Support FAQs for Count Administrators
We have developed the Frequently Asked Questions below to help Count Administrators take full advantage of the features within the Point in Time Regional Command Center.  General FAQs about the point in time count, and about the services available from Simtech to support it, can be found here.  If you don't see the answer to your question already posted then please submit a ticket to our help desk and a member of our team will be glad to assist.

Count Planning

• What do we need to do to customize the Volunteer Registration Portal to meet our local needs?

• How can we use social media to recruit volunteers for the PIT count?

• Why should we consider a "Known Locations" approach for planning purposes?

• How do I view the Known Locations Surveys that have come in already?

• How does the Counting Us app help personalize and streamline the data collection process? 

• How can the Command Center be used to manage user accounts?

• What are the various User Roles available within the Regional Command Center?

• How can the Command Center be used to manage regions and count teams?

• How can I control what map boundaries are displayed within the Counting Us app?

• How can I use the Counting Us app and the Command Center to conduct a Point in Time count for sheltered projects and/or sheltered projects not using HMIS or with poor data quality? 

• What tools are available to help collect and report on data from VAWA-protected DV providers?

• We want to conduct a training but want these survey records to be ignored from the final HUD report. How can we do this? 

• What do we need to do to customize the questions in the surveys to meet our local needs?

• How do I revise the order that the surveys are listed within the Counting Us app?
   

Volunteer FAQs 

• How do I enable location services on my Android or Apple device?

• What steps do should I take to get started with the Counting Us app?

• How can I provide feedback to help improve future PIT counts?

• How do I handle the Unknown Location Error on Apple Devices?

Managing Data Quality within the Regional Command Center

• How can I check for duplicate surveys within the Command Center?

• Can I tag responses with my own custom tags for post-count follow up?

• Why do some households have an "Unknown" household type?

• How do I find and correct Unknown Household types?

• How can I use the Data Export feature and Excel to improve data quality of our survey data?

• Why is having a response for age so important that Simtech made this a required field? 

• How do I change the location of a survey?

• How do I archive / unarchive a record?
   

Reporting and Data Analysis

• How can I generate a HUD-compliant Point in Time report from the Command Center?

• How can I aggregate the unsheltered and sheltered counts gathered using Counting Us with the results from HMIS and the Point in Time Report Generation Tool? 

• How can we derive estimates for any responses that are left blank? Is there an extrapolation tool?

• How does the question "Where were you sleeping on the night of the Count" impact the Point in Time reports?

• How does the PIT report calculate chronic homelessness?

• Why is there no "long and indefinite" qualifier on either developmental disability or HIV/AIDS? 

• HUD requires that we report on complete data for gender, race and ethnicity. How can we meet this requirement if our data is incomplete?

• What do the numeric values for the data elements such as age range, gender, ethnicity, veteran's data and sleeping location, in the CSV export represent?

• How can I see data, or run a report, over a geographic subset of the data?

• The count has ended. How do I prevent people from entering additional surveys?

• Why is there a difference between the count of surveys on the dashboard and/or the CSV export, and the total number of clients counted within the point in time report?

• How can we get the national Point in Time trend analysis updated to include our recent count results?