After about a thousand crawl spaces and attics I retired from home inspections in 2023 and took on a 2-year QA/QC project in another industry I’ve worked in off an on for most of my adult life; Structural Steel and Welding. I had quite a bit of flexibility and didn’t miss being in the field all day and at my PC half the night writing reports for one or several different inspection services I was providing, but that 2-year project has now come to a close and I’m considering returning to an entrepreneurial status and returning to construction/contractor type work.
Since I’ve maintained my Home Inspection certification and still get requests for inspections I figured I may include an occasional home inspection service when time permits, so I’m looking for a simple and inexpensive reporting solution and preferably one that does not required a month-to-month agreement, but rather can be purchased and updated as necessary.
Before HIP moved to their online service and initiated a monthly fee, which was just prior to me getting out of the business, HIP was a perfect solution for this. I was doing two or sometimes three inspections a day at that time, so stand-alone or online didn’t really matter I could justify the expense, but now I don’t want to pay a routine fee for a service I may not provide a lot of.
That said I’m just curious if there are any part-time inspectors out there in a similar situation or full-timers for that matter that may have some suggestions for me.
After selling my multi-inspector company and moving to another state I find myself in a similar situation of doing few inspections but software is the least of my worries. Insurance, licenses, accounting/book keeping etc. seem to be much more of a financial “annoyance.”
As for your question I’m pretty sure there are software programs that offer per use options. I still just us an MS Word template and convert to PDF which is basically free.
I think I still have all of my versions of HIP. I suppose the only issue there is using an iPad onsite and then accessing/downloading my reports to a PC later for review prior to sending a final copy to the Client. That’s been my typical workflow in the past, but I suppose that’s something I could work around for minimal usage.
I’ll have to try it, maybe it’d still work, but I don’t think so.
the biggest hassle using word is resizing the pictures each time. you can use a powershell script and imagmagik to do all of them. i put them all into a folder and run the script and it takes them all and separates them into landscape and portrait and makes them the same size, 2.5x3.5 for portait and 3.5x2.5 for landscape. then when you insert them they fit and don’t throw everything out of whack until you drag them to the right size. saves a bunch of time.
i am also working on a python thing using django and postgresql to use the narratives and put the report together for me like software does, but that may take a bit to get perfected. if i were busy with inspections instead of other things i’d have taken a few days to sit down and get it done. i’ll put it on github when i get done with it. if you want to use the script let me know and i’ll put that up so you can grab it.
I remember the days when software was something you buy to solve a problem or complete a portion of your job, but nowadays they are all subscription based models that benefit the software vendor more than the individual using the program, and the fees for these programs (initial & ongoing) have increased dramatically.
This vendor (a Nachi member) has several products available that you can buy and that are more affordable than many others.
For the longest time, they also offered InterNACHI Members a FREE Software version.
I do not know if this is still available. Perhaps George @gwells will see this thread and jump in to comment.
Agreed for the most part but years ago I found Cannon digital cameras insert at 3.56 X 2.67 which is perfect. All other mainstream camera manufacturers came in much bigger and each had to be resized which is a real pain as you say.
Depending on your report format you might check out this plug-in, I use it all the time for reports. It took a few test runs to get the config right, but after that it works pretty good.
My only issue with using a word template is the lack of narratives. I like to explain or justify why I’m calling something out and educate the Client whenever possible, so having the ability to select from a large list of narratives fits my style very well.
Yes I believe it was referred to as the “Cloud Service”, but now all I see is the HIP “Office” subscriptions. Their cloud service may still be available I’m just not seeing how to access it.
Irfanview is free. It’s been around for a long time. It will resize photos in batches to any size you want. You can save your preferred size and other specifications as a default. It’s also lightening fast. It will resize a few hundred photos in mere seconds.
Microsoft has a free app called ImageResizer. It’s on the Free Stuff page of my website. ImageResizer doesn’t give the user as much control over images as Irfanview, but it is easier to learn. Irfanview can be a little overwhelming when you first look at it. It’s easy to use though once you get used to it.
We have two inspection reports that are free to InterNACHI members. Legacy Home is an older style report. It is a hybrid checklist and narrative report. Some inspectors still like the format; especially inspectors who have been in the business a long time. We have been giving Legacy Home to InterNACHI members free for over 20 years. It has been updated many times over the years as inspection trends have changed. It was originally a checklist report similar to the popular Home-Tec report.
The other report is InspectorLogic. It is a more contemporary style report. We have been giving it to InterNACHI members for eight years. It is preferred over Legacy Home at least 5:1.
Our higher-end software is very reasonably priced. All our reports run locally on the inspector’s computer, not on a cloud server. All our software is also sold at a fixed price. We don’t play the subscription game. The average length of time between buying upgrades is around five years. I have customers who still run Windows ME or Windows XP and have been using the same software for 25 years.
We still have fixed prices. I’ve thought about offering subscriptions, but I don’t like to sell anything that I wouldn’t buy myself. If I ever do offer subscriptions at some time in the future (which I doubt), I’d still have fixed price options.
We also focus on good inspection report software. Most of my competitors are trying to be everything to everyone. Instead of focusing on a superior inspection report, they throw in a lot of stuff that is available elsewhere free or for a very low cost just to make inspectors think they are getting something special.
Our website hosting plans offer most of those incidental things as free add-ons. Inspectors are paying upwards of $150 a month for things that are free with a $5 a month website hosting plan.
I’ve seen a lot of companies come and go in my 32 1/2 years in business. I used to keep count of them, but I stopped doing that a long time ago because this business is like a revolving door. There haven’t been many to survive more than five years. Most that have survived have sold their businesses. After Carl Fowler died, that left me as the oldest continuously operating inspection report software publisher.
thanx for that add-in. as for the narratives, that’s the shortcoming in my stuff, you have to write the narratives first. the good thing about that is ai, chatgpt can write them for you. i haven’t put mine up to that yet though, just now getting time to do stuff again after getting my desktop setup again.
All AI can do is regurgitate what some wanna-be person has fed into it, to make themselves sound important!
Half (or more) of most all AI generated narratives contain mistakes, some which could actually bring harm to unsuspecting homeowners. Those inspectors who presented that crap to their clients should be castrated, (maybe they already are)!!
I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting ChatGPT and other AI. I ask for things that I already know so that I can gauge the correctness and accuracy of the responses.
Some of the responses are good, but many are completely wrong. I’ll respond in turn with a correction. The AI usually comes back saying something like “Thanks for the clarification. I see now that you are right …”. It then will go on to give me a completely different answer.
I discovered that all I have to do when it gives a bad answer is to say “Try again”. Each time I’ll get a different response. They sometimes get better and sometimes they get worse. After about six times of saying “Try again”, it will usually say something along the lines of ”I’m sorry I couldn’t help you” or “Maybe we should move on to another topic”.
AI has made internet searches much more efficient. Beyond that, though, I wouldn’t risk my reputation on anything AI tells me.
AI will probably change the world as much as the Internet itself has done, but it still has a long way to go.