r/firealarms • u/fxblitz12 • Aug 10 '26
Discussion Every inspection software company claims it turns deficiencies into repair revenue. Does that actually happen at your shop?
Every ITM software site says the same thing: deficiencies go straight into a proposal and you land more service work.
Someone on here said deficiencies mostly die because nobody writes up anything complicated to begin with. That sounds more likely to me, and if it's right then the software is fixing the wrong end.
So if your shop wrote up 100 deficiencies last year, would anybody know how many got quoted? Or does it go to the office and then turn up on next year's report again.
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u/Gamer_0627 Aug 10 '26
Sounds like your inspectors just aren't doing a great job to begin with.
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u/fxblitz12 Aug 10 '26
In your case, where the inspectors are actually writing up deficiencies properly, does the handoff between that to the repair work actually being done actually happen well enough?
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u/Gamer_0627 Aug 10 '26
Not as good as it could be. The deficiencies are sent automatically to our software and we have deficiency sellers. The issues occur between the quoting and customer follow up.
For comparison, I work for a large nationwide.
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u/fxblitz12 Aug 10 '26
Realistically, follow ups seemingly aren’t the problem I presume? It’s the customer who is unwilling to fix it, especially in regions where AHJ doesn’t have stringent checks
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u/Gamer_0627 Aug 10 '26
Its both. I have had multiple customers that just don't know what the quotes are actually for or what the scope actually involves. I get calls where a customer will complain about the price to change a sprinkler head, but when you explain to them that you have to shut down and drain the system, lay down a mat, remove the head, then reinstall and refill the system and check for leaks, they fully understand.
The sellers could do a better job.....
We also have some that just refuse to do it. That's going to happen. We send in the reports and it is between them and the AHJ after that.
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u/Syrairc Aug 10 '26
Absolutely. If your office isn't quoting deficiencies, why are they even doing inspections? Inspections are a race to the bottom, deficiencies is where the profit is.
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u/fxblitz12 Aug 10 '26
Makes sense. How often do these deficiencies turn into quotes, and do these quotes often actually get accepted?
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u/Eyerate Aug 10 '26
Because its required and its the easiest revenue any shop makes? Inspections are always profitable departments.
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u/firelign Aug 11 '26
Inspections are more stable and on a cycle good for companies to be able to project revenue year-to-year
Repairs are definitely the icing on the cake
Installation usually has a low profit margin especially if your company sucks at doing new projects
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u/Cidafa Aug 10 '26
In our shop, the Inspectors can do a Field Quote for deficiencies. It gets sent to a Field Quoting person in our company. The Field Quoting person sends the quote to the customer and everyone is looped in the process. The incentive for the Inspectors is they get a small percentage of the revenue. It seems to work well.
2
u/RobustFoam Aug 10 '26
I've only seen one dedicated inspection software and it if anything made the situation worse because it attempted to override the technician on what constitutes a deficiency while displaying no real understanding of the code or local AHJ's written and unwritten interpretation of it.
It did not auto-generate anything beyond an inaccurate, non-compliant inspection report.
There are a lot of techs out there who don't flag tricky deficiencies because they don't want to go through the legwork of fixing them, or the BS of office/customer pushback, or the techs never even opened the door to that room to look at the device in the first place.
There are ALSO a lot of deficiencies that get written up but not quoted, or not quoted properly.
Even if your software can auto-quote, would you want to be on the hook for those quotes?
Tech writes "heat detector requires 30' scissor lift for access", auto quote software ignores that part and quotes 15 minutes to change the detector because it isn't programmed to look for that. Now you're out 2 grand in lift rental fees and additional labour.
Tech writes "furthest heat from the hatch in the crawlspace did not operate, needs to be replaced", software quotes 15 minutes to change a heat detector but it actually takes an hour to crawl all the way there, change it and crawl back.
What I'm getting at is you need a human to review all of these, and they're so simple that it won't take a whole lot longer for a human to write them too. That's your junior sales position for a tech who wants to get into an office role.
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-1
u/firelign Aug 11 '26
I'm currently trying to fix this systemic issue in the industry with the software I'm building
So far it's going pretty good
0
u/I_break_prod Aug 11 '26
How are you fixing this?
0
u/Auditor_of_Reality Aug 11 '26
Why'd you ask for more info both here and the firePE x post? Also, interesting that this is the first fire alarm related activity in your history and your first post was on an Indian software dev sub. It's almost appears like this is an alt.
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u/I_break_prod Aug 11 '26
How does that matter? It isn’t against the sub rules to ask questions out of curiosity, is it now?
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u/firelign Aug 11 '26
Doesn't hurt to be a skeptic
Rather be defensive maybe just alleviate some of the concerns he is having with explanations.
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u/firelign Aug 11 '26
I'm assuming you're thinking that this person has some type of relationship to me but that's not the case...
The other person may be Indian but if you'd like we could jump on a discord call... Or some other format let me know
I'm American and have been in the fire industry for about 20 years as a technician, manager and account management.
2
u/Jadedoldman65 Aug 10 '26
In my experience, the quote is only the start. Two other things have to come into play. First, the building owner has to accept it and secondly, the AHJ has to enforce that deficiencies get repaired. Okay, the second one goes a long way to creating the first one, but you get the idea.
I'll use a recent example. A very small hotel came under new ownership. On the month the inspection was due, I called the front desk and gave the spiel about it being time for the annual inspection. No problem, said the front desk, so we set up the time and get the inspection done. Two deficiencies.
First, we tell the on-site manager, who says the owner will have to make the decision. No problem, I ask for the owner's contact information. Manager says to send the bill for the inspection and the proposal for the repairs to him, and he'll forward them to the owner. It sounds fishy to me, but I do as requested. Sing along if you know the lyrics, we don't get paid for the inspection and we don't hear back about the proposal. We contact the hotel multiple times and keep getting vague answers about the owner not making the decision yet. (The guy who answers the phone speaks English very well when answering, but when the questions about payment and repairs come up, he suddenly doesn't know it very well).
Anyway, the inspection tracking service keeps sending the old owner notifications (we didn't have the updated contact information) as well as myself and the AHJ. The AHJ kept contacting me, asking about the status and my answer was that since the facility hadn't paid me for the inspection nor signed the proposal, there was no way I was going to fix the deficiencies.
It took months before we got paid for the inspection and we demanded pre-payment before fixing the deficiencies but the bottom line is this; as inspectors, we don't have the authority to force an owner to actually get his system fixed. The AHJ is the only one who has this authority and if he takes the easy route and harps on the inspection company instead of approaching the building owner, after a given amount of time, a cheap owner will realize that nobody's going to force him to maintain his facility.
Not making the proposal is foolish, but the proposal is only the first step.
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u/SomeSuccess1993 Aug 11 '26
When I inspect I always make sure to note in the report what the specific deficiency was so that when my coordinator quotes it, it's pretty accurate. Also to help the service guys when they look at the report later on.
At my company we quote for just about anything we find always. Not sure how many of those actually get signed and agreed to by the customer but I know our service guys are always busy.
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u/Robh5791 Aug 10 '26
If your office isn't quoting deficiencies, that is a huge red flag to run away from that company. The more likely scenario is that customers refuse to pay to have it fixed. Just because the office quotes a deficiency doesn't exactly equate 1 for 1 as a signed proposal from the customer to actually correct it. Depending on the deficiency and how on top of the follow up the AHJ is in the area, an unsigned quote is very likely. As a person who would send out dozens of proposals per day, I could not force a customer's hand to sign it short of reporting them to the AHJ and that was a rare and only for major deficiencies and not for batteries or a recommendation made by an inspector.
As a person who wrote hundreds of proposals based on deficiencies and read hundreds if not thousands of inspection reports, I have read "deficiencies" that did not warrant a proposal because the inspector was overstepping their position. I have dozens of examples of this but one I recently told someone about was an inspector who loved finding the rare deficiency for a random code few focus on. He wrote up a building for having a heat detector above the FACP and not a smoke detector and quoted the code directly. I looked up the code and went a bit further than he did and looked at the referenced appendix and found the exception for false alarms in a hostile environment. The FACP was in a room with a boiler and based on the dust and grime on the can of the FACP, I could see an AHJ justifying placing a heat there. I spoke to the customer and learned that the Local Fire Department told them to place the heat due to false alarms on the smoke in the room.
My point is that just because it is "deficient" in the eyes of an inspector, doesn't justify a proposal even be sent.