Your source for the latest in product news for the home and commercial building inspection industry
 

 
 
Software Review

September-October 2007

New from BestInspectors.Net

XL Pro
Home and Commercial Inspection Report Software


It looks like this may be it, the best home and commercial inspection report software money can buy.  MSI has outdone itself once again with the all new XL Pro.  It is truly a State-Of-The-Art application.  Users of older editions of XL Pro will appreciate the familiar look and feel of XL Pro plus all the new features and report pages.  Thanks to the logical design and the carrying over of all the report pages from the other reports in the XL Pro family, making the transition to the new XL Pro is easy.  What the user will soon realize is that XL Pro version 7 is much much more than its predecessors. 

If you are a user of XL Pro, you already know what its like to be able to produce a comprehensive good looking report in less than 30 minutes.   You may be thinking, what more could I possibly ask of inspection report software? Well, for starters, how about more than 20 new pages from which to build your report, a sleek new way to select pages to print, being able to define a custom report in any of literally millions of combinations of pages, and adding icons and symbols to give your reports visual impact and make them even easier to read.  And, that's just the beginning.  There are dozens of new and improved features in the latest lineup of XL Pro family reports.

Not everyone has a need for all the powerful features available in XL Pro Platinum, so BestInspectors.Net has done something that no other inspection report software company has done.  XL Pro is available in six different editions.  The company's flagship product is the Platinum Edition.  The Platinum Edition has more features dollar-for-dollar than any other reposting system on the market today.  But then, the same is true for every report in the XL Pro family.  The new XL Pro is doing a fine job at upholding the XL Pro family tradition.

XL Pro may have the same look and feel in many ways as earlier editions but looks can be deceiving.   A few minutes with the new XL Pro reports is like going from the family sedan to a high performance race car.  Tasks that took minutes before now take seconds.  Tasks that took seconds before now only take fractions of a second.  If you are among the unfortunate inspectors who paid too much for clunky difficult to use inspection software but have stayed with it because you made a big investment, you owe it to yourself to take XL Pro for a test drive.  The reality is that that clunky overpriced software that cost you so much to buy is still costing you.  It cost you money every time you sit down to do an inspection report.  Time is, after all, money.  XL Pro was designed from the ground up with efficiency in mind.  And, efficiency is what XL Pro is all about.   

 


XL Pro is sure to surprise you.  It operates in a Microsoft Office environment but even seasoned Office users are sure to be surprised at some of the things that XL Pro can do.  The reason?  XL Pro is written entirely in Visual Basic for Applications, also known more simply as VBA.  VBA is a very powerful version of the most popular programming language of all time, Visual Basic.  Even the most experienced VBA programmer will probably look at some of the things XL Pro can do and wonder "how did they do that?"

The chief software architect and lead programmer for XL Pro, Ivan Moala, is internationally known as being one of the top VBA programmers in the world.  Ivan does things with XL Pro that would impress even the most savvy of VBA programmers.  XL Pro's project manager, George Wells, just happens to also be the President of MSI International and is still an active home inspector.  George makes sure that everything that goes into XL Pro is there for a reason - to make the job of the home inspector easier and more efficient.

It's also refreshing to know that even though BestInspectors.Net sells more home inspection report software than anyone in the industry, you can usually get in touch with either Ivan or George on any given day, seven days a week.  

One of the first things you will notice when you load XL Pro is the XL Pro Command Bar.  The Command Bar puts more than 30 custom commands at your disposal at all times.  The Command Bar is always visible to you regardless of where you are or what you are doing in the report.  That is, of course, unless you turn off the Command Bar.  Even when the Command Bar is turned off, the XL Pro Custom Commands are available from a drop down menu on the main menu at the top of the screen. 

 

Learning XL Pro is easy too.  Every command on the Command bar has a help box that tells you what the function is and how to use it.  You probably won't need the help function very often because XL Pro is very logical in its design and its use is very intuitive.  But, it's nice to know that help is there when you need it.  With so many new commands in XL Pro you may want to use the Menu bar more often for a while until you learn all the new commands.  The menu bar has the names of each function alongside its icon.  The icons and commands are grouped in logical groupings making it easy to learn all the commands quickly. 

Perhaps the most powerful feature of XL Pro  Platinum Edition is the  Category Assignment Tool, or as the folks at BestInspectors.Net call it, "The CAT".  The CAT is XL Pro's trademark and copyrighted tool that allows the user to quickly and easily assign any of XL Pro's 99 categories of comments and descriptors to be assigned to any field in the report.  Any page of the the report can be completely transformed in a matter of minutes into something completely different.  It makes it so easy that it's fun to create entirely new pages using any of the 11 templates provided for that very purpose. 

The CAT is absolutely an essential tool for the inspector who does commercial inspections.  Even an inspector who encounters a wide range of types of single family and multi-family houses will appreciate this great tool.  XL Pro is the home and commercial inspection report software with such a powerful and versatile tool. 

We could go on about all the great new features in XL Pro but we'll leave it to you to discover it power and versatility for yourself.  BestInspectors.Net has made demos of XL Pro available on their web site.  The demos are fully functional so you can see for yourself what the excitement in the industry is all about.  Be sure to download demos of all the other software from other publishers.  It is only by trying the others that you will truly understand and appreciate what a fantastic value XL Pro is.    

BestInspectors.Net is an international company based right here in the United States and sells more home inspection report software than any other company on the Planet.  More home inspectors use BestInspectors.Net home inspection software than any other.  There's a reason for it - as you will soon see.

 

Visit BestInspectors.Net

Request a demo of XL Pro

 

 

 

 

 
  ©2007 InspectionJournal.com