TOPIC: Mobile template

I didn't say it was best for the electrician. I said it was easier for the client to go to the electrical section to see what needed to be done. If you do room by room then the client has to go through the report and figure out how many receptacles need work. Time consuming for the client, who cares about the electrician. I would hate for the client to call an electrician have them correct the issues the client pulled out of the report only to find that they missed one. So I do it for them.

After the learning curve of doing my inspections onsite, I finish my inspections in about 3 hours, my report time went from 3 to 4 hours down to about an hour, mostly just proofreading and adding new comments or captions. Works for me but may not work for everyone.

...I have no reason to try and make sense of all this being I am "blessed" with the Texas template, right Dom? I read everything I can that has to do with speeding up the report writing but I do not think any of these ideas pertain to me.

Some of the items definitely do. But anytime you see the words "template change" you can ignore it.

I disagree. Room by Room templates are much easier for clients to read. Clients think of the house by picturing themselves in the house. It also takes longer to do a report on site in a System template as there's more jumping around to do. A room by room or hybrid is best.

I've never in ten years done a room by room report, so I honestly can't speak to whether it is easier for a client to read and understand. I'm sure I have an opinion on that, though.

But Dom's second statement about room by room being faster onsite is hard for me to believe. I do as Mike mentioned and place all wall, floor, ceiling, window, outlets, etc. comments in one section under "Interior". Looking at this from a data input and final report perspective, which is faster:

1. Inputting data on those sections as okay(Walls, Floors, Ceilings, windows, outlets) only once? or
2. Inputting data on those sections as okay multiple times in 6-10 individual room sections?

From a time standpoint, obviously the system by system input would be faster. Even if there were defects to call out, moving from section to section in the mobile version would add only about 5 seconds per defect. That's not a lot of time spent moving around the template. I suppose if those components had tons of issues your time would be worse using a system report. It is arguable that in a house that bad it would be better to write one note regarding every thing wrong with the windows or walls, etc. and just include the photos for specifics.

I think the reality is there are very few defects which are called out in those components which would populate the sections of a room by room template. Alternatively one could not include much of the descriptive notes and "satisfactory" conventions for each room and only focus on notating defects, but it seems a room by room report written that way would look very empty with lots of white space.

Kenton said:

The InterNACHI Narrative template is a hybrid. It's broken into systems, but I don't see any point in scrolling all the way back to Electrical to enter a common problem in a particular room, outside, or in the garage, basement, crawlspace, or attic, so each of those has outlet, light, switch and junction box problems (or any other common to each area) listed in those sections. Those comments should wind up in the summary anyway. The Electrical section is service drop (or lateral), mast, meter, service panel, sub-panel, branch circuits, etc.

Same with various plumbing components. Problems with undersink plumbing in the laundry room go in the Laundry Room section.

I'm so proud of my reports that I don't include a summary just so agents get to read all of it. ;D

Actually, a system by system report in my area works out to be a bit of a summary anyway. The contracts used by every Realtor, which represent about 90-95% of the transactions, limit repair requests to Structural(foundation & framing), Electrical, Plumbing, Heating, A/C, Roofing and a miscellaneous category. The repair amendments which they(clients) fill out are pre-printed with these 7 spaces to fill, so my system report ends up summarizing the categories they can use anyway.

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Perhaps providing both room-by-room sections and system-by-system sections in the HIP mobile template would be the best way to streamline it for users. They can easily then just remove the template sections which they wouldn't use and still have all the narratives at the ready.

I also agree titles using the NOTE feature are a great way of speeding up mobile input. I remember the placement and content of my narratives based on just a couple words which come to mind when I discover a defect. If I were titling the Kenton narratives, I would pick the most unique keywords in each narrative to include in the titles so that even the use of the search feature would benefit from the addition of titles.

I'm having to re-do a lot of the notes because they're too long. The most important words have to come first. It's tricky because I sometimes offer to or three slightly different versions of the same narrative. For example, I have long and short narratives about aluminum wiring, giving inspectors a choice in how much information they want to provide.

I offer choices in some things about recommending a qualified contractor or a structural engineer, so in the notes, I not only have to describe the condition covered by the narrative in a couple of words, I also need to mention the recommendation choice. So it can get tricky.