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It's is a great day here in Orem, Utah. Our oldest daughter, Jessica, just celebrated her 10th birthday this past Saturday and the Leavitt Family had a house full of guests. This coming week will be more of the same as we may have as many as 10 extra family members to find sleeping arrangements for. It seems that all of Shelly's family is converging upon our domicile for their annual visits. This week is Spring Break and next Sunday is one of the best Sundays of the year as we get to celebrate Easter.
The saddest part about today is that it is officially income tax day. I wonder how my fellow Inspectors made out this past year. Was 1999 a prosperous year for your bank accounts??? Is 2000 turning out to be even better than last year??? Are any of you finding any major advantages by either remaining a Sole Proprietor or are any of you figuring out the true advantages of being an L-corp or S-corp. We made the switch to S-corp a year and a half ago and I am still waiting for the verdict from my lovely Accountant Shelly as to whether or not it is working out for us. We made the switch for several reasons which mainly involved the addition of employees. That never panned out and we are still a one Inspector shop and I am still left wondering if this has made any real difference in our bottom line or overall protection...... The best thing about income tax day is that they allow you to file extensions. =:}
Last week I shared the following...... There is an internet special running through April 14, 2000 (Friday) where you can purchase both Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Publisher for just $145. The website is http://www.alamode.com/ and it is geared towards the Appraisal industry. This is a great deal for those of you who haven't already invested the regular $229 sales price for the Adobe Acrobat alone. I couldn't believe the deal when I heard about it and I was very upset because I spent about $450 to buy the Adobe Acrobat for both my Macintosh and PC and never did get the Adobe Publisher program. I encourage those that are considering the e-mailing of inspection reports to invest in the $145 offer. After Friday the deal is over.
The deal is over and quite a few MMM readers took advantage of the offer. I heard reports back like Mark Daughtry's.... I am not having success contacting the site www.alamode.com I tried the hyperlink that Michael supplied on the MMM and was able to get a partial page but then can't access and my computer locks up and I have to restart from there......HELP!!
I also tried contacting the site going directly through to www. alamode.com (not using MMM) but no luck. I am using Netscape Navigator. If anyone is able to gain access to the site is their a phone number available?
Some of you were kind enough to offer assistance such as Jim Corbin.....
I ordered the package yesterday. I had the same problem on access to their site...my system locked up and said "crashed" when I tried. I called them on the number that did appear...1-800-ALAMODE (252-6633). I ordered with the person that answered and also had them send info on their site and offerings. The only question he asked was if I was an appraiser...I said no, a home inspector. We then did the order. Delivery should be Friday or Monday via UPS. Hope that helps. Regards, Jim Corbin - Bow, WA
Those that were successful ordering the special discounted version of the Adobe Acrobat are now receiving their boxes of software wondering what to do with it. This will be the main focus of today's MMM....... Now That I Have Got Acrobat, What Do I Do With It???
Roy Brown from WA passed along this query......
Michael: Well, I have it and don't have a clue as to what to do with it. I opened a quick tour and printed it, but I can't do the first thing. It asks you to open the AA_00.coc file inside the tour folder. There isn't such a file in that folder.
Do you have printed out how to use this program for e-mailing inspections? I'm not looking forward to another two week discovery learning curve.
By the way, I printed a sample inspection on your software to show my agents, and it seems to work great. I will be really glad to know how to modify it and learn its features. Thanks. Roy Brown - WA
When Roy speaks up about a topic I know that there may be some confusion in general with the readership. In my quest to help out I don't want to have to see Roy go through a two week learning curve with the Adobe Acrobat. So howzabout I step everybody through a quick Adobe Acrobat primer on how to E-mail inspection reports?
When you open the Adobe Acrobat box you receive a CD that actually contains numerous mini programs. There is Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Capture, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Adobe Distiller, and a bunch of plug-ins. If you want to learn about each one, then you better contact Adobe and find out where their next 1 or 2 day training is so that you can attend. You can also purchase from Barnes and Noble a great guidebook called "Adobe Acrobat 4.0 Classroom in a Book" published by Adobe Press. I think it ran $44 and I ordered it from Amazon.com.
Installing the Acrobat CD installs everything you need, everywhere that you need it, yet you will notice no major differences to you machine..... So what is it that you have just installed???
Let me share a tip with you..... You have just spent $150 to $229 for a program that you will use about 3% of its power. This collection of software will do tasks that you never even dreamed of needing to do, and I would leave it at that. There is no reason to even go through the learning of its diversity because you have purchased the program for one specific reason..... "I want to e-mail my Home Inspection reports!" Of course you may branch out and want to send PDF files..... Or create PDF files for download from your website..... Or you may want to modify a PDF file that you downloaded from another website. Those tasks are all possible, but you really just followed blindly along to purchase this software so that your reports will e-mail okay to your clients and their agents.
Adobe Acrobat is a program that lurks in the background until you call upon it and it will take whatever file that you are working on, in almost any program, and turn it into a PDF file.
The challenge has always been on the internet of how to exchange files with different computers and have them open up and look the same way that they did on your very own computer. Each computer is set up a little differently and each has their own set of fonts. What makes things even more difficult is that each computer does not have the same software running on it. This means that you can take your home inspection report straight from 3D or Borealis, etc., and send it to your client, but there is no easy way that they can open up and view it without owning the software that you created it with.
This is where the PDF file comes into play. PDF stands for Portable Document Format. Adobe Acrobat allows you to convert your files, send them, and then they provide a free mini software called Adobe Acrobat Reader that your clients can open it up with. Many computers come with Adobe Acrobat Reader installed, and many others have aftermarket softwares installed that includes the Adobe Acrobat Reader software. Clients who do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed can go to the Adobe website and download it for free. Clients who are not able to do that are not ready for your e-mailed report anyway so you will be giving them the traditional hard copy of the report.
Adobe Acrobat is a different kind of program in that it is a lurker. Most programs must be manually opened up and then you get busy. Adobe Acrobat can also be opened up manually, but unless you are using it for more advanced things you will probably never have to click on the Adobe Acrobat icon. Instead, you will select a print driver and the rest is automatic..... Sound strange???.... Well it is.
Some of you have multiple printers and the following process will be very easy for you. Those of you that use only one printer are probably not very familiar with the steps, so be patient.
PC DIRECTIONS..... Left click on START..... Left click on CONTROL PANELS...... Left click on PRINTERS. In this folder all of your print drivers are stored. You will notice the printer that you usually use. In my folder there is a driver for an Apple Select 360 laser printer and a HP 870 CSE ink jet printer. Once I installed the Adobe Acrobat I now have two new print drivers installed. One is the ADOBE PDF WRITER, and the other is ADOBE DISTILLER.
To get your current document converted to a PDF file you will eventually select one of these drivers and print directly to them instead of your printer. You do not need to select the driver from the printer folder now, I just wanted to show you where they were stored. When you print to the Adobe drivers they automatically open Adobe Acrobat and you create a PDF version instead of having a piece of paper come out of a machine.
MACINTOSH DIRECTIONS - On your Macintosh click on the APPLE icon..... Click on the CHOOSER. Once the Chooser opens you will see your Adobe print drivers.
The question that first arises is which driver do I use. The simple answer is that the ADOBE PDF WRITER is geared towards simple documents. If you use it on complex documents you may lose part of your document.... That is not good. In fact, if you used it on a complex 3D Home Inspection Report you will lose nice features like your custom header and footer.
When printing a 3D Home Inspection Report it is important to select the ADOBE DISTILLER as your print driver. So that I wouldn't forget I went to the START, CONTROL PANEL, PRINTER folder and renamed my ADOBE DISTILLER driver to INSPECTION DRIVER. You can do this by right clicking on the ADOBE DISTILLER driver and left clicking on RENAME. Once RENAME is click upon you can type in the new name. The reason that I did this was that I learned how to successfully go through the process and then it was another couple of weeks before I had to do it again.
I hate to break the news to you, but you will not immediately start to e-mail every report. I'm sure that your transition will be easier than mine was a couple of years ago, but you are going to have to condition your marketplace. It seems that much more of the home buying public is online now then they were back in 1998, so your clients may be computer and e-mail saavy and ready for your new report offering. I predict that your biggest hurdle (if you do not live in a major market) will be the dinosaur real estate agent.
My biggest hurdle was getting my client's agent to come along for the cyber space ride. You may remember my sharing the incredible inspection day where I perfomed one inspection for a client in Saudi Arabia and the other in the Orient. Both were half way around the world at the time of the inspection and both received their reports via e-mail as I was driving away from the inspection sites. The DRAG was that I then had to print out the reports that evening and drive 20 miles to drop off hard copies at the Agent's office the next morning so that they could disuss the inspection report intelligently with their clients.
I can hear the grumbling from you saying...... 'Why didn't you just fax the Agent their copy if they weren't e-mail saavy?" That is a good question, but you must understand the bigger picture. I previously built my reputation on doing the inspection and hand delivering 2 beautiful copies of the report by the following morning to the Agent representing my Client. I couldn't fax an ugly copy of the report to an Agent already accustomed to receiving my work of art with the color picture on the cover in the nice report cover.
This is where the transition is so tough from Hard Copy to E-mail. For a while you may find yourself working twice as hard. You may e-mail the report and still find yourself hand delivering hard copies. You might even find yourself taking your copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader and going to the Agent's computer and installing the Reader software yourself.
I have this office in town that is a little behind the cyber generation, but I knew that they were a little computer literate. I took my CD into their office only to find that their computers were so old that they did not have CD rom drives. You could either use a little floppy or the ancient 5 1/2" floppies from the early 1980's. They thought that they were cutting edge. You just can't help this type of Real Estate office until they decide to step into the modern generataion. Not only can they not take advantage of modern media, their modems are old and their hard drives are too small. If you make any comments to them they will feel like you are condescending and they take it very personally. You may just decide to not pursue the business of the Dinosaurs...... Some of you have that luxury.
The moral of the story is....... Don't just automatically assume that just because you can convert your Inspection reports to PDF that you will immediately eliminate your copying and printing fees.
Be careful who you offer the E-mail report service to. Many of your CHEAPO clients cannot see to invest in a paid E-mail service and they think they have the world by the tail because they get their E-mail for free. One of the biggest free E-mail providers is Juno. I share this tip with you because your Free Juno clients cannot receive your e-mailed report. Free Juno does not allow large attached files. The only way around this glitch is if you have your own website that you can store their report on. If so, they can access a private area of your website and download the report directly form your site..... Wanna see how this works??? Click on the following link and see how my latest Free Juno client got their report. I sent them the following e-mail.......
To download your Inspection Report please visit the following backdoor link into my website.... http://www.TheHomeInspector.com/Clients/ClientReport.html
Michael Leavitt
Let there be no misunderstanding.... This is an added pain. I notify the client via e-mail and then give them two weeks to access the sight and get their report. The downside is that it takes extra time on my part and I never know when they have picked up the report. I find that I have to do this about once a month. When my client says that they have Free Juno I always ask them if they have another e-mail address that will allow them to receive attached files, and they usually do. Many clients have a neighbor, family member or friend who allows their report to be sent to them instead. I willingly accept numerous e-mail addresses of the Client and the Agent and send one group e-mail.
For the Clients and Agents that do not have e-mail I volunteer the fax or mailed report. I only hand deliver a couple reports a month..... That has taken a couple of years to ween my Clients and their Agents off of my hand delivered works of art.
I was asked whether or not the Client ever feels cheated by receiving an e-mailed report...... That all depends on the presentation. I will share more on this at the Technology And The 21st Century Home Inspector presentation in Portland, Oregon at the AII™ Northwest Conference here in a couple of weeks.
I will focus on the 3D Inspection System, although I know that it works well in other reporting systems too. The process is simple..... Perform your inspection, spell check your report, import any photos into the report and most importantly SAVE your report BEFORE trying to create the PDF file. If you do the process incorrectly your machine will throw the yellow flag and give you an illegal procedure 15 yards call. This penalty shuts down 3D and you will lose whatever work was not saved. Therefore, always save your work in case you mess up.
Once the report is ready to convert click on FILE.... then PRINT SETUP. Clicking on the PRINT SETUP will allow you to swap your print driver and I recommend that you select the ADOBE DISTLLER driver. This is done by going to the drop down NAME menu on the SETUP PRINTER FOR REPORT WRITER screen. If those directions don't seem to fit what you are looking at, make sure that you were in the Report writer and not the Office Management or the Word processor programs.
Once the ADOBE DISTILLER driver is selected it will make any 3D Inspection Report that you print out be converted to the PDF format.
To print the document to PDF you must first make sure that the report that you want to print is opened up in the Report Writer. Then you can either click on the printer icon or click on FILE, then PRINT. The Print screen will come up asking you which forms you want to print and how many copies that you want.
PDF TIP: When you have selected the ADOBE DISTILLER driver it will only allow one copy to be created even if you change the number from 1 to 2. I can't think of a situation where you would want multiple copies of a PDF file anyway.
Once you click on Print, the 3D software will look just like it does when you are printing to your regular printer. The screen will show it processing each page one by one. When it gets to the end it will look like your computer is doing nothing and then all of the sudden it will open up the Adobe Acrobat program. In another 30 seconds or so it will show your printed document on the screen...... It's a miracle! This really looks sharp if you have a digital picture of the house on the front cover. The Adobe program allows you to quickly scroll through the multi-paged document and print it out if you like.
It is at this point that you must save your file with a unique name. Click on FILE, then SAVE AS. Title the document with the file name of the inspection. Now where do you want to save it? By default the software wants to save it in an Adobe folder that is difficult to find later.... I could never easily access it so I created a new folder. I created a new folder on my C drive called 1Email 3D This allows me to easily find it because it starts with a #1 it is one of the first folders on my C drive. Inside the 1Email 3D folder I have a folder for each month of the year titled Jan2000, Feb2000 etc. I then save all of the PDF reports for the month in the specific folder. At the end of the month I very easily copy the folder for the month and paste it to a Zip disk for easy back-up.
Now that you are mastering the creation of PDF report files I'm sure that there are many other questions such as watermarks, file modification, and secure tamper proof files. Line upon line and precept upon precept. I will save those for other editions of the MMM as you request them.
I am sure that those of you with Acrobat are anxious to close up the MMM so that you can go play with your software, BUT there is another important step that you must deal with. So after you have mastered what I have just shared with you, you will need to know this next topic....... "What do I send to my clients?" The majority of your clients are not going to know what to do when they receive their e-mailed reports. They are going to get the attachment and they will probably click on it. If they have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed then it will open right up for them. Many of your clients will not have it installed, so it will be your responsibility to give them the direction and guidance that they will need.
I'm going to share with you what I created for my clients, but I urge you to follow through the steps yourself so that you can encounter the glitches that they will inevitably stumble onto themselves. In other words...... Go to the Adobe site for yourself and see how and where they will be getting lost. Afterall, when they are unsuccessful they will be calling you and I refuse to receive calls from YOUR clients to help them with the Adobe Acrobat Reader download=:}
Your clients will do the strangest things. Some will download the software and never click on the EXE file sitting right on the desktop and therefore never install the program. Some will not restart the machine so the program won't take affect. Be patient, as time goes by, this program will become an automatic part of every computer. In the two years that I have been working with it I have seen its acceptance and use flood the marketplace to where there are rarely any glitches. Most clients already have the software installed, but I would not rely on this. My motto is to always provide my clients with more information than they need.
Here is my e-mail to them....
Here is your Home Inspection report.
The report is an attached PDF file. It can be printed and you have permission is granted by Michael Leavitt & Co for copies of the report to be distributed to 1) The Buyer, 2) The Seller . Please refer to the Service Agreement for more information on our Confidentiality Agreement.
PLEASE NOTE: To view or print .pdf files, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed and configured as a helper application on your browser or available on your hard drive for manual file opening. If you do not have an Adobe Acrobat Reader for your platform, you can download a free copy from the appropriate link below. Installation and setup instructions are provided at the site.
Click on the Adobe link below if you would like to download a free copy Adobe Acrobat. It may be that your browser already supports PDF files. Try clicking on the attached file at the bottom of this e-mail first, and then download Adobe Acrobat only if needed.
http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html
If you have any questions after reviewing the report, please call me at 801-225-8020 or send me an E-mail.
Michael Leavitt Orem, Utah Peaceofmind@TheHomeInspector.com American Institute of Inspectors www.TheHomeInspector.com
This type of notification e-mail has virtually eliminated call back questions from clients. Since I use this same e-mail over and over I went into my e-mail program Help menu and learned how to create and save e-mail DRAFTS. This allowed me to make one e-mail, open up the draft and copy it to a new e-mail message. I'd step you through it here, but I have already been too longwinded.
Creating a PDF file from a 3D Inspection Report or any other file is quite easy. All it requires is the selection of the ADOBE DISTLLER driver and then print the document. Once it is in PDF format your client can easily open it and forward on the file to anyone they see fit. After using this $150 to $230 software for one month you will have probably paid for it with savings of your printer cartridges, copying, folder and delivery time....... I remember those 2 AM visits to Kinko's..... I never want to experience that again!!!
Last week's Photo Challenge #8 shared an interesting closet photo. Roy Brown was feeling exceptionally spunky as he shared....
I suspect the vacuum, due to age and past use, no longer had proper suction to remove the typical cat hair found in a closet where the cat sleeps. The cat obviously sleeps in this closet next to the stove pipe which by the way just might not be a safe distance from combustibles such as the carpet and rear wall. This condition may have already been solved by inadequate chimney flashing, which allows the constant bathing of the pipe by continual rainfall. Oh, this wasn't taken in Washington? So maybe that is all wrong. By the way everybody, eat your hearts out. The forecast for today in Seattle is sunshine with temp between 65 and 70. Roy Brown - WA Another Photo Challenge regular,Washington Inspector Mark Daughtry shared.....
It appears that the chimney flue pipe is too close to the combustible wall and floor. It also appears that the carpet is touching the flue pipe. If the pipe is not insulated it is not only a fire hazard, it is extremely dangerous to small children as a burn hazard. Recommend correction immediately=imminent fire and burn hazard. It might be a good idea to hang a fire extinguisher on the vacuum cleaner. Mark S. Daughtry - WA
The rest of you probably felt that the condition was too obvious to take your time to comment. Roy was accurate that the flue did leak at the roof and water stains were on the flue. The carpet was run right up to and contacting the flue. I am surprised that nobody bothered to mention the much greater issue of a flue inside a sleeping room.... Is it a risk or not??? On what do you base your opinion???
Please e-mail me your Opinion and Justification!
This week's AII™ Photo Challenge is titled "AII™ Inspectors Remove All Accessible Access Panels." This photo reveals why we adhere to our Standards of Practice so closely. I was in the converted attic of a 94-year-old house. Luckily the house was vacant or else I probably never would have found the different color piece of paneling on the lower wall.
Take a look inside and tell me how you would have reported this condition. The only modification to the boxes was that I opened the cover door on the gray panel......
Here is a close up shot of what was inside........
The challenge that I extend to all of you is to see how many diiferent conditions can you identify???...... "What do ya think?"
Your Name:
DATES: APRIL 28-30, 2000
PLACE: AIRPORT HOLIDAY INN - PORTLAND, OREGON
SPOUSES: We also encourage you to bring your spouse. We have a policy that spouses may attend at no additional fee - just let us know when you register if your spouse is going to join you.
GET YOUR CREDITS ! - Attendance at the presentations qualifies for Continuing Education Credits with the State of Oregon, A.I.I.™, and other home inspection associations.
SCHEDULE: Go to the AII™ website for details and schedule.
REGISTRATION: Don't delay.... Go to the AII™ website for details.
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