Thanks, Dan. When I look at our competitors’ sample reports I discover that they don’t often include explanations for most defects. They’ll just check condition ratings (poor, fair, satisfactory, etc) for many deficiencies and will write a code like “RR” for repair or replace, CM for continually monitor, and so on. Comments are also canned and will say “one or more…” which obviously isn’t specific at all and leaves the client and realtor wondering whether one item or ten were defective. Big difference!
That’s not how we do things… at all. Our reports are incredibly detailed and user-friendly, and it’s served us very well. But like I said, I very much want to simplify things as much as I reasonably can to shorten our average report writing time by a bit (I currently work on average from 8 am till after midnight every day, including weekends, despite having 4 inspectors working for me and often don’t even have time to eat). It’s really a major issue because I’m completely burnt out and finding a “work/family balance” is near impossible. Everyone tells me it’s a good problem to have. Well yes, financially, but not in terms of my family life I get one shot to be a dad and am a fully committed husband, so I need to find a happy medium to prevent complete burnout. That’s why I posted this topic. There has to be a way to lessen our overall workload and our time spent on the report-writing side. I’m not even sure EXACTLY what our report writing requirements are, but we’ve always gone well beyond the bare minimum - that much I know for sure.