Need help selecting report software

[Dominic J. Maricic]

Robert, if you'd like a free copy of Home Inspector Pro, I'll hook you up in exchange for a review from you. I'd like to know how you feel we stack up against your usage of Horizon. Our software is setup to be extremely easy to use with most of the advanced features sitting in the background so inspectors don't get overwhelmed at first glance. The template feature is extremely powerful; we have people who've made everything from boat inspection templates to home organization reports. The software runs on Mac & Windows.

Our site is http://www.HomeInspectorPro.com . The latest version hasn't been publically released yet but let me know and I can pm or email you a link. We're waiting for final feedback from our beta testers before we release it on Friday. I respond quickly, and late at night. In fact I just got off the phone with an inspector who bought our software today, and it's almost midnight. I guess that's a side effect of being a workaholic.

Dominic Maricic
Home Inspector Pro
Dominic@HomeInspectorPro.com

[relliott]

Dominic I will be happy to give an honest review as I have tested or looked through alot of them out there to the point where I am developing my own system.
Bear in mind that control of appearence is important in my world.
I use lots of photos, which is becoming more common place with us next day report guys.
If you read this thread you can send a E-Mail at my invatation to
A picture tells a thousand words and reminds clients of what was discussed.
So I am pretty busy till Sunday but will at least as of now be free to explore the software in detail from elliotthomeinspection@gmail.com or link on one of my others from the profile page.

[relliott]

Dominic I quicly went and viewed a report sample.
My initial response was that even the narrative report was a check list.
Everyone has there own way of reporting and I do not see that flexability on an initial look.
Checking off a box excellent ,good ,fair ,poor .to me sets up liability as it is to concrete of a judgement and looks like a school test.
Is there an alternitive? I describe conditions as they are and leave firm judgement to the client .
I also need control of pic placement and size,so if your program meets this requirement the above offer still stands.

[Dominic J. Maricic]

Hi Robert,
Yes, actually the checkboxes are completely optional and you can easily remove them, or rename them. States such as Texas require the checkboxes so we include them in the program. The checkboxes themselves are just an addendum. Most inspectors completely customize the actual comments in the report to fit their needs. You can add comments of unlimited length. I do admit that the current comments that come in the default template are pretty short. We have created more narrative comments in the Texas template and are working on the default template now as well. The nice thing is that you can do everything with one program. You can create a template to do residential, commercial or anything else you want. The Texas version we just created is just a new template.
Pictures can be cropped, brightness adjusted, arrows, circles, rectangles drawn, etc. You can change all the header, border & font color & types.
I'm sending an email to you right now.

Dominic Maricic
Home Inspector Pro
http://www.HomeInspectorPro.com

[relliott]

I have accepted Dominics offer and spoke at length on software with him by phone.
Bear in mind I now use Horizon and will be using this for some comparison.
So far my initial response is that he is putting hard work into getting his software out there with good support.
Some of the ideas he has for upgrade are impressive if put in to the program in the near future.
The check list style I saw on the samples did not endear me but I found them easy to get rid of.
Templates are quick to change and I will be playing around to see what I can squeeze out of the final presentation.
Look is very important so expect an honest opinion.
Un fortunatly Inspect Master seems to have no Idea how to handle NACHI members and is a dud in my opinion.

[Michael R. Boyett]

Dominic...I briefly looked at your examples shown on the www.homeinspectorpro.com website. The one example shown purported to follow the Texas requirements is absolutely wrong and does not meet TREC requirements in any way. Both the flow of topics and the checkboxes are wrong. You are doing a disservice to Texas HI's by claiming to meet TREC standards when you do not. If your latest version of s/w does something different than the .pdf examples shown on your website then please let me know.

[Dominic J. Maricic]

Hi Michael,
Thanks for the response, but you have me extremely confused. We have not posted a TREC sample on our website yet! As far as I know the words TREC don't even appear on our website yet (I've looked through the whole thing just now and couldn't find a thing).

Last week we offered 15 NACHI Texas home inspectors a free copy of our software to help us evaluate the Texas template we have created, before it's released, and we gave them a direct link to the version that included it. You can see the post here: http://www.nachi.org/forum/f31/home-inspector-pro-texas-texas-real-estate-commission-version-testers-needed-20909/

We have also been in contact with the Texas state attorney's office over the past few weeks to have them look over our TREC report. They have pointed out a few cosmetic issues such as indenting all the titles to the middle of the page, removing some of our extra borders and stuff. We hope to have these issues resolved and looked at again by monday or tuesday. The Texas attorney is the only person who we've sent a sample report to.

If you'd like to check out the version we do have and help us evaluate it in exchange for a free copy, that would be great, please let me know. You definately seem like you know your stuff and it's always good to have a well informed person helping out.

Thanks,
Dominic Maricic
Home Inspector Pro
http://www.HomeInspectorPro.com

[Michael R. Boyett]

Dominic, on the Sample Reports page under the 1st example called 1. Average Home, Blue theme, etc ( see http://www.homeinspectorpro.com/down...=SampleReports ) the cover page says, at the bottom, "Promulgated by the Texas Real Estate Commission(TREC) P.O. Box 12188, Austin, TX 78711-2188, 1-800-250-8732 or (512) 459-6544 (http:\\www.trec.state.tx.us). REI 7A-0 .

That is the example I was referencing. If your latest s/w is different than what generated that example then that's fine, maybe it is in compliance now.

BTW, when you say you have been working with the Texas state attorney on this I do hope that is a staff attorney with TREC. They are the only ones authorized to speak for Texas regarding inspector forms.

I'm up to my eyeballs in inspections and other challenges right now and can't promise how much help I would be concerning your s/w. If you need another reviewer then let me know and I'll find the time. I'm not looking for new reporting s/w however.

[Dominic J. Maricic]

Hi Michael,
Thanks for pointing that out! That's not supposed to be a Texas pdf sample by any means. I generated that sample report last week and I must have had the footer in the program still set to the Texas footer from all our testing.

Dominic Maricic
Home Inspector Pro
http://www.HomeInspectorPro.com

[Dominic J. Maricic]

Sorry, missed that last part in your post. No problem about checking it out, I understand. We have 9 inspectors helping us out right now so we should be ok.
Yes, the person who is looking it over is named Devon V. Bijansky, Staff Attorney Enforcement Division.

[Michael R. Boyett]

Yep, Devon is the right person to be doing that. She will do a good job for you.

[Keith Swift, PhD.]

Gentlemen:
Many of you now me as a former VP of NACHI, the President of Porter Valley Software (PVS), and the author of the narratives in InspectVue Residential and InspectVue Commercial. Many of you also know, Nick included, that I never try to sell my software; I demonstrate it when asked and then advice inspectors to check out other software. In fact, I nearly always nod toward Home Gauge. Nick, and Russell of Home Gauge know this).The free enterprise system works wonderfully well, without any help from me. As an existentialist, I'm faced with the responsibility of making me who I am and for making the world a better place. That being said, I have to step into the fray.
You will notice that NACHI has a "new user," a person identified as Martin Peterson who, by his last post, is revealed as Martin Hewitt, a "new vendor" hawking his software: Inspectmaster. Well, let me tell you something about Mr. Hewitt. He is a former user of InspectVue who has shameless ripped-off huge blocks of my narratives, which now appear in InspectMaster. I have spent several days documenting this beyond any shadow of a doubt, and am consulting with an attorney with a view to prosecuting him. In the meantime, I intend to foward the proof to Nick. In the meantime, please call me direct at PVS (800) 388-4541, and I'll tell you more about Mr. Hewitt and his software. Like Mark Twin, I can lie but I won't.

[W. Michael Chris]

Keith,

I'm glad to know the scoop on Mr. Peterson or Hewitt or whatever his name is. Keep us posted and good luck in all you do.

[Keith Swift, PhD.]

Thanks, Michael. People who lie have a tendency to forget their own lies.
P.S. Had to edit, because I just noted your tag line about the Queen. That's the way it is in my home, and happily so. Take care of the Queen and all the others stars will align.

[Linas I. Dapkus]

Thanks for the heads up on this thief. I got a junk e-mail from this scumbag a few days ago. Kieth you have been a great asset to NACHI and I hope everybody here boycotts his garbage wares and passes on the word.