The case note, the HMIS file, and the grant report should be the same piece of work.
COMPASS is case management for organizations serving people experiencing homelessness. Your team records the work once, and the HUD export, the funder report and the timesheet all read from that record instead of asking someone to type it again.
Nobody is short on effort. The work just gets recorded three times.
Most agencies this size run on spreadsheets, plus the HMIS their Continuum requires them to feed. The spreadsheets are not the problem. What it costs to hold everything together with them is.
| The task | How it goes today | With COMPASS |
|---|---|---|
| A case note after a client meeting | Written on paper in the moment. Typed into the HMIS that evening. The parts the grant report needs get retyped a third time into a spreadsheet. | Written once, in the session. The HUD fields sit inside the same note, in plain language. Everything downstream reads from it. |
| The quarterly funder report | Pull the HMIS data. Reformat it in a spreadsheet. Write the narrative from memory the night before it is due. | Assembled from the sessions your team already logged, with a first draft of the narrative built from that same data. You edit instead of starting at a blank page. |
| HMIS submission | Send the files and wait. Find out which required fields were missing when the rejection comes back, sometimes weeks later. | COMPASS names the missing required fields, client by client, before the archive is built. You fix them and export again. |
| Staff time against a grant | A Friday afternoon spreadsheet, reconstructed from memory, with everyone hoping the splits add up to forty hours. | Clocked as it happens, signed, allocated against the funder it belongs to, and exported in the shape payroll asks for. |
| Knowing where the money stands | Ask the bookkeeper, wait two days, and get a number that was accurate at the end of last month. | A six month forecast that moves as expenses are classified, with spend visible against each award as it happens. |
Enter it once.
The HUD fields live inside the note your caseworker is already writing. Not a second screen, and not a separate system somebody has to remember to open.
The panel stays closed until the session needs it, and the labels are in plain language. Nobody on your team has to learn HUD vocabulary to do their job, which is the part that decides whether a rollout survives its second month.
One system, from the front desk to the board packet.
Most case management tools stop at the client record. The executive director then runs the rest of the organization somewhere else, usually on a spreadsheet nobody else can open.
Checked before it leaves.
COMPASS exports the HUD HMIS CSV set against the FY2026 specification, and names the required fields missing from each client record before it builds anything.
It is not an HMIS and it does not sync with one. It produces the export your HMIS Lead ingests, which is the path that actually exists.
How the export worksEveryone in one system without everyone seeing everything.
Access is granted capability by capability rather than by job title. A bookkeeper can approve expenses without seeing pay rates. Substance use records stay behind their own door, as 42 CFR Part 2 requires.
You change any of it yourself, without a support ticket and without waiting on a release.
Seven doors that need no login.
People apply for services directly. Volunteers sign themselves in. A funder checks progress against their award. A lobby tablet runs as a kiosk.
All of that work happens today on your staff's phones and inboxes. Each of these is a link instead.
See the seven doorsAI you can put a ceiling on.
Ask Beacon a question about your programs in plain language and get an answer with the query that produced it shown alongside, so a supervisor can check the number rather than trust it. Beacon reads your data and does not write to it.
AI spend frightens every director who has been burned once, so COMPASS meters its own. You set a monthly cap, watch the daily number against it, and switch it off for the whole organization without calling anyone.
Written for the part of the job nobody trained you for.
Plain explanations of the HUD requirements small organizations get handed without a manual. Free, no signup, and useful whether or not you ever run COMPASS.
Questions? Just ask.
Email goes to Brandon, who built COMPASS and answers these himself. No form to fill in, no call to book, and no sequence of follow-ups afterward.
Ask something specific and you will get a specific answer. If COMPASS is wrong for your organization, that is the answer you will get.