HomeGauge Inspection Software

[pjkelly]

I am looking to purchasing HomeGauge Software and looking for some current/past users who can give me some feed back on the usability, customization and overall satisfaction with the software.

cheers,

[Brandon Whitmore]

Hi Patrick,

I use Home Gauge software and really like it. Some inspectors do not like the "canned" look, but it seems to work really well for me and can be customized pretty easily. I'm sure they still have a free trial so you can play with it, etc.

Customer service is second to none.

Having said that, you might want to look at Inspect Express by DevWave software as well.. they sponsor this site and I hear they are pretty good.

[Brad Manor]

I played with a trial version of HomeGauge and liked it okay. I purchased Inspect Express and really like it. I guess it all boils down to what one is a good "fit" for you.

-Brad

[exploreparadise2]

I've used Home Gauge for a couple of years and am very pleased with it. It's versatile and easily customized. I created a template for commercial inspections. The templates are easily updated. I tweak it just about every time I write a report. Be sure to back up the templates regularly on a storage device other than your hard drive.

The canned comments are terrible. I deleted all of them.

Customer service has been excellent.

They try hard to sell their web hosting service, probably because it's more profitable than selling software. I didn't sign up because I upload the reports to my website.

You can play around with the free demo version for a month, and if you buy, they just activate the demo version and you can keep your work.

Blair Pruitt

Home Inspection Seattle

[Erby]

The best thing about HomeGauge is the customer service. HomeGauge, like the rest comes as an out of the box useable software complete with all the crappy canned comments that others come with.

BUT, it's very easily customizable. I looked at it like a pile of bones. YOU get to put the bones together the way you want to and add all the muscles, nerves, skin etc so it comes out looking like you want it to. The software does all the programming stuff for you. I do a narrative version of it instead of the checkbox.

HomeGauge has a user support message board on their website. Any thing I can't make it do for myself, their customer service will do fairly rapidly for me. In addition, there's several on-line tutorials on their website and a free one day training seminar if you go to their headquarters.

I think it's tops.

I have the skills to put together something in Word or similar, but consider my inspecting time more valuable than my programming time and don't think it'd work as slick as HomeGauge does once you get past the normal learning curve.

The report upload (and offsite backup), e-mail to customers, and view tracking is very handy. Makes my report delivery real simple. About $30.00 bucks a month with two month discount for annual payment.

I switched to it from Palm-Tech 2 years ago. Switch was a pain in the butt for about two weeks but I doubt I'll every change again because I really like it.

They also have a pocket PC version that I hear is pretty slick but I choose not to use it.

Good luck on your decision.

Download trail versions of all of them and spend some time doing actual reports with each one. Pick what's best for you.

Sometimes it's better to pay someone else to do something for you (because they do it all the time and it'd take you a lot longer to get it done) so you can spend more time inspecting and with the family.

[mthomas1]

Because Homeguage has the ability to embed extensible comments (called "smart text") within other comments the program is extremely flexible, for example you can build your own "menu" system such as

Electrical

Panels

Load side

Isolation

Bonding

to create comments with only mouse or stylus input.

For example this is the top level smart text which builds my comments for all findings related to any defect within panels (click to enlarge):

Image Insert:

96.15 KB

With this I can build this comment in a half-dozen mouse clicks (click to enlarge):

Image Insert:

27.2 KB

Note that there was nothing in Homeguage that forced my to structure the comment in that manner (Observation/Analysis/Recommendation) - that was entirely my own choice. I also have the choice, for example, of whether to include the "Analysis" section in a comment and a number of other ways to format the comment text on the fly.

Also, the way I have Homeguage set up it produce BOTH narrative and checklist (as many as 7 checklists, actually ) format reports for every inspection client, with Homeguage automatically cross-referencing between them.

The catch?

I had toss the canned prose and smart text structure, and to "program" every snippet of smart text and keyboard in every word in every comment myself. (In many cases I write smart text extensions and additional comment text as needed AFTER keyboarding it into the report "freehand" the first time it's needed so as to get reports out quickly). I have it the way I like it - and more important, the way my clients and their attorneys like it- however it took hundreds of hours to get there.

And while you don't HAVE to do any of this to use Homeguage, IMO this sort of extensibility is HG's real strength.