Author: Michael

Spectora Payments

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Due to our growing size we’ve been able to negotiate a better bulk rate for our inspectors by becoming our own payment provider! By using Spectora Payments, you’ll get 2.75% + 30 cents per transaction as a flat rate with no additional fees. And it only takes a couple minutes to set up! You’ll also get tighter feature integration, like taking payments in the mobile app with a slick camera interface and the ability to process refunds on-platform.

Read more here: http://support.spectora.com/business-tools/how-to-take-payments-via-spectora-payments

MailChimp integration

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Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform to send mass emails.  It can help you create beautiful emails, track open/click rates, and keep your contact lists clean. Our integration syncs your contacts (clients and agents) with Mailchimp’s lists. It is free for 2000 contacts or less!

We use MailChimp extensively to help our inspectors get more business with our SEO and PPC (managed pay-per-click ad campaign services) programs.  Let us know if you want help getting more business!

Continue reading “MailChimp integration” →

Repair Request Builder

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Agents are loving our new Repair Request Builder!  Agents can quickly create professional-looking repair request lists from Spectora home inspection reports, adding their own requests for credit, repairs, replacements, or custom text.  The tool can also be used for project lists, fix-it lists, or any other addendum that requires certain defects with custom text!

(To see a quick 3-minute demo, watch this video.)

(For a full walkthrough video, click here.)

Continue reading “Repair Request Builder” →

Custom Invoice Text and Invoice PDFs

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We’ve heard your requests for more options when it comes to invoices!

You can now add custom text to your invoices (such as your address):

Custom Invoice Text

This will be displayed on all future invoices:

You can also edit this per-inspection in the Fees & Payments “edit” popup:

 

Lastly, you’ll notice that all invoices have a “View as PDF” button on the bottom now, for those agents and clients who don’t know how to print to PDF:

 

 

Team Reordering

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You can now customize the order of your team on the Team page!  The top spot determines the default inspector for new inspections.  The order also determines the way inspectors show up in the Online Scheduler.

Reordering is easy – simply grab the handle and drag:

Live Saving & Syncing

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Use multiple devices on-site?  Do team inspections?  Want all your inspection data to constantly save to the cloud as you go?  You’ll love our latest mobile feature, live saving & syncing!

 

Live saving constantly saves your inspection data to the cloud while you’re on-site.  If you use another device, one tap of the “Sync” button will pull in all the latest data, allowing for seamless transitions between devices.  This also allows inspectors on a team inspection to see what everyone else has done, increasing efficiency and maximizing productivity.

Enable syncing

To enable, pop into Settings and turn on Live Saving:

 

 

You can choose your save frequency.  This is how often your device will send data up to the cloud.  The more frequently you’re saving the more data and battery life you’ll be using, so we recommend finding the balance for your needs.  Remember that data is always saved to your device, so data loss is never an issue – you’re always able to save it up when you’re ready.

In the field

Once enabled, start your inspection as you normally would.  Your data will be constantly saved to the cloud in the background (indicated by a loading spinner in the top-right.)  You can always be sure everything is saved by hitting the “Save” button.  To pull down the latest changes from other devices, hit the “Sync” button:

Sync changes

When you tap “Sync”, you’ll pull down the latest saved data from other devices and inspectors.

In the event two inspectors have edited the same comment, whomever edited it last will overwrite the other.  The app compares real-world timestamps, so you can be assured that the latest input will always be what you see!

 

Per-template settings and custom ratings

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We’re excited to release a massive update that will allow you more template customizability!

Settings like header text, deficiency categories, and display options are now per-template, meaning you can have different settings in every template.  You can now also customize your ratings, which were previously locked at IN/NI/NP/D.  These ratings are now unlinked, allowing for any combination.  We’ve also better organized comments into “Info”, “Limits”, and “Defects” to match how they display in the report!

Continue reading “Per-template settings and custom ratings” →

Share templates with the community via the Template Center

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The Spectora community is full of amazingly generous people.  Every day we see experienced inspectors sharing their templates with other inspectors, new and old alike.  This free sharing of ideas makes for a supportive, welcoming community and helps build up the industry as a whole!

To help facilitate template sharing even more, we’ve created the Template Center.  Here you can browse and import Spectora default templates as well as any template another inspector has shared! Continue reading “Share templates with the community via the Template Center” →

A better way to report bugs and request features

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We’re growing fast and with that comes more input from our users.  We love it!  Thank you all for contributing your ideas to help us improve the Spectora platform.

Being a small team, the sheer volume of emails, Facebook messages, and calls we’ve been getting the past couple months has been overwhelming.  We’ve come up with a few processes to manage it all and we need your help to make it happen. We’ll be rolling out in-app chat soon to consolidate communication and we’ve created a single channel for reporting bugs and requesting features!

Roadmap and Ideas Board

The goal here is to make it easier for you, as users, to be heard by us.  We also hope it helps us make sense of all the incoming data so we can take the best actions possible.  Here’s how it works: Continue reading “A better way to report bugs and request features” →

New Online Scheduler

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We’re excited to announce the release of our brand new Online Scheduling Tools!

Spectora online scheduler with cost calculator, availability checking, and home data lookup

Now your clients and agents can book a complete inspection in an embeddable scheduling widget, complete with accurate pricing and availability!  Here’s a rundown of the features:

  • Setup your various services, each with cost formulas based on the square footage and the age of home
  • Associate templates and agreements with each service type
  • Set up your availability schedule with options for time slots or open scheduling
  • Disallow bookings within the next X hours
  • Create vacation days, appointments, and time-off blocks in your calendar
  • Custom confirmation options
  • Optional emails & texts when booking are in-progress and complete
  • Automatic Google Address and Zillow lookup for exact addresses and square footage/year built info when available

Start the new year off with a complete scheduling system that integrates directly with your report writing software!  Read on for setup instructions: Continue reading “New Online Scheduler” →

Transitioning from ISN to Spectora

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Ready to switch your back office over to Spectora?

Our Training Center can help you with setting up your automated emails/texts, getting payment configured, and getting your Inspection Agreements in place.

If you’ve been with ISN for a while, you probably have a ton of data you don’t want to lose.  We’ve made a data import script to move all your historical inspection data over to our platform.  You’ll be able to maintain your agent contact lists, client lists, and inspection records.  Our Business Metrics section will reflect all your past data, so you can always view the continuous history of your business. Continue reading “Transitioning from ISN to Spectora” →

Map ISN Order Types to Templates

Michael1 Comment

ISN users now have even more flexibility with using Spectora!  When integrating with ISN, you can now map your ISN order types to specific templates in Spectora.  You can also choose not to import certain order types.

This allows you to have the right templates ready-to-go for your inspections every day.  You also can keep your interface clean by not importing inspection reports you don’t use Spectora for.  Here’s how to set it up:

Continue reading “Map ISN Order Types to Templates” →