Fire Software Reporting Package with NFIRS

Administration

The Administration module is the brain of Emergency Reporting. From beginning to end, this is where you create, control and maintain the master data and settings that integrate our system into your daily operations as if it had been designed with your agency in mind.

System administrators begin by customizing the system to define local time settings, logos for reports, Daily Log functionality, Apparatus, Divisions, Stations, Zones and Shift and Rank structures, making them available as dropdown lists throughout the rest of the system.

In addition, the Personnel List stores records about career and volunteer staff and lets your administrators control their individual access to other parts of the system.

If you choose to share data with neighboring agencies, the Administration module is also where you configure which mutual aid data to share with whom. 

For EMS agencies, the Administration module provides detailed configuration settings that meet state, federal and billing company requirements. In addition to profiling your agency’s capabilities, you can simplify the creation of patient care reports by selecting only those Medications, Protocols and Procedures your agency is certified to administer and filter out the rest.

And if you opt for a CAD interface with your local dispatch center, this is where you define how your account translates incoming dispatch data into codes you actually use, as the system automatically creates new run reports.

In the end, once everything is configured and your personnel are completing those run reports, administrators return to this module to generate NFIRS, NEMSIS, billing and other data exports and submit them to the appropriate agencies.

Daybook

The Daybook, or Welcome Page, is the first screen you see after logging in to Emergency Reporting. This section offers many benefits, including the ability for individuals with system access to receive daily notifications to match their preferences and unique job responsibilities. These notifications contain links directly to the appropriate records or modules, and may include:

• Messages from HQ and other agency personnel, like critical safety alerts and equipment-out-of-service notices
• Specific Incident and Patient care reports that require the individual’s attention
• NFIRS export status
• Outstanding Hydrant work orders and hydrants that have gone out of service
• Pending work orders for Apparatus and other Equipment
• Scheduled and overdue Occupancy Inspections, with optional filters
• Active, Expired and Pending Permits, with optional filters
• Overdue and Scheduled Training, with optional filters
• Certifications that are about to expire, with optional filters
• Events and scheduled activities such as station tours and blood pressure screenings

The Daybook also includes the agency’s Daily Log, an electronic and easily searchable version of the traditional pen-and-paper station log book. Emergency Reporting’s Daily Log will automatically list summaries of Incident responses, including Personnel and Apparatus involved. Personnel may also manually enter, track and report on other activities, like physical fitness sessions, garage maintenance, department holiday parties…most anything you like.

These customized Daybook notifications and Daily Log entries can help personnel comply with rules, laws, standards and regulations that affect your agency’s daily operations, as well as plan, manage and track your other day-to-day duties and activities.

Incidents (NFIRS)

The Incidents module is the heart of the Emergency Reporting system. We believe Fire personnel should be free to focus on protecting lives and property instead of record-keeping. That’s why we designed our entire system, especially the Incidents module, to let you re-use common data wherever possible after you’ve created an original entry.

We pre-load your account with dropdown lists of all necessary NFIRS codes and descriptions, so you can select and auto-fill fields from them throughout the system. You can also create your own dropdown lists in the Administration module and use them in the same way. For instance:

1. Create Station and Rank lists
2. Create Personnel and Apparatus lists, selecting the appropriate Ranks and Stations from those lists you’ve already created
3. Assign your Personnel and Apparatus to Shifts and Rosters by selecting them from those completed lists

When it’s time to fill out an Incident report, you can then:

• Select the responding Apparatus from the same dropdown list you’ve already created
• Watch the system automatically insert correct NFIRS Apparatus Type and Primary Use codes
• Click another button and watch the system automatically pull appropriate Personnel into the run report, inserting information you previously entered when you assigned personnel to their apparatus for that duty shift.

As Personnel and Apparatus rotate in and out of the agency or between stations, all you will have to do is update those dropdown lists. The most current information will then be instantly available to all personnel using the system, as well as your exports to various data collection agencies.

And that’s just one example. We use the same “create it once, use it everywhere” model for Activity Codes, Destinations, and many, many other data types required for export compliance, as well as optional items. You can even create custom data types and require report submitters to capture that information in their Incident reports.

In addition to minimizing data entry, we strive to “keep it simple” in a visual sense, which makes our system very fast and intuitive to use. For any given Incident report the system will only display and prompt for information concerning the scenario you identify, and that display will adapt as you select various codes and options throughout the report.

For instance:

• If you start a run report by selecting Incident Type 143 – [Grass fire], the data entry screens will only ask for items related to grass fires
• If you select Incident Type 111 – [Structure fire], the system will expand the scope of basic fire-related questions and add a screen with questions specific only to Structure Fires.

With Emergency Reporting, you won’t have to bushwhack your way through every possible nuance in the thousands of different scenarios, data elements and other reporting requirements in the NFIRS specifications, just to log a false alarm at a vacant lot.

The system walks report submitters through each step of this process in a logical sequence, while a status bar at the top of each report displays red and green “lights” to indicate which sections are complete and which ones are not. If there are any errors or missing information anywhere in the report, an Authorize page will provide links to the specific page and section that requires attention, with suggestions for completing it.

Our goal is to help you create every run report with 100% NFIRS compliance, and in most cases, to automatically submit those records to your local, state and federal data collection agencies. We can also help customize your exports to meet certain state-specific requirements, where feasible and appropriate. We often hear from customers, as well as state Fire offices, that we provide the most accurate data they’ve seen.

We can make things even faster and easier if we're able to link your account to your agency's local 911 dispatch center system. Emergency Reporting's CAD interface can then create new run reports and update them for you almost as quickly as dispatch staff can enter the information. On those busy holiday weekends when your crews are responding to fires, MVAs and false alarms one right after the other, when they finally return to the station they will be pleased to find that our system has already completed much of the “who, what, when, where, why, how” data entry for them.

Message Center

Unlike standard email systems, the Message Center is a spam-free internal environment where personnel can send messages to individuals or broadcast critical notices to all users. These messages will then appear on everyone’s Daybook page when they log in.

Hydrants

If your agency is responsible for fire hydrants in your coverage area, Emergency Reporting’s Hydrants module will help you consolidate those records online for easy access, reporting, maintenance and field work:

• Easy-to-follow on-screen forms help you record hydrant locations, manufacturer and replacement information, maintenance records and flow test data.
• A Bulk Operations tool makes fast, easy work out of routine tasks like printing, scheduling maintenance, creating work orders and changing settings for large numbers of hydrant records.
• Quick and easy process for importing your existing hydrant records (including flow test data) from most other systems. You may even be able to import data from one of those tracking spreadsheets stored on various hard drives around your agency.

Maintenance

In Emergency Reporting’s Maintenance module, you can track status, location and service life of all your agency’s Apparatus, as well as SCBA and bunker gear, hoses, defib machines, even calculators and pagers. You can easily assign Equipment to individual Personnel, an Apparatus, a Station or some combination of the three.  You also have the ability to generate maintenance requests for any of your Apparatus or Equipment, track their histories and plan for their replacement.

Occupancy

In our Occupancy module, you can manage numerous types of valuable data for buildings and other structures in your agency’s coverage area:

• Occupancy Contact Information for a variety of contact types
• Permit and Inspection assignments, schedules and verification
• Compliance with corrective actions for code violations
• Latitude and Longitude
• National Grid coordinates
• Fire Protection Systems
• Pre-fire plans
• Audio, video, and other document files from actions performed by personnel outside your agency
• Pull Occupancy information directly into Incident reports

Even though business names, owners and tenants may change over the life of a single structure, you will be able to archive all of the historical property and inspection information for each address over time as other aspects of the property change.

To keep such a potential flood of Occupancy data manageable, agency personnel may configure their individual accounts to only display critical, scheduled and overdue actions that match their own job responsibilities and receive reminders immediately upon on logging in to the system.

On a more strategic level, Inspectors and other responsible Personnel can quickly record, assemble and retrieve data related to property and even community-wide risks, using forms and templates created specifically to meet your agency’s unique policies, procedures and objectives. You can then use extensive reporting tools to measure the effectiveness of your inspection and risk reduction programs and other activities.

Training

Use this module to create and store all records, documents and other information related to Fire personnel training:

• Organize your agency’s Training program using Class and Certification templates.
• Schedule and verify Classes, enroll Personnel, assign Instructors and allocate Resources to meet your agency’s training objectives.
• Schedule multiple instances of a class to occur on several dates.
• Run reports to meet internal and external requirements from state and insurance services offices.

Individual personnel can configure their Daybook to display scheduled and overdue actions, Classes, Certifications and Evaluations that match their own job responsibilities.

Reports

One of the key reasons agencies move to Emergency Reporting is so they can easily run real-time reports. You can add reports to your Favorites list, search for reports by key words, or even export all your data to an MS Access database for use offline or as a backup.

Some of the more popular reports include:

• Average Response Time for Agency for Year Range
• Breakdown of Major Incident Types
• Daily Log Items for Station
• Hours Spent per Activity Code for Agency
• Hours Worked for Personnel
• Incidents for Personnel
• Training Hours for Personnel

Library

This section allows the agency to store files for Personnel to view, such as PDF or video files. Some of the most common categories that our customers use include “Training Files,” “Incident Scene Photos,” and “State forms.”  The agency can retrieve these files from anywhere online and even share them with other agencies via email.

Shifts

The Shifts section feeds and simplifies the Daily Roster, which in turn feeds and simplifies Incident reports.  And with our web-based solution, all personnel with access to the system can access their shift schedule from anywhere, 24/7.

Calendar

The Calendar module displays a thumbnail view of department activities. You can configure the Calendar to display icons for different types of events, such as:

• Shifts
• Training Classes
• Events
• Inspections
• Miscellaneous items

Click on any of these icons to go straight to the actual item elsewhere in the system. While the Daybook displays similar information for a specific date, usually the current date, the Calendar can show you information over a range of dates.

Events

The Events module can track your agency’s contributions to the community outside of pure emergency services. Such Events might include:

• “Safety-Standby” at large public gatherings like fireworks displays
• Special events at shopping malls or schools, anything where it could be important to have a Fire or EMS presence
• Honor Guard ceremonies
• Community CPR or First-Aid Classes
• Public relations events at a state or county fair

You can assign Personnel to participate in or conduct these events and document their time and other committed agency resources.

Inventory

The Inventory module tracks consumable, non-Equipment items such as latex gloves, batteries, and syringes that are usually used over the course of a year. You can configure your Inventory module to track item usage and send re-order notices via email to responsible personnel.

Daily Roster

The Daily Roster module helps you assign and track Personnel and Apparatus at multiple stations. You can customize the Rosters to meet your local needs, whether you are a Career, Volunteer or Combination agency.

Payroll

Use the Payroll module to designate Pay Grades and assign, collect and report on Hours and/or Points for Incidents, Training, Events, and special items entered on Timesheets. Payroll reports can be submitted to accounting and used as a ‘timesheet’ when generating payroll checks.