Need help selecting report software

[Dale Duffy]

Originally Posted by jwatts1

I highly recommend InspectVue by Porter Valley over Home Guage, it is hands down a better program and easier for your clients to read.....

You might want to add to your biased comment "In my opinion"

Other wise your comments are pretty moot to most intelligent readers of this message board.

[bzimbelman]

Originally Posted by jwatts1

Checklist style reports are an attorney's best friend.. Most home inspectors are SUED due to check list style reports because they don't explain or "educate" or disclaim conditions that buyers should be made of aware of. Not sure if you knew this.
Give proof. Lets see the facts on this. Not just your marketing crap. And while your at it, you'll need to provide information that includes the percentage of reports for that period that were produced of each type as well as the percentage of each that were 'sued'.

I am in business to provide the best report possible and to protect myself and my clients... As for the extensive language, its there for a reason. to EDUCATE clients, and if you are ever sued for those "boring" topics you failed to disclaim in your report, wouldn't you like to read back in your report.. and say didn't you read this?

Where did I say I failed to state anything on my report? Please show the specific quote. How does adding legal disclaimer "EDUCATE" (your yelling not mine) your customers? It doesn't. I actually think the narrative report (especially if you color code the important stuff), is putting you into far more legal limbo then a checklist report ever will. Look at it this way, who's stupid enough to read your entire report if all they have to do is scan the red sentences???
On the other hand since the realtors and my clients all find my report clear and concise, it gets read, and since they understand what they read, I get far less questions, now that is what I would call effective education.

Serious defects are highlighted in "red" in my reports.. so for clients/agents that do not wish to read the "extensive" language, I have highlighted issues that are high priority...

In my State of California, next to New Jersey... California is a very litigous state and filing a lawsuit is cheaper than a steak dinner!

Your inspection software should be the best financial armor one can have... Why not have one that looks good, and protects you!

Just my thoughts,
Justin Watts
American Dream Home Inspection
www.americandreamhomeinspection.net

Your inspection software should allow you to concentrate on inspecting and not on recording your findings and it should help you to produce the most informative report you can. Whatever program helps you to produce that informative, readable report, then that program will allow you to protect yourself.

[Justin Watts]

I appreciate your feedback and "your" opinions... I didn't know that yours was the right one. But agree, to disagree... I am down with that. As for marketing, I am only posting my opinion regarding the program, no offense intended there Chief.

Happy Holidays!

Justin
www.americandreamhomeinspection.net

[David P. Valley]

Originally Posted by jwatts1

Checklist style reports are an attorney's best friend.. Most home inspectors are SUED due to check list style reports because they don't explain or "educate" or disclaim conditions that buyers should be made of aware of. Not sure if you knew this.

Just my thoughts,
Justin Watts
American Dream Home Inspection
www.americandreamhomeinspection.net

IMO, you are dead wrong. How can you state that a specific type of report is an attorney's best friend? I've been doing checklist reports for over 6 years now and have never spoken to a judge or attorney regarding one of my inspections.

I've heard several stories of home inspectors utilizing software reports who have lost their case in court due to them missing big ticket items. It's not the actual report that puts you in front of a judge, it's your reporting style.

I do write fast and I have excellent penmanship and I have never had a client call me and tell me that they couldn't read a specific line of my report. When I started my business, I decided to design my very own 3-part form. These forms cover every component in a typical single or muti-family home. I will not miss a single component in a home as my form requires me to fill in every line of the report.

Now if an inspector utilized a checklist report had poor penmanship such as this....
inspection_report_bad.pdf, now we are talking about lawsuits.

It's not the style of report (which an inspector decides to utilize) that places you in front of the judge, it's your reporting habits.

Observe and Report to stay out of Court. Be through, report everything you see that is clearly visible, be polite and befriend your clients, and problems will not arise.

[Justin Watts]

People in your State may not be as sue happy as they are out here in California.... If you want stats on lawsuits filed regarding checklist style reports talk to the NACHI inspector Russel Ray in San Diego, he actually did some research and has excellent contacts.

Attorneys tear apart checklist style reports.....they will hang you with your own report. Without disclaimers, information about ages of systems, conditions and locations, proper references to have components further evaluated with the (who, what, when, where, and why) reasons... Inspectors are not covering their bases and protecting themselves.

If you are confident that your system will protect you, then no reason to worry... I would not trust any other reporting system out there. In my "opinion" if the InspectVue program was compared to vehicles it is the "LEXUS" of all reporting systems, safe, fast, reliable, and well worth its price.....

And by the way, I just love the "reputation" box... So others get to judge me based on my opinion, make sure you mark me with a bad reputation since I am leaving feedback. This is a joke!

Justin
www.americandreamhomeinspection.net

[bzimbelman]

Originally Posted by jwatts1

People in your State may not be as sue happy as they are out here in California.... If you want stats on lawsuits filed regarding checklist style reports talk to the NACHI inspector Russel Ray in San Diego, he actually did some research and has excellent contacts.

Attorneys tear apart checklist style reports.....they will hang you with your own report. Without disclaimers, information about ages of systems, conditions and locations, proper references to have components further evaluated with the (who, what, when, where, and why) reasons... Inspectors are not covering their bases and protecting themselves.

More hearsay, give facts. Attorneys will tear apart any poorly written report, including those with extensive disclaimers that make it near impossible to determine the actual findings like many of the sample reports I've seen on inspector websites that are produced with InspectVue.

If you are confident that your system will protect you, then no reason to worry... I would not trust any other reporting system out there. In my "opinion" if the InspectVue program was compared to vehicles it is the "LEXUS" of all reporting systems, safe, fast, reliable, and well worth its price.....

I'd rather drive my Dodge turbo cummins diesel (HG on my tablet PC) then your 1984 run down crappy Lexus that's been in three accidents last week . We are just giving our opinions here now, right?

And by the way, I just love the "reputation" box... So others get to judge me based on my opinion, make sure you mark me with a bad reputation since I am leaving feedback. This is a joke!

Justin
www.americandreamhomeinspection.net

I've never given a red box, so it wasn't me. Probably someone who didn't appreciate you trying to turn an honest discussion of the merits of various systems into a marketing pitch. Nothing wrong with a marketing pitch thread, as long as you start it and clearly identify it as such. Same thing happens to other marketers who come on here and try to turn every thread they can possibly turn into a pitch of their own product, not appreciated by the masses.

I know that the InspectVue fans like to make this claim that narrative reports are more defensible, but as far as I can tell there are no facts to back this up, at least none have been presented in this or the other forums I monitor.

The closest I've seen was someone posting that more lawsuits were filed somewhere over some period of time involving checklist reports, very detailed! But what wasn't said was what percentage of reports in the lawsuits were checklist, what percentage of reports over the same period were checklist, how much experience these inspectors had vs. that of the inspectors who didn't have lawsuits filed against them. If the claims turned out to be valid poor inspections, poor reports, both, what. Or any of the literally hundreds or thousands of other factors that may have been in play here to skew these numbers.

On the other hand, someone else also posted more hearsay, in this case that lawyers loved narrative reports because they were easy to destroy in court... filed more lawsuits... blah, blah, blah. Again no facts were provided to actually prove that the type of report was the reason that the client had a problem, and that the lawyer was actually able to 'tear apart' the narrative report.

So it seems to me, until one camp or the other provides some facts backing up their claims, then all we can do is look at actual [sample] reports from inspectors, put ourselves in the place of the client and try to figure out what would make one better then another.

I did this five years ago when I started, and have made a practice of doing it annually ever since. I go to several sites, download their 'sample report', this year it was about 30 sample reports (down from over 150 when I first started) and try to read them all as if I'm the customer. I considered switching to narrative reports three separate times, but every time the sample reports were just far too difficult to easily glean the information from.

In fact, most are down right hard to read, ever try to read a legal contract and after reading a paragraph think to yourself, "What the heck did that say"? Well that's what many of these sample narrative reports come across as, and I can guarantee you, if I was the client and something was in the report, but I missed it because it was obscured by disclaimer language or poorly communicated, I'd be pissed. Would I sue, depends on the situation, but I certainly would be pissed. Bad referrals would be guaranteed.

Since I prefer to communicate clearly with my clients and hope that will keep them from getting mad at me, I choose to go with a checklist style report.

Now, those aren't all perfect either. In fact the one constant that I come away with every year is the feeling of amazement at what people actually post on their website as a sample report!

There are some with funky symbols or abbreviations which are not clearly identified and visible at all times, that means I have to go back to a key to read the report, back and forth, back and forth. Seems hard to read to me, so I looked for tools that don't do that. There are many sample checklist reports which also have long legal disclaimers in each section, so they can be as bad as a narrative report in that aspect. Checklists with so many sets of checkboxes that no one wants to see, that its almost impossible to find the actual issues, etc.

No one format was perfect, but I find that its much easier for me (maybe not for others, but for me) to create a very easy to read, usable checklist report that has very clean, concise comments which clearly state the findings.

My reports have little to no disclaimers in them, that goes in the contract I have my client sign before I agree to do the inspection for them. I don't see how adding a second set of disclaimers will ever make them more likely to stand up in court, no matter what state your in. Oh, especially since your client didn't sign off that they agree on these disclaimers, so they are of absolutely no positive value, and they interfere with your client reading your report so they have a very big negative value.

[Roy D. Cooke, Sr]

I use a check list and have for ever never been to court yet.
We have a person on this BB and it has been posted more then once .
He has been to court as an expert witness 42 times ( I think it was ) And 39 of theses cases involved a computer generated report only 3 where a checklist
. I like 6% odds in my favor as 93 % against me .

... Cookie

I wonder is this one of the reasons why many who use the check list have been around so long ,Better survival with check list?

[bzimbelman]

Originally Posted by rcooke

I use a check list and have for ever never been to court yet.
We have a person on this BB and it has been posted more then once .
He has been to court as an expert witness 42 times ( I think it was ) And 39 of theses cases involved a computer generated report only 3 where a checklist
. I like 6% odds in my favor as 93 % against me .

... Cookie

I wonder is this one of the reasons why many who use the check list have been around so long ,Better survival with check list?

Good point Cookie. The question I would ask is how much you think your not having to go to court has to do with your particular report format and how much of it has to do with how you perform your inspection, interact with your clients and otherwise handle yourself in your business.

I'm going to guess that if you wanted to you could produce a high quality report that would not only keep you out of court, but also make your client happy and get you referrals with many different report formats/tools. You have found one that works for you, which is the key.

[Jeff Knight]

Can I ask a simple question as to what do home inspectors consider a "checklist" style report and a "narrative" style report ? I think there is confusion on both ends and both terms are thrown around without really anyone knowing what each one is. Is it considered a "checklist" report if it contains checkboxes in the report ? If you see a sample TREC form from Texas there are checkboxes in the report but I would not consider most reports being produced ina TREC format a "checklist" report. Just curious as to what people consider when they refer to a report as one type or the other.

FYI: We call our report a "semi-narrative" report so I am not sure whether it falls under one or the other. It doesn't contain any checkboxes so I can't consider it a "checklist" report...but I also do not consider it a "narrative" report because it really is broken down into columns and can have just a couple words in each column and is not usually full of paragraphs of comments.

[David P. Valley]

Originally Posted by Jeff Knight

Can I ask a simple question as to what do home inspectors consider a "checklist" style report and a "narrative" style report ? I think there is confusion on both ends and both terms are thrown around without really anyone knowing what each one is. Is it considered a "checklist" report if it contains checkboxes in the report ? If you see a sample TREC form from Texas there are checkboxes in the report but I would not consider most reports being produced ina TREC format a "checklist" report. Just curious as to what people consider when they refer to a report as one type or the other.

FYI: We call our report a "semi-narrative" report so I am not sure whether it falls under one or the other. It doesn't contain any checkboxes so I can't consider it a "checklist" report...but I also do not consider it a "narrative" report because it really is broken down into columns and can have just a couple words in each column and is not usually full of paragraphs of comments.

My checklist report contains 17 pages of components along with a 64 page maintenance manual. Each and every component (on my report) has a slot designated for the checklist and next to that is a line item area for my comments.

If I enter a check-mark on a grade other than "A", then I always enter my comment as to why I have entered a derogatory grade. My report will be full of comments when it finally gets completed.

Even New Construction inspections will have comments noted in the comment area. No home is absolutely perfect....

[bzimbelman]

Originally Posted by Jeff Knight

Can I ask a simple question as to what do home inspectors consider a "checklist" style report and a "narrative" style report ? I think there is confusion on both ends and both terms are thrown around without really anyone knowing what each one is. Is it considered a "checklist" report if it contains checkboxes in the report ? If you see a sample TREC form from Texas there are checkboxes in the report but I would not consider most reports being produced ina TREC format a "checklist" report. Just curious as to what people consider when they refer to a report as one type or the other.

FYI: We call our report a "semi-narrative" report so I am not sure whether it falls under one or the other. It doesn't contain any checkboxes so I can't consider it a "checklist" report...but I also do not consider it a "narrative" report because it really is broken down into columns and can have just a couple words in each column and is not usually full of paragraphs of comments.

narrative report

For an example of a narrative report go to www.inspectvue.com and use sample/sample to get to the sample reports.

[Russell Buchanan]

HomeGauge can be a narrative report. You can remove all check box column headers and style and materials selections. At each inspection item start typing or use your auto-comments. Color red, bold or whatever.

HomeGauge is a checklist / narrative. It can do either and it can do both.

[Jeff Knight]

So is this report considered a narrative or checklist report ?

http://www.knightssoftware.com/Sampl...n%20Report.pdf

It seems that if there are actual physical checkboxes in the report that that is the designation some inspectors are using to signify that it is a checklist report when actually you really don't need the checkbox but just the actual item that was checked to print in the report.

[bzimbelman]

Originally Posted by rbuchanan1

HomeGauge can be a narrative report. You can remove all check box column headers and style and materials selections. At each inspection item start typing or use your auto-comments. Color red, bold or whatever.

HomeGauge is a checklist / narrative. It can do either and it can do both.

I thought that was the case, but I've never seen anyone actually use it that way. All of the sample reports I've ever seen of HG users are checklist reports. Sorry if I made it sound like HG didn't have that functionality.

[Dominic J. Maricic]

Same goes for Home Inspector Pro. We've had people complain it's a 'checklist' program before too. The checkboxes can be kept in, or removed compelely.

I think the reason that most people leave them in is because A. they used checklists in the past and they feel comfortable having a few checkboxes, B. they like the look of the combination of the two, and C. it's the default (same with HG), and many inspectors don't change items past the defaults until they've used the program for awhile. The NACHI guys here seem to be an exception to that though. I've seen tons of variations of our templates being created by Russ Spriggs and lots of the other NACHI users here.