That’s a very thorough and well written template. You can tell that a lot of time and effort went into this. Good job, KC. 
KC lives just a couple hours North West from me and I have been reading his posts on facebook for years. I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with him at the InterNachi annual conference. If you use Spectora, buy his template. 
Spectora users: Check out Inspector Template.
This should be posted in the dedicated SPECTORA section!!
Did you buy the template?
Moved. Thanks.
As someone who doesn’t use Spectora, that video seemed to make it look cumbersome.
Kinda funny that the part he demonstrates for reporting the deck ledger, I would have phrased that differently.
And then I always find our different experiences doing the same things, very interesting. His comment that he has had three arc flashes removing deadfront covers compared to my zero in 25 years, is one of those differences.
I’ve never had one during an inspection but most of my stuff is new and I’ve not been at it that long 2026 is/will be my 5th year.
In my prior career one of the electricians I worked with had one in our Honduras factory. I was in the building and heard it, I didn’t see it though.
Yes, I did purchase his template about four years ago. He sends the new version for free every time he updates and refines it. There have been several updates over the years. You only pay once.
He gets feedback from users and incorporates it into new versions roughly once a year, as needed.
Disclaimer : I don’t use his template for my inspections since I have my own narratives, but I have used his for inspiration and found them useful. My template started before he was selling his, so my template has been a work in progress for many years. Many of my narratives have been taken from conversations on this forum over the years. I’ll take a good idea and advice from many different sources. I’m always learning and improving. For new inspectors, just starting out, they might use his template as their starting point and customize it as they develop their inspection style.
Yesterday, at the HOH in Boulder, a rep from Spectora and I had a conversation about this template. She was familiar with Bartley and his template and had good things to say about it. She told me that Spectora will help you set up your own template as part of their services. Spectora is up to over 11K customers now.
Curious… How many are veteran (>5 years) inspectors vs newbie (<5 years) inspectors?
Yeah…She said that five years ago, they had 5K subscribers. I don’t remember the exact percentage she said about retention, but I’m pretty sure she said a number over 90%.
So, if accurate about the retention percentage, then there are a lot of veteran inspectors using their software.
One of the things she advocated for Spectora was saving time by completing reports on site instead of finishing reports back at the office. I find that claim curious as I find in my own experience, that the time difference between on site or at the office is not much. It is just a matter of where you do it. Long ago, I determined that I write better reports when I finish them at my office, particularly when some deficiencies require an essay. Perhaps some of the Spectora users here might address if they think it’s convenient for finishing reports on site and saves time with that.
Personally, I would not make such a determination, as I suspect that a majority of those (5K) 11K Users are Newbies with Spectora being the first Report Software they’ve ever used. (Example would be Ryan U. with Spectora being the only software he’s used in his approx. 5 year inspection career). This gets to the gist of my curiosity question above.
Every modern Software Company makes the same (Marketing) Statement.
Exactly why I dumped Mobile Reporting early on, in approx. 2009, in the early age of on-site reporting. I have never regretted that decision ever, although I have been tempted to give it another whirl, based upon the raves of other Members, (such as Ryan and Bert). That being said, I have been using HIP since 2009, which I use on-site with my Laptop on the occasionally more technically detailed Commercial and Industrial projects.
All / any on-site reports are finished off at my desktop, always… with no exceptions!
Thanks for the info.
I know many Spectora users claim to finish/publish onsite, or in their truck in the driveway. But I can only think they must be doing vastly different homes than I am. Or, they maybe are extremely fast and accurate typing on their phone? Or, they may not be as meticulous as I am, or their report may not contain all the info mine does, etc., I don’t know.
For me, it is a hybrid approach. The easy, redundant stuff is done onsite. More complex things and proofreading is done on desktop at home. Unless my local housing stock suddenly becomes new and on a slab, I don’t see that changing.
There are other variables as well.
- Weather - I don’t f* around in zero degree temps trying to get things in the report. Take a pic, get moving! Same with rain, for the most part.
- Attic/crawl - I typically just take pics in these areas, put in report later.
- Time - If I get behind due to number of systems/issues, will just take pics and put in report later. In my area, client almost always comes for a review at the end. I like to keep things on schedule.
- Utilities - All of my utility and data tag pics get added later on desktop. That’s mainly due to the way my template is structured, as well as wanting to take multiple pics of data tags because sometimes one is blurry or something is cut off. Then I can pick the best one for the report.
The answer is multi-inspector firms.
I have 8 Spectora accounts.
If your considering software, check out SwiftReporter. It’s got a bunch of AI tools to make everything faster and easier. The key thing is that you always keep control though, you can generate an observation from a live transcribed note, or even just from photos themselves. If you like what it suggests, save it to the comment library for future use. SwiftReporter AI Home Inspection Software
Full disclosure, I made this.
It should be noted that KC Bartley is no longer associated with Spectora and no longer uses Spectora.
Interesting. Do you know what he switched to?
Binsr, according to his FB posts.
Software companies are popping up like mushrooms. I got some msgs from something called Property Vision.