The benefits are we are able to do our charts and QA/QI in a timely manner and we are able to use the scheduling portion and setup times easily as well for scheduling.

We use the firehouse software for our scheduling and for our reporting and it is the best.

None needed the software meets all our expectations

I'm currently using the 7.x version and not FHnet. I have only played with FHnet and cannot give guidance. I also use the client provided server model and have not used the hosted services offered. Admin side is fairly straight forward and easy to use. They used a proprietary software for reporting in the older version based on FireFox. Crystal knowledge will go a long way with this. They have conferences every year and they teach you everything you might need to know about reporting (the best reporting courses I have ever taken). The newest version is using SQL reporting which is free and has a lot of youtube videos. The conference again will help with this. User side is straight forward, but a little clunky. Easy to set custom rules and require fields when you want. Interfaces with many other software packages including: Kronos Workforce TeleStaff, OSSI CAD, Rescue One CE provider. If you have a little database knowledge, you can do just about anything. Lots of task that can be set up automatically. Automated reports. It is easy to import bulk data and export bulk data from the software directly. Also have a ipad version for inspections.

Tech support usually makes you leave a message, but generally calls back within a few hours. Started using other software for scheduling, truck and SBCA checks because they are easier. Did not like the EMS package offered. They could do very little customization. When I asked about a field that would be required by my region, they stated that not enough people wanted it so they would not do it. I would say the 9 county region around Houston, Texas as being a very large group of people.

Prior to other programs becoming more readily available FH had everything a user could want in charting because nothing really existed pre-hospital. Now with programs catching up and surpassing FH, FH has not continued to keep up with the times. There is not much to look at for Pros outside the fact it is still #1 for NFIRS reports only because it is FIREHOUSE, it should be good at that.

Just about everything in this program, I apologize for being harsh but it has been bought and sold many times now and the development and upkeep of the software has fallen by the far wayside. Customer service can take up to months to respond and I believe only because you emailed them enough times. There is no way to truly modify the fields you want to modify even though that was a portion of their sales pitch. The program loses data as you are typing through your chart so we have learned to avoid certain "automation" buttons. This once great program has fallen quite far from its original design.

We used Firehouse for 5 years. It was great for putting data in and getting it out but could cause other issues.

The ability to make your own reports was great. Also, you could set certain questions to make other questions be asked. This made it easy to be able to get as much information from the data inputter as possible.

There was a little much customization on some stuff and could cause other issues if you didn't know what was being changed.

It integrates with our CAD. When it works, it works okay. It does what it says for the most part, and has been around for awhile.

When you call in with a problem, the tech has 20 minutes to fix the problem, and then they make it into a ticket. It can takes many days to hear back about it. Sometimes I have had to call in multiple times about the same open ticket, and have to talk through the issue from scratch with each one. The software is definitely not intuitive in any way. It is 5 clicks to attach a document to an occupancy, and if it doesn't work, that's at least 4 days to get it fixed. Sometimes it seems like most of the repair tech's themselves don't understand the software. One time I was asked if I had Googled the error code myself to see if I could find anything. The FH Inspector app requires many things to work together for the program to work, which means it doesn't work as much as it does. The Fire Marshals still carry paper with them for when it is down.