the computer if you're ready little

window should pop up and just say you're

ready to go

can you hear me I can yeah right you

still hear an echo or am i okay you

sound great okay

and everyone says I can hear you

and there's they're not hearing an echo

doesn't sound like it nope and we can

see your screen do you see my screen

okay yep we can all right I guess just

let me know why don't you go in here

yeah sounds good I get going yep okay um

my name is Dominic message from home

inspector Pro we are just about to

celebrate ten years being a business

coming up here in February since I

started the software we have a thousands

of different home inspectors using our

software right now in up to 19 different

countries now and nine different

languages home inspector Pro is the only

software that natively runs on Windows

Mac Android iPhone and iPad you an

important question we get a lot is the

internet is not required during the

inspection on any of those devices so

software is not web-based just like any

of the programs that are talking tonight

you don't need the actual internet

during the inspection that's something

important for guys to ask when working

on the software when important to fact

about our software is that we really

pride ourselves in our tech support we

have tech support on both coasts we have

guys use data California Washington and

North Carolina so that way we can cover

both time zones we start our phones at 6

a.m. Pacific time and run until 4:00

p.m. which is 7 p.m. Eastern we have

live chat on our website which goes up

until 6 p.m. Pacific or 9:00 Eastern

both those are Monday through Friday and

then we have our email which is our help

desk that goes from 9 a.m. in the

morning to 3 a.m. Eastern Time so

basically I usually shut down about

usually 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning but

I tell guys midnight which is midnight

Pacific in the

a 3m on the East Coast that's something

that's really important that you know

the top companies are extremely good at

our software is very reasonably priced

now we've always tried to keep that

price point down the Windows and Mac

version of our software is 6:49 if you

get the mobile version which is the

iPhone iPad and Android it makes it

$7.99

internachi members always save $150 off

year-round but right now through

Christmas we have our holiday sales so

it's $200 off those prices which makes

it 449 or $5.99 we also have a no-cost

six months financing so you can actually

pay that off over six months which a lot

especially new inspectors appreciate a

special that I kind of highlighted here

I made this today if you use the coupon

code nachi seminar through Friday you'll

get two hundred and twenty five dollars

off um one thing that I've always

thought was really important our

software you only pay for one license

per inspector so if you have three

computers and you're the only one using

those three computers you're only paying

once and that includes if your windows

and a Mac you could we have guys that

actually start on a Windows tablet and

go home and finish on their Mac and

they'll only bought one copy of the

software the same thing goes with the

mobile version so our software runs on

the iPhone iPad and Android and we're

the only one so far that does that on

all those but you can actually start on

one device so you have an Android then

tomorrow you break your phone you can go

buy an iPhone you don't have to buy

another license it actually covers you

for both you can actually use both we

have guys that use an iPad and an

Android device and they'll merge the

inspection when they're done to it to a

third device the software includes a lot

of templates the templates are largely

based off all internachi standards or

practices commercial/residential mold

radon septic pool we have a spanish

french check in english that's in the

software like I say we have guys using

it nine languages but four are included

with the software fire door fireplace

fire safety accessibility which is based

on the accessibility ad a template for

not cheap we have a marine survey we

have over two dozen different templates

that guys have shared on the message

boards and those are all included with

the software we do not charge extra for

additional ten

all our templates are included at that

one cost that's an important thing I

wanted to kind of go over the program

here briefly the Windows and Mac version

of our software look almost identical I

know we only have a few minutes so I'll

kind of just highlight a few things

the software is driven through the menus

at the top of the screen that way it's

not using up a lot of navigations space

on the side and the menus are all

completely customizable so I can drop in

to say kitchen go to dishwasher and I

can see my comments and I can select my

mind your issues hit black major issues

and hit read all the colors are

customizable we have guys that you know

completely change them you can use more

color if you want this kind of up to you

you have multiple inspectors working on

a job you can actually import multiple

inspections together into one job like I

said that's on mobile devices or on the

full version and then one of the things

I left these in here let's test in this

earlier one of the things that's one of

the big points and reasons that guys use

our software is our batch add photos

feature so I can actually come into the

software and select my camera card or

your folder on your desktop or all your

pictures are short I'm gonna do that

right now

and it will actually add every single

photo that I took on my inspection

directly into the software it

automatically resizes them and

everything adds it's doing that so you

can see in here right now is going

through and adding 240 photos in there

and some of you guys might think that's

a lot of photos but Bend how many photos

did you take on your average inspection

3 400 3 to 400 yep so guys like Ben that

our shutter bugs and like taking a ton

of photos that will obviously come in in

handy for once that's done there's two

drop-down boxes above each photo so one

thing that kind of makes the software

unique is that rather than taking the

photos to rather than going to each

section throughout your software and

adding the photos one by one we actually

do the opposite and we bring this

section to the photo so the first

drop-down box is all

which is in your report it's like this

photo right here belongs in the grounds

page under vegetation and that's going

to put that photo directly in the report

this one right here belongs on the

grounds page driveway walkway this one

belongs in the exterior area windows and

I can go through each photo and

designate exactly where it appears now

of course if I'm using the mobile

version when I take a picture it's going

to go directly into that section the

sophomore and I don't have to do this

but the nice thing if I skip a photo

that photo will be saved directly into

the report but it will not appear on

your PDF report for your clients so all

photos received with the user are not

kind of as a you know way to cover

yourself but they do not actually show

up to the client unless you tell them to

and once I've taken the photos I can

actually go to like my exterior windows

and I can see those photos on the side

while I'm actually going through the

software let me try real quick here I

was going to see if I can share my iPad

I was having to restart this program

here real quick all right let's see if I

can connect

yep let me finish while this is work in

the mobile sync part of our software

that allows you to upload your report

your templates to the cloud for the

client to download them alright sorry

for you to download them onto your

mobile device and then when you're done

with that you're going to upload your

inspections from the cloud back to your

desktop your windows or your Mac and

then you could finish your inspection

directly on there looking at a couple

reports one of the things that makes our

software unique is the way that we

structure our reports our reports are

all PDF based and we have a really cool

stationary feature this is actually

sample report I received a few days ago

from an inspector and you notice he's

added stationary to the to every page of

his report and this is kind of like the

old days guys used to print on

pre-printed paper you can actually do

this digitally so his 90 day warranty

from recall Chek as homeowners network

is two hundred percent guarantee those

actually all show up on the paper and

then the report prints directly on top

of them

you look at there's another report here

that we have as one of our inspectors

everything in the report is completely

symmetrical everything appears with nice

clean lines so you can see all the

photos and everything and all all nicely

aligned all my exterior views here you

can color code your report this guy's a

military vet so you've got red white and

blue throughout his entire report you

notice you've got the red border there

some of the inspectors will change the

colors of the border in every section so

they're completely different

so maybe the plumbing pages is blue um

but the electrical page is yellow and

you know the roof page is brown and that

actually makes your report appear much

nicer for the clients in the agent so

they can see exactly what it is that

what section they're in and it can flip

through everything and see it nicer

let me try hitting my mobile going here

again

just one one second here guys

and fortune is giving me a problem

showing off the iPad version sorry about

that I can pull up some pictures here

real quick so here's some screenshots

that Apple has on their web on iTunes

you can see here the pad version or IFM

I feel version and Android all looks

identical you see a list of all your

sections directly in the report when you

click on each section is going to drill

down into all the subsections we've

added quite a few different features in

there so that you can actually view a

summary now of all the photos that

you've taken in the report so that way

when you're done with the client on site

you can actually do a little photo

summary and flick through everything you

can take photos that you aren't going to

include on the report within the mobile

version that's something we just added

one thing we're actually finishing up

right now we already have it done that

we're testing and internally is the

ability to add video directly into the

report from the mobile version or from

the from the desktop version and that

will be released here to everyone

shortly you see here's an Android device

all the sections here and I flip down

you can change the colors of the

backgrounds the colors of the fonts and

everything on the mobile version so if

you're colorblind or something you could

ship that one feature that's important

there's a search the top of mobile so

when you're looking in a section of

comments you can type in a comment in

the comments within that section it will

automatically filter down to only show

you the comments with that word in it so

if you're in an appliance right here and

I start typing in something about the

dishwasher and I just type in dish it's

only going to show those narratives

mobile devices are small so it's hard to

obviously see all comments at once the

other thing is little voice recognition

here you can easily click on the

microphone and then you can type in all

the comments that you want and then

you're good to go so you can you can

talk or voice talk voice to text

directly in the software so if you guys

that's probably hits I know my time is

run it up here so if you guys need

anything else

please let me know awesome thanks

Dominic

there are a lot of questions for Dominic

and we'll get to them after everyone

presents

let's see Carl and Jorge who goes next

did we agree to something I think Carl

was going up second alright Carl doesn't

matter I'll be I'll be happy to go

second that's fine

sure go right ahead alright uh how do I

get the screen I'm gonna say bye I'm

gonna give it to you right now so you

should see a little window pop up

don't see you yet there we go

it's just a little bit of a delay okay

we see your screen okay I'm gonna sit

everybody get back to where ups need to

go here let's say sure take your time

okay there we go can you see my screen

okay

yes we can I probably need to turn this

thing off I'm just sick out here okay

there we go

okay this is where you would normally

start with 3d and we were we started 26

years ago and I guess we were the first

commercially available software out

there were windows-based

we do not run with iPad we do however

run on an Apple Mac you can run it with

parallels which is a program that runs

that allows Apple computers to run

Windows programs our phone 3d app is

also windows compatible Windows Phone 7

and Phone 8 as well as we have another

app that runs on Android and is

compatible with our main program that

phone 3d is a free app and it interfaces

with anybody who happens to have a full

version of 3d we have forms on our

website that are free and also there is

a community out there that sells forms

to each other for different purposes and

needs basically the overview here is we

have report that the 3d is is comprised

of four different sections you've got

the office management where you it might

take orders you've got the which you see

in here you've got the report writer

here where you would write the report

you've got a word processor which is

used for ancillary items such as summary

pages contracts things like that and

then you also have a custom form studio

custom home studio is where wholesale

changes to forms are made where you have

a group of forms and you have the forms

in the group and the order that you want

them and then you have

forms that you can pull over and drop

into that group and then you can always

go into that form and edit those forms

in in a wholesale sort of a manner where

you can expand the thing and you can

actually see for each heading subheading

and narrative just what the properties

are done in the lower portion of the

screen we'll get into each of these in a

few minutes but right now I want to go

back and start with the office

management like a typical inspection may

come in I would usually say start a new

job and it would come up with the

screens I've got one already opened

however so I'm going to go ahead and

click on this one and come back to

office management somebody typically

calls up and they say how much is a home

inspection and so what I will do is I

will click on to my inspection request

tab right here and here I have all my

services listed and each service has an

underlying cost and these are all set up

up here in a customized menu and so I

would ask the the prospect you know how

large is the house let's say it's 2,800

square feet and ask him do they have a

pool because we have a lot of pools in

my area I assume if they wanted me to

schedule a termite inspection at the

same time when I tell them about the

dangers of radon and hopefully I'd sell

him on that after I had gotten some

information from him about the house I'd

come up here to my invoice tab and I

would click on them on a button here at

the bottom fill in voiceless liquid

products and not give me my price of

five hundred thirty five dollars now at

that point in time you may get a

question oh my goodness why so much well

that's the perfect building to be able

to go in and explain what I'm going to

do for each one of these inspections and

today I have not yet been able to get

through my entire explanation without

somebody saying okay you're the guy I

would assign an inspector here I would

assign a date right here and the time of

course save 9 a.m. and I say 2 hours 3

hours whatever you whatever you want to

do for that once all this information is

taken and let's say the guy has agreed

to the job and I've got other

information here I may want to add for

instance I may find out in questioning

him that there's a there's a crawlspace

and so if I click YES on this each one

of these answers can be loaded up so

that it adds more money to the invoice I

may come over here and fill that

once again you'll see here now it's

added a crawlspace inspection of twenty

five dollars additional so it's five

hundred sixty dollars I would get my

information as far as my sellers agent I

would have my buyer's agent up front

here and it's quite easy to you know

search for these people you can search

for jobs or agents or clients by name or

my last name by company by address which

is the street address by the street name

of the city this whatever you want to

search by and and they pop right in now

I just I just popped in one that I

didn't yeah I just popped in goofy one

here there you go okay so now once I've

got all this information and I've gone

ahead and booked this job I need to go

ahead and start the job and typically

what I would do is come over to begin

inspection but right now it's grayed out

because I've already got some

inspections started so let me go back

here to another one real quick and just

open something up here here begin

inspection there's there's two ways to

begin inspections the first way is on a

laptop or a desktop and here you would

use this tab right here to begin the

inspection and when you click on it you

get a list of the different forms that

are in your particular computer I have

some weird ones here program comes with

three basic forms such as residential

checks tile resident residential

detailed narrative in a condo form and

so I would just pick whatever form I

wanted to use here and click OK and the

phone would open up now another way to

start a job if your mobile is to come

over here to your cloud 3d inspection

tab and to click here and to say create

and upload an inspection and basically

you get the same screen so you can pick

your form set right here and from that

point on it would start uploading to the

cloud and it would upload to the account

that was had started to upload just sent

it would upload to the account that was

that was indicated over here on the

invoice for that particular inspector

now I've got a different job here though

stay here long collected ninety nine oh

one for this particular inspector that

we had in here meted ago so would go to

his actual

his actual phone okay so let's go ahead

and begin an inspection and just see

what this looks like okay actually I've

got one open already here and we've got

several different types of inspections

you can do with this program you could

do a checklist inspection something like

this and you can see here that there are

checks check boxes or these we call

ratings and you see you have three

different ratings at the top here but

you can have as many as five different

ratings that you can name yourself and

if you decide somewhere along the long

as you'll want to check box for a

particular line you can just click on

the actual subheading and you can just

say uncheck it say okay and the check

box goes away so it gives you a lot of

latitude the other type of inspection

that you can start is one that is a

narrative inspection and this one

wouldn't have any ratings you see

there's no ratings up here and as you

scroll across and you move along in here

you'll see there's there's no check

boxes at all so this is the main screen

for report writing and what do we have

here we have a single scrolling screen

that has everything on it from the top

to the bottom and along the top you have

tabs and these tabs you can use to drill

down you can either click like this to

go to the page or you can click and hold

it down and come down to where you want

to go and now you're on electrical

outlets notice your cursor is already in

this open box right here this input line

and so your narratives are represented

by the check boxes and the abbreviations

over here at the right and these menus

can be switched around left and right

however you want them by the way but so

as you scroll over these I'm not

clicking anything I'm just simply moving

my mouse over man as I move my mouse

over you'll see at the lower right a

preview of what that comment is so as

you use this thing you get more and more

used to what those comments are and you

really don't read them you just know

what the radiation stands for when you

click it and go so I would click this

damaged outlets and then I would right

click while my cursor is in this sidebar

to go to the next line so it's quite

quick to go up and down through this

thing anything with the little plus

right here that means there's another

choice underneath it so here this is a

this is a

an example of a placeholder may used

with what we call grouping where I can

put multiple items these blue items here

let's say this guy here

ground fault interrupters should be

installed uh say in the kitchen the

bathroom the unfinished basement in the

garage and then when I go to the next

line you'll notice that what this does

up here is it actually adds commas

between each one of our selections and

then also puts an and and I don't have

this set up quite right I shouldn't have

periods at the end of each one of these

little selections here but puts commas

in a hand in so it completes the

sentence for you now down here at the

lower portion of the screen we have here

some more tabs and this tab at the far

left would be for the cover image where

you would actually select your cover

image and you pop it in and then that

would print on your cover page when you

get ready to print your report you have

thumbnails these are the pictures that

you would normally take during the

inspection with your camera and you

would put a card into the computer and

you'd be able to read these directly you

have the current line the current line

is what line is actually activated up

here and I sort of like to use this

because you can change the size of these

of these little input lines here you can

make them larger or you can make them

smaller but making them smaller it makes

it easier to be able to see where you've

gone where you've been and where you're

going as far as in the report so I like

just being able to look at one place

right here form reference is another way

to be able to reference stuff in reports

where you have multiple items it may all

be the same attachments attachments is

useful when we get ready to print the

report because we want we might want to

attach certain things like oh let's see

here

finalized inspection like that like a

summary I mean when I touch a summary so

when this is click the summary comes in

and builds based on what items that you

have up here that you've marked as

belonging to a summary and anywhere

along here on any one of these these

input lines you can just click the

summary and click whatever you want it

to be that's a summary one which is

action items at this point and of course

you can name these any way you want to

and you can have as many as eight

different summaries I've just got three

named I feel like if you're doing

eight summaries you're actually

rewriting the report so the last thing

left here on this screen is over here at

the left side this is the actions menu

and all this is is what we used to call

a macro the list of macros and a macro

is a button that you program to actually

do more than one thing to say complete

the function that it would normally take

maybe five or six clicks to do so over

here one of the things that I can do

with this actions menu and by the way

there's a there's a button at the bottom

many people miss called the customize my

actions where it has a a wizard where

you can actually go through there and it

helps you it tells you exactly what to

do as you go through but here what I've

done is I've set up some recommendations

so if I click here I've got the three

basic recommendations that the

inspectors need at the end of any

comment that they make it's either call

a contract or monitor and call a

contractor in the future or how the

sellers demonstrate it so anywhere in

the report you know if I need call a

contractor I click here that says call a

licensed contractor for further

evaluation or repair replacement as

needed if I go to the laundry area and I

come here to the entry door and I need

that same comment I can click here and

there it is so this is sort of access

like a global menu so I don't have to

list this over and over and over over

here in these narratives as far as

thumbnails pictures the pictures are

down below you just double click on one

it pops in as a thumbnail you can

actually come in here and you've got

quite a number of different editing

things your your typical arrows and

things like that you can change colors

you can change transparencies you

actually have a magnifying glass or you

can pull out and and show people you

know something a little bit you know of

more interest to them you can resize

you've got captions here you can

position it to the left of the right or

below your text you can change the end

of the brightness and change you can

crop in gold sky stuff so it's

full-featured as far as though editing

the photos and that's pretty much the

Report Writer screen right there

now we're how am i doing on time

we're just about

I would say got something else okay

without more important thing well what I

would this is pretty much the basics of

3d ah there is a now there's other

things like over here if you're in the

field and you want to say add a comment

while you're all you're out there and

you have just a thought you can always

click here you can say add a comment

here or you can modify a comment if by

some chance you've typed a comment in

here and you think it's a great comment

you can highlight that comment come over

here and say add and it's already

brought the comment in all you have to

do is give it an abbreviation like new

until it where you want it like I want

it right there click OK and there it is

now it's here so it's that easy

any any time that you have a let's say

another bathroom you've got here we've

got three bathrooms so let's say I

needed another bathroom I could click

into the third bathroom anywhere in here

and I can just go up here to add copy

and say copy the current heading and

that would I would say bathroom number

four or I might say the blue bathroom

oops they stick that sorry copy of

current heading I say blue bathroom

click OK and that creates another whole

section for me another whole bath so

there's no need to have any extra rooms

or anything you can always add them on

the fly same thing with adding head

subheadings and this is the way adding a

recall check item works as well so once

you've setup recall check you can add

the items anywhere in the report writer

cool um I don't want too much my time so

that's probably about all I'm going to

be able to talk about but I would say

that if you have any interest in our

mobile stuff that you go over to our

website and on the main page there is a

video that you'll see right here that

shows you how this thing is organized

and how it works and it's it's pretty

simple to use and there's a poll on our

website and we've got some results for

the last six months eighty percent of

the inspectors that have filled up this

poll sets they've saved one 30 minutes

per inspection just using the mobile

stuff so I think the mobile stuff is

working quite well thank

very much and you could always walk with

is the website and I'll be hanging

around for questions later thanks Carl

thank you very much thank you right so

um next George George why don't you tell

us about your software okay Ben Thanks

a bank can you mute the other presenters

to minimize my echo sure make sure their

thanks appreciate and you sound uh that

we don't want to hear what they want to

say but I've just got a little bit of

echo all right I'm going to talk mainly

about home treks and I'm just going to

very briefly just maybe two minutes or

so on one of my other reports just a

little bit of background invest in

Spector's net I've been in business a

little over 21 years got involved with

home inspection software in 1999 so

about 14 years with home inspection

software before that it was pretty much

exclusively commercial and home treks

which we're going to be looking at

tonight is equally capable in commercial

and as far as other software that I have

pretty much you can think of it

something that needs to be inspected a

building an airplane boat we've got you

covered but tonight we're going to focus

on home inspections obviously the one

thing that really sets our software

apart I think probably more than

anything else is that it was designed by

inspectors and inspectors who have been

inspecting since long before computers

were part of the industry so what we try

to do is carry over some of the things

that folks are comfortable with and you

know their work practices and so on but

incorporating that the newest technology

and today I'd end with only one real

notable exception our software is all

what you see is what you get when I say

our software - I want to point out that

with the largest assortment of

inspection software anywhere literally

we have what you need a dozen or so

different

boarding systems on multiple platforms

we do cover all four major platforms we

do have some inspection software that is

portable you can start on an Android

work on your iPad a little bit go over

to your Mac and then finish up the same

report on your Windows PC if you wanted

to the so the home tracks and the others

basically it's what you see is what you

get you're working in the actual report

you're not clicking on different menus

and this and that and wondering how your

reports going to assemble and how it's

going to look you have complete control

and the only real notable exception is

setting up the job we have the job setup

form you see I have some dummy

information in here the job information

the client agents obviously optional

information and there's a help and

incidentally this help is actually a

open text field that you can put notes

to yourself that you don't necessarily

want your customer see I'm going to

cancel this set up because I've already

set this job up and I'm going to come

over to our cover page just just give

you an example what a cover page looks

like with the controls you'll notice we

have a control panel across the top of

the screen the controls are laid out for

the most part left to right as you

encounter them starting with the job

setup you'll see you have inspection

details of the form that we just looked

at

inspector details which you'd only have

to enter in typically once select pages

this is where you can select from any of

the pages those that have a checkmark in

hi-lite are highlighted in blue are

turned on or currently added to this

report those that are not checked or not

you'll see that there are some templates

for creating entirely new pages and so

on so I'm not going to do anything with

that right now as I said I already have

a job sort of set up we have a job order

again this is where

what-you-see-is-what-you-get information

was pulled from that form I'll just jump

back to the cover here the job

information

inspector information

if I go back to my job order form a lot

of that information is plugged in for

you but you can put your pricing all of

the fields through the entire report are

adjustable you see we have dropdowns we

have different ways that we can populate

different fields but most of this is

prefilled in same with the invoice

you'll see that all that information was

carried over to your invoice so you can

print that out you can also use that as

a receipt just change the word invoice

to receipt your inspection agreement you

can completely customize your inspection

agreement but it does have if you look

here I hope everyone has a good enough

view of this it automatically populates

with the inspector information the

address of the property the client name

the company name and here you can see

that has the total amount in this case

was eight hundred forty dollars because

we added a bunch of add-ons on to it

here is just one example of a standard

of practice of course we're showing the

internachi standard practice here a

general information page you'll notice

that just jump back to the cover page

one more time we have a picture of the

house that we're inspecting on the cover

we also can put a picture of the house

here or you can put text in this field

if you prefer most of this information

of course is already pre-populated for

you and again all of these fields you

can adjust and pretty much for the

entire report double-click to put a

check mark right click to put an X and

that's pretty much again you're working

directly in the report what you see is

what you get here's a page that I've

started to fill out a little bit I put a

little bit of information here I put a

couple of pictures you see I have a

variety of options for arrows and

circles and so on various annotation we

have a feature that I'm not going to be

able to get into into any kind of detail

but you'll see that this text is in red

you can put

predefined narratives and so on in your

library that will always automatically

work regardless where you insert them in

your report you can have them appear in

one of three standard colors black

obviously for everything but you also

have red green and blue so if I type

for example this says trip hazard I just

come over here anywhere and type trip

hazard of course I have to spell it

correctly you'll see it it's

automatically in red so that's a little

bit more advanced feature that won't get

into into too much detail the actual

filling out of the report again double

left-click to put a check right click to

put in X we have a feature called total

control summary you can choose to have

deficiencies automatically put into your

summary or not that can be turned off

and on and in the interest of time I

won't demonstrate that I would like to

say that there is a video that is on the

inspector outlet website under the

listing of home treks that you can watch

it's seven minutes long and it walks you

through some of these also in the video

library at best inspectors net or if you

go to best inspectors dot TV that's our

YouTube channel we have videos on

individual features and how they work

inserting pictures is a piece of cake

you'll see that you don't have to think

about where your pictures go you have a

left and right option just as we have

here you also have a left middle right

if you want to do three across so

they're going to be a little bit smaller

but they'll fit three across you have an

option if you want to do a completely

narrative report you can actually turn

off all your checkboxes and of course

makes the page wider the I'll just

demonstrate to put a picture in we'll

just grab a picture I'll just grab

something random you see the size and

positions it for you automatically and

I'll just grab a second picture just to

show you and you can put an unlimited

number of pictures you can add as many

rows as you want and so on when you've

finished with section you've got some

extra whitespace here let's say we you

see we've allocated plenty of space here

and this these can all be expanded these

sections there's no limit to how many

rows or how many pictures and so on but

when you're all done you just want to

clean things up you come over here to

this compact feature and you'll see it

takes out some of the extra whitespace

and just kind of tie these things up a

little bit the

next section here you see we have

different ways to navigate

we have tabs at the bottom of our screen

you'll see that this is a section that's

not been filled in at all if I come over

here to my tools you'll see that I have

some options here to create a table of

contents you've got some tools for

residential/commercial show or hide

contextual tabs I just want to

demonstrate that quickly because that's

an important one again I'll just jump

back to the cover for this if I click on

the photo you see nothing happens here

but let's say I need to edit that photo

if I come over to my tools and say show

contextual tabs now when I click on the

photo it brings up picture tools if I

needed to adjust that picture I can make

corrections gives me a little thumbnail

preview I can lighten it change the

contrast brightness and so on and if I

wanted to get a little bit fancy like on

my cover I could put a little border

soft soft edge in this case and so on

the another key thing about best

inspectors at Ness software in general

home to home tracks in particular

question that I often get is what are

your reports look like my response is

whatever you want it to look like the

level of customization is virtually

unlimited if you can if you can imagine

it you can basically build a template

now I'll just give you a quick example

of something that sometimes inspectors

do I just highlighted some rows here I

can generate check boxes I can label

those these are fully functional as I

generate them I can put check boxes over

here so if you wanted to go back to an

older check list out report and as I

mentioned a few minutes ago you can have

completely narrative as well the how you

put information in the into the fields

this is real important we've got the

classical method of using a drop-down

pull from the library

pretty straightforward obviously but we

also have a couple of other options and

if I jump I don't want to jump around

too much and get everybody confused or

dizzy here but here is a section that I

filled in using the library

assembly wizard here I have access to my

library where I can pull multiple

comments simultaneously actually I'll

come down to Anu come over here go to a

new field go to the electrical section

here so I can now come over to my

library assembly wizard and I can grab

I'm just going to grab some things

randomly here as many comments as I want

to grab I'm going to make these bulleted

comments so I just checked bulleted and

I'll say add that add that at that and

then when I've selected all my comments

I just say insert and they're all in

there now if I want those I have the

auto summary feature turned on right now

so I want to say that I've inspected

those but if I if I don't want them to

go into the summary I put a checkmark if

I do want them to go into summary I put

in X and it'll be a red X and it'll also

take it to the summary and I just select

where I want it to go we can go over to

the summary and we can verify that those

items in fact went into the summary you

select where those comments go in the

summary you can come back to your

summary later and format it if you want

you can pre format your summaries to in

a template so you have headings and

things of that nature you want to

alright George going back yes if you

could wrap up and in a moment here

Russell is here fighting at the gotcha

let me just if I could just switch over

and show the capstone just very briefly

all right for those who want a

completely different platform this is

another one

completely expandable unlimited number

of pictures can go into your reports

just as you do in any of these reports

and so on multiple summaries available

just an option just another example of

one of the other software options that

we have anyway thanks to everyone for

the opportunity to go over the software

and I'll be happy to answer questions

later thanks Ben thanks George thank you

very much

up next is Russell and

I'm going to give you control of the

screen you should see a little window

pop up let me get ready here great well

I didn't know we were going to have a

webcam opportunity next time I'll bring

my webcam but I packed seven minutes

full so let's get started sure hey

everyone I'm Russell Buchanan with home

Gage and I want to thank you for coming

to this little webinar and let's start

this whirlwind tour so I'll bring up

some sample reports or reports different

looks so just give you an idea of it any

of these reports can be done in

different colors this one's kind of a

grid look if you look over here we've

got little tables that and your pictures

you know your pictures are great they

your comments and your pictures stay

together a clean-looking report over

here we've got a woman as well that's

the same it's just the blue and except

it's a narrative book so it's not

actually the same this is a grid look so

here we don't have any kind of grid or

line so we just got words this one is an

internet chula go and it also has a

really cool logo on the background these

are available as well and here's one for

Canada and all sheets so some of you

guys over there in Canada can use a good

look and love it there over back here

before just give you an idea of what the

reports can look like these are cover

pages in HTML which means you literally

can take your cover page and make it

just like the web page anything you want

as a report itself it's in CSS or

cascading style sheets and all that

means is that if you get a guy or girl

who knows websites they can make this

report format look any way you want

reach however you want one thing that's

really cool that I want to show you is

that a home page can have expanded

pictures in the report so when you click

on them they expand High Definition also

you can have video in your report this

is great for marketing reasons as well

as pointing out defects it also

eliminates the need to

you talk a lot if you've got a lot of

information you could put it in a video

and not have to type it haven't

expanding pictures like this is really

cool so they can zoom in and see either

the defect or try to and here you can

make out the tell-tale line of the

settle back so expanding cases error

falling down able to do little

instructional videos gives you a fourth

life you know an interactive video and a

rooster cover just because I see

something yeah there's some rough up

here

well finally it's not where I used

aviary multimedia so Vivian your record

is cool you can have expending pictures

video your course we're on my left have

a floating content model it'll jog out

so your buyers and agents can get to

let's say you know Heating and Cooling

they can get to it right away you know

so uploading content bar helps and their

navigation I really cool-looking reports

and let's go look at your services your

services here real quick here you still

be stored on your reports for five years

we've dependent offside act up you can

set view information you can manage your

report you can set up a contract

agreement to get signed online or you

can force pay or force view before a

forcing the cyber for the view or or to

pay before they be able to get the

report setting up your notification to

automatically timestamp at here you give

viewing permissions and you can change

the address where to actually send them

your website to pick up the report so

once you send out the email you'll have

these time release messaging letters or

marketing emails at trigger based upon

your templates of whether it's two days

and you want to maybe you know this one

says thank you customer the second one

if you have some weight that you want

them to rate you your service

one year home warranty we got ADT offer

different things that you can make

yourself let's go look at the report

here we're just going to do a customer

first name last name email address you

can make new customers here here you can

put the address of inspection

miscellaneous you can attach anything

you want to report Word documents or

HTML you can also go to forms here and

get to the citizens Florida pest control

forms select template you've got

different templates here on the

commercial with a SEM ABA but also got

an interaction owner for your internachi

commercial and internachi residential

which will pick up now you open it up

your sections are on your left

curious inspection arms and here your

condom head and double click to fill

them out quickly if you change your

continent column it is really easy by

coming up here to edit column headers

and then you can making your

commentators your pictures a line up on

the right side straight unless you're

using the home gauge companion for

Android or iPhone if you alter your

pictures come in and automatically you

need just come up here to this content

answer and changes to edit all photos

and it will take you literally through

each and every photo here your picture

your pictures come out if you want you

can multiple select and drop them in my

fifth and it'll actually remember the

order you can drop them in where you

need to put something on Princess you

just put an arrow arm like this as fast

as you can put them in they'll just pop

up and so we'll just do one more here

I'll go line out and teeth tenth that's

the screen I can type in or get them a

little magical on here and put in damage

to whatever you can create people call

outwards himself and drop it in it okay

and let's see line runs line bones are

in here as well they just they just work

like a picture anybody flying drones or

work your customer and agent tab here so

many things we've got we don't have time

to go over file emerge report in the dis

reports so multiple inspectors can merge

you can use the cloud server

here and sin reports back and forth

using a cloud to have an automatic back

feature you'll never lose anything again

as long as you're backing up everything

to the cloud and we've also got a unity

to do a reinfection so you can select

this quickly inspection and then your

report will actually turn into a

reinfection report or everything's

excluded except for your summary items

and we get to assign the Ottoman was

going to fail you can just come over

here hit the little wheel and pass or

fail you can make up your own pass or

fail comments here and turn red and make

them come in different colors and all

that good stuff so automatically include

a comment or report automatically attach

a document or a picture or a live drawn

to a comment many things you can do at

home engage and I think my time is up so

I do have a special for you guys at

attended the webinar please come to

internal gah calm and I'll put a special

up tomorrow tomorrow only for any of you

guys that are interested and will be

able to get you ever get it through the

Hachi store and I'll give you a special

bonus for by ok thank you very much and

I'm gonna turn this back to you being

lets you getting questions thanks

Russell thank you very much that was a

fast so thanks Russell very much and I

see by our time we have about seven

minutes left I don't want to hold

everybody all night long I have a ton of

really good questions don't worry I'm

going to send all those questions to the

four presenters tonight so that they can

answer them individually but let me go

through a few of them and Russell while

your microphone is still hot how many

years have you been a software

inspection software company we

incorporated in 2001 so it took us about

two and a half years to get it rid

for sale and we started selling it a

little bit before 2001 but yeah since

then and Russell do you have staff do

you have full-time staff is it just yes

oh I know yeah I've got ten employees

we've got five five girls that are

dedicated to answer the phone Monday

through Friday 9:00 to 5:00 Eastern Time

the rest of us will pick up too but

these five girls are dedicated to

answering the phone they know the

software actually some of them know it

better than me

but so yeah we're here to help and you

know you can go to our website your

phone numbers but when you download our

software and try it out call our support

try our support out and support is a big

question

a dominic if you can hear me how fast

can I ask someone at home inspector Pro

a question and get an answer what if I

need you real quick do you have a good

turnaround time

are you there available yeah um you can

call us like I said we have phones we

have live chat and we have email our

average we have a ticket system that

tracks everything if you ask an email

via the help desk which is like emails

the average question is answered within

under ten minutes

if you jump on live chat that's

obviously live and that's all day long

and you get immediate responses and then

if you call us we have seven people in

the office for some reason they're all

on the phone we call everyone back

whether you leave a voicemail or not so

we we get back to you immediately or

talk to you immediately and answer your

question George does this software work

on both Mac and PC a lot of attendees

are asking what does it work on and what

do I need well you can run home tracks

on a Mac using parallels or if you

wanted to run capstone capstone run on a

Mac under the Mac os10 right up through

Mavericks and do you

do you have we saw some very fast

feature that enters a lot of pictures

into the report software do you have a

feature like that that handles a lot of

pictures for a fella like me an

inspector like me that takes three or

four hundred pictures yeah you know

you're going to have to decide where the

pictures go or the order in which they

go so the way the software structure is

you grab your picture you can grab it

for anywhere from any where you can grab

it direct from camera you can transfer

them to your PC first if you prefer and

then just you know put them in place

it's it's pretty fast inserting photos

is asked because it's it's not only is

it sizing the photo for you it's also

positioning the picture for you in the

report as you go thank you and Karl

everyone's asking about templates

especially a Texas template

do you have templates that the others

that your customers can use without

creating them especially a texas-based

template alright there's a trick

template over on our website under the

bonus downloads page under our user

community tab there's a number of other

forms over there as well wind storm or

wind the insurance forums and wind

mitigation forms and there's commercial

inspection forms of condo inspection

forms and mobile home inspection forms a

lot of forms over there that are all you

know basically no charge and then

there's also another another number of

forms that are out there that are sold

privately by other inspectors who have

developed these forms taking a lot of

time to develop them and of course they

sell them for a couple hundred bucks and

a lot of times I'll give you a running

start on maybe doing some type of new

service or something like commercial or

radon or whatever and again they're out

there and kind of like templates is the

spec inspection software filled with

narratives already or is it empty and I

got to fill mine in or do you help me

with my narrow all form sets come with

come with narratives already in there

but practically speaking I've always

found

the only way you can really increase

your speed and doing a report is to own

the form so when I say own the forms

that means you should have gone through

there and put your own words in there

and had a part in designing those forms

because it seems to imprint them in your

brain so that when you start using them

you just go a lot faster

you just know what's going on a lot

easier than using somebody else's

wording so there's always going to be

customization and every program no

matter which one you get thank you

Russell can you help me figure out what

these reports convert into does my

clients can they get a PDF email to them

do they have to log in and there they're

reading a web-based report because we

saw those bits of use that are embedded

yes so you can either use our services

and when you in the very beginning when

you saw those reports they were in a

report online as if the buyer was

looking at so at the top right I didn't

I just didn't have enough time I failed

to mention that if you put this up for

them to view again at the top right

there's a little PDF icon and that's

what your buyer an agent will click on

to be able to save it off as a PDF there

the there's also a little summary icon

that will generate pull the summary

straight out of your report for real

estate agents whatever a nice idea but

that PDF will obviously work just like

anybody else's PDF the video won't the

video I have a little watermark on there

that says you know there was a video

here so obviously if you don't want to

use your services you can email it as a

PDF but if you give our services a try

you'll get the impact of the marketing

value of expanding pictures/video

knowledge yourself and it does work on

mobile devices correct absolutely so

that is oh but yes it works on Android

device now it's been working on Android

and you can go to Google Play Store

download it right now and look at it

look at it a full version for free it's

a very attractive interface very liquid

very fluid we are coming out with the

iPhone iPad we're already taking a pre

pre

we expect that to be out by the end of

January if not sooner and we've been I

know crying wolf yelling wolf for almost

a year now but it will be at end of

January or say cool thanks Russell

Dominic what would you suggest with

taking suggest you can use a lot of ice

without Enterprise too or lately you

take a picture how many understand do

take a picture their iPhone or you

suggest having a separate camera and

uploading pictures yeah it's a really

good that's a really good question so um

we have a lot of guys that are using the

iPhones and iPads to take pictures a

problem is most of those devices still

don't have flash Android devices do all

have flash so a lot of guys use Android

the iPhone does take beautiful pictures

so a lot of the guys that use the

iPhones will still have a separate

camera for the attic in the crawl space

that they'll pull out there is a device

called the Samsung Galaxy camera and

also a new phone the Samsung s4 zoom

that has a zoom lens on it which none of

the other device is obviously iPads or

iPhones are Android devices have so the

Samsung Galaxy camera is a 21 x oom

which is better than most normal home

inspector cameras and the F score I

believe has a seven or eight x oome on

there so with those you can actually

have a mobile device at your phone and

actually take pictures with the zoom and

everything else and it's directly

dropping your software and then the nice

thing is even if you have to pull out

your normal camera because you're using

an iPhone at the end you would just

merge those photos together and they

automatically would add them all in so

it doesn't matter if you use two phone

devices you're so good and what about

this I got a couple questions about the

cloud are there additional fees I know

everyone said something about how much

this costs and the fees involved in

order to purchase the software but there

are there other additional

haven't thought about we're having

talked to lasso Wow hey stop if you're

just using the Windows and Mac version

there's no fee your your genuine your

PDF reports and then you're emailing it

off there is a cloud option our software

is the only one where you can upload

your report if you're hosting a website

with us it'll actually show the report

directly on your website so the client

agent will leave it so there's a cloud

option that you can use with the full

version but it's not required if you

have the mobile version the clouds

required and that's $20 a month the

reason is we store all the files for

five years we run our cloud on Amazon's

and Apple does not allow a direct data

transfer so it's impossible to hook up a

cable to trek to convert your

inspections to your desktop so we have

to go to the cloud and we use amazon's

cloud and we have to pay them you know

thousands a month for all their servers

and every time someone uploads a file or

downloads a file we have to pay them as

well so since we store all that

information for five years we basically

just pass the cost on and if you have

multiple inspectors obviously there's a

discount though thank you hey George um

so your inspection software it has eight

summary sheet a summary page right can

you print that like when I was in

inspector I did a summary page as fast

as I possibly can for my client I either

printed it on-site or I sent it as a PDF

and then I took my time writing the full

report oh you have that option where I

could send out the summary as quick as I

can

sure you can is for that matter you

notice that we have the summary but we

also have the inspection agreement job

order any of those can be sent out

immediately as a PDF cool and Cara I

didn't ask how many years have you been

in business and is there a a 100 ask

Karl question phone number that I can

call in case I'm having problems with my

inspection software there we don't have

an 800 number for tech support but of

course we prefer to do it by

email because we're able to provide a

written answer that then the customer

can refer back to maybe perhaps you know

another day when he has time to do

whatever he needs to do we're always

available however and by calling our

regular tech support number and we have

a ticketing system as well and we have

to tech support technicians online all

the time so they're here available you

know five days a week basically anything

that's not in those five days we go

ahead and take the email and we do check

emails during a weekend and other time

so if there are somebody's having a big

catastrophe we can get back to all but

that typically doesn't really happen

we've been around for 26 years we

incorporated in 1987 and really it

wasn't when we started it this this

software was invented to save me because

I had too much business I was a home

inspector doing two hundred fifty

thousand dollars worth a year myself and

I was about to kill myself staying up

too many nights and writing reports and

and I never intended to sell the

software until people started shoving

money at me and saying we want a copy we

want a copy and it just took off from

there and so you know there's been a lot

of input by inspectors over the last

twenty six years and of course I I left

the business after 20 years of doing

inspections I thought I'd had enough

thanks Carl

well I don't like to keep people over

their bedtime so I've got three kids at

home to put the bed and that's what I'm

going to do and I'm going to leave

everybody to their own I want to thank

you very much for attending this webinar

the recording is going to be available

in probably 24 hours you go to nachi org

slash webinar naturally our work slash

webinar and that's where we will have

the recording and some other free

downloads and other information in case

you missed the beginning of it and I

want to thank our four presenters

dominic carl george and russell thank

you very much it was really a really fun

time and i'm going to be sending you all

the questions that we could not get to

night we have many many questions and I

want to thank you all very much and have

a wonderful time and inspector's stay

safe out there

bye now

Up next

Now, what is the conclusion? Well If you work in the mining industry, you should checkout this documentary. Or else, nothing should stop you from trying nSpek.