The new coronavirus has disrupted our way of life in so many ways. Our hearts go out to anyone dealing with the illness and especially anyone that has lost a loved one from it.

COVID-19 has also impacted our industry. In some states real estate transactions have been deemed an "essential service," while in others they have been prohibited. Regardless of the ability to inspect, many potential home buyers are waiting to see the impact on prices and many agents are hampered in their ability to sell, resulting in less overall volume.

Your first reaction might be to cancel your Spectora subscriptions. Of course, we'd prefer you didn't...

The Federal government would prefer you didn't either! So much so that they've allocated trillions of dollars to help the economy stay afloat. Here's a breakdown of resources available to you, including $10,000 grants and two months worth of payroll, rent and utilities. By keeping bills paid and employees employed, the hope is our economy overall will recover faster once we're on the other side of this.

If you're struggling with making ends meet, please utilize these resources our government has made available! The forms take less than 10 minutes to fill out and funds get to you within a few days.

By continuing to pay your self and your team members, hopefully you avoid having to retrain folks in a few months. By continuing to pay your Spectora subscriptions, hopefully we avoid having to lay off team members and setting back our support quality and development velocity months down the road! We also are continuing to pay for our rent, full payroll, and numerous software subscriptions, which rely on our subscription fees!

If you still are considering cancelling, here's some guidance:

If you're on a monthly plan you are, of course, free to cancel your subscription. It will expire at the end of your billing period. 

However, if you are in a state where inspections might still be allowed, you may want to keep your subscription active so you can schedule new inspections. Keep in mind the Online Scheduler does not function if you aren't an active account.

If you do choose to go, we hope you come back once things improve!
 

We offer longer-term plans at a significant discount in exchange for your company absorbing the risk that things don't work out for the full year. Because we calculate many of our expenses based on revenue collected, from when to hire to how much to spend on various software programs and servers, we unfortunately cannot offer discounts or extensions on annual plans. Often we prepay our bills upfront on an annual basis as well. In other words, the money is already spent! Here's more info on why refunds are tough for us as a small self-funded business.

As much as we would like to give discounts, deferrals, and refunds, this would be crippling to our business and hinder our ability to better serve you in the future. However, we're glad that our government has recognized this issue and has made many financial resources available to help small businesses like yours cope with these difficult times, keeping your team employed and paying your bills.

In the meantime, we hope to continue offering tremendous value with content, resources, more daily software trainings, and a full support team! Use this downtime to improve your efficiency, get to know the software better, or finally start using those new features you've been hearing so much about!