We have had many agencies call to ask where to find a calculation of shelter nights. This means that each night a client is served in their program counts as one shelter night. It is measured between two dates, so that the nightly client count served on each night in the date range is added together to give a total …

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UPDATE: Since this blog post was published, HUD has released new guidance on how to calculate this. However, I feel like this way of doing it makes a lot of sense and could be useful for folks who just want to know this kind of information for internal processes. So, use it if it suits you, but don't use it on the …

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One of the more challenging parts of my job is working with users who show up to a new user training having never used a computer. Or who have, but they just do not feel comfortable with computers. It's difficult enough being a case manager without also having to learn basic computer skills plus entering data about …

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Have you ever deleted a provider in ServicePoint? What was your favorite repercussion? Still seeing it in lists of providers in ART Not being able to access the provider admin for the provider, which of course you wouldn't want or need to do if it wasn't still showing up in ART, (please see update at the bottom!) or …

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Last year, we did a giant audit of all 400 of our providers, one by one, asking grant managers and others who had more intimate knowledge of the individual projects if each one was still in business, because there were so many that were no longer in use that we couldn't tell what was what. We had some turnover in our …

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If you are new to ART (Business Objects) reporting (or even if you're not) and would like a very simple ART report to design from scratch, this is a good one. For our CoC, we have a policy that HMIS users have 5 days to enter a household into HMIS from the day they entered the program. We have had this policy for ages, …

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The Quarterly Performance Report (QPR) I've been working on for months now is FINALLY to the stages of being edited for tiny things like the exact verbiage in the header, how it looks, and sorting out the alerters, etc. On each of the reports, there is a formula designed to state the goal of the specified performance …

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Last year was our first year doing our Housing Inventory Chart mostly from HMIS. I say mostly because not all agencies on the HIC are entering data into HMIS, so those obviously didn't come out of HMIS. This year, the plan is to do our HIC completely out of HMIS. We are currently collecting all the extraneous provider …

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Being a Balance of State implementation, it is very difficult to get a handle on which providers are doing what, are funded by whom, etc. Prior to learning about Provider assessments, I never really saw a way of keeping all that straight. The first time I ever heard of Provider assessments, I was at a Bowman conference …

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This does not sound exciting at all, but I think about the most exciting thing that has happened at my work lately is our CoC board voted in an updated Policies and Procedures document and a brand new Data Quality Standards document. As of November 1st, it will be IN EFFECT! It is exciting to me partially because this …

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