Why I built IntellectSpect after fifteen years of home inspections

Fifteen years in crawlspaces, attics, and client kitchens

I started OneStop Shop Inspections in 2011 after finishing the Carson Dunlop home inspection course. Since then I have inspected houses and commercial buildings across Southern Ontario, added the certifications the work kept asking for — Level 1 thermography, air leakage testing, mould, WETT for wood-burning appliances, BCIN for septic, well and water, Phase I environmental site assessments, a drone licence for the roofs I did not want to walk — and I have sat with more clients than I can count at a kitchen counter while they made the biggest purchase of their lives.

Along the way I did the work the Ontario Association of Home Inspectors asks of a Registered Home Inspector, then volunteered on its committees, and served as OAHI Vice President and then President for one year. That seat gave me something I did not expect: a steady stream of conversations with other inspectors about the same frustrations I had at home. Almost none of them were about inspecting. Almost all of them were about the software.

The software never kept up with the job

I have used every generation of inspection software. Desktop report writers with a companion app. Cloud writers that promised everything in the browser. Scheduling tools, agreement tools, and payment tools stitched around them. Each generation fixed one thing and broke another, and every one of them made the same quiet assumption: that the inspector would adapt to the software instead of the other way round.

Here is what that looked like on a normal Tuesday.

• Booking lived in one tool, the agreement in another, payment in a third. A client who booked at 9 p.m. got three emails from three senders and still texted me to ask if they were confirmed.
• Photos went straight into the report record. By finding forty the app was slow, and a dropped save could take the whole gallery with it.
• Autosave was silent. I did not know whether the attic note stuck until I opened the report at home — or until the client asked why the attic section was empty.
• “Offline mode” worked in the driveway. It did not work in the basement, under a metal roof, or on a rural concession road, which is where the inspecting happens.
• My comment library — fifteen years of description, implication, and recommendation wording — lived in the vendor’s format. Every switch meant retyping or living in a Word document.
• Clients and agents got generated usernames nobody could find a week later. The repair list needed a second login. Interac e-Transfer, how most of my Ontario clients want to pay, was not an option at all.
• WETT inspections, French-speaking clients, and Canadian tax were afterthoughts in catalogs built for a different market.
• Then the invoice: a photo package here, an AI module there, a mobile upsell, a finance add-on, and a technology fee skimmed off every card payment my client made to me.

None of these are exotic complaints. Ask ten inspectors and you will hear the same list. The difference for me was that after fifteen years I stopped waiting for a vendor to fix it.

What IntellectSpect does instead

IntellectSpect is home inspection software built by a home inspector for home inspectors. It covers the whole job — booking, agreements, payment, the inspection itself, and the client report — on the web and on the phone app for iOS and Android. Every claim below matches what the product does today, not a roadmap.

Booking that finishes the booking

Every company gets a public shop page at /book/{slug} with logo, tagline, service area, hours, review link, and inspection types — in the seat, not sold as a website or SEO extra. The client books, reviews and signs the agreement, and pays on one request link: Interac e-Transfer at their bank, card through your own Stripe account, USD ACH with no card fee, or pay at close. Booked, contract sent, time confirmed, inspection completed, and payment requested each send the right email to the client, the agent, and the inspector. Evening-before and hours-before reminders can email and text everyone on the job.

An inspection that moves at the speed you walk

Voice fill maps what you say to the fields on the section you are standing in. Snap a photo, add a rough note, and Analyze drafts the description, implication, recommendation, and severity for you to edit before you save. Record a short video on a finding and Analyze works from stills of the clip; the client can play that clip on the finished report. There is no limit on photos and no per-clip fee. Point the camera at a furnace nameplate and the Appliances tab fills type, brand, model, serial, and estimated age.

Your own comments become your templates — description, implication, and recommendation — and you tap them into any later finding on web or phone. Bring your agreements and standards files in, or start from platform templates. On Styles & Materials, add the odd boiler or roof covering for this house only, or save it on this device so it is ready next time. Two inspectors can work the same report: the lead adds a teammate on Conditions and each sees the other’s saves within seconds.

Saves you can see, offline you can trust

Every field, photo, and finding shows Saved, Saving, or Not saved. When signal drops, the phone keeps a working draft on the device and says Offline so you are not guessing. Voice fills queue and process when you are back online — AI needs the network when it runs, so we queue it instead of pretending. Photos and video store as files rather than inside the report record, so a two-hundred-photo job stays fast.

A report clients and agents actually open

When you release the report, the client and the listing agent email themselves a two-hour sign-in link using the address already on the job. Agents also get an inbox of released reports. The repair request list prints from the same portal, with an optional estimate range such as 800–1200 per item. Company Setup can print the report and repair-list chrome in English, Français, or Español; your findings stay exactly as you typed them. Six months after the inspection date the report locks, and a company admin can unlock it if it is ever needed again.

What I refused to build

• No ads. Not on the web app, the phone app, the client portal, or this site. Your seat pays for the product.
• No mining your clients. Your book of business is not our lead list, and it never will be. Report data belongs to your company.
• No nickel-and-dime modules. AI, unlimited photos, video, finance reports, contracts, payments, scheduling, and mobile are all in the $139 seat. The only volume fee is $2 per report after 20 in a month. The first three live months are $99 per inspector and the first live month is unlimited.
• No technology fee on your client’s payment. Card charges settle to your Stripe account. We bill the seat separately.
• No thirty-day custom rebuild to change a comment or add a material option. Customize the house, not the roadmap.

Built for Canada as well as the United States

I inspect in Ontario, so IntellectSpect was never going to treat Canada as an export market. Interac e-Transfer is on the request link. WETT credential gating and the original WETT PDF checklists are built in. Canadian companies bill in CAD with GST/HST, QST, or PST for their province; US companies bill in USD with no tax on the subscription. The same $139 and $2 amounts apply on both sides of the border.

I still inspect — and that is the point

I still run OneStop Shop Inspections and I still carry the ladder. Every feature in IntellectSpect has been through a real crawlspace before it shipped, and every complaint I hear from another inspector goes onto the same list I kept for fifteen years. If you have been quietly adapting yourself to your software, I built this for you. Read the feature list, check the pricing math against your current stack, and if you want a second opinion from someone who has done your job, call or email — you will get me.