We manage quite a few houses at Home Rental Services, Inc.  Every month, we replace between 5 and 10 central heating and air conditioning units for our owners.  It is important to know that you can receive up to $500 worth of tax credits when you install approved energy efficient units.  If you are doing any home improvements, there is a good chance that some of the work will be eligible for tax credits, especially if you are replacing key systems or working on the exterior of your home.

Types of things that are eligible for these credits are:

• Water Heaters
• Furnaces
• Boilers
• Heat Pumps
• Central Air Conditioners
• Building Insulation
• Windows
• Roofs
• Circulating Fans (used in a qualifying furnace)

Maximum Incentive

Here is a quote that talks about the maximum incentive (in aggregate) you can be eligible for:

For purchases made in 2011, 2012, and 2013: Aggregate amount of credit is limited to $500. Taxpayer is ineligible for this tax credit if this credit has already been claimed by the taxpayer in an amount of $500 in any previous year.  For purchases made in 2009 or 2010: Aggregate amount of credit for all technologies placed in service in 2009 and 2010 combined is limited to $1,500

For more information, please visit the DSIREUSA.org website.

Our good friends at Bank of Kansas City gave us tickets to the Kansas City Sports Commission’s 40th awards banquet.  The event was last Friday, April 19th at the downtown Marriott.  Coach Bill Snyder was the keynote speaker for the event, and spoke for about 40 minutes (uncommonly verbose for coach Snyder.)  Nationally recognized sportscaster Gary Bender and Kathy Nelson of the KC Sports Commission were the Emcees.

Caitlin and her husband Brad attended the event and really enjoyed seeing coach Bill Snyder and other award recipients.  “I thought it was really nice to take the time to honor people who are making a difference in the Kansas City local sports scene. The life story of Colin Dougherty was especially touching and inspiring considering he plays on the varsity squad of his high school basketball team while suffering from autism.”

List of Award Recipients

Waddell & Reed Executive of the Year: Robb Heineman – CEO of Sporting Club, parent organization of Sporting KC

Sprint Community Champion: John Denison – Metro Sports

Kansas City Life Sportswoman of the Year: Kelly Dippold – Lockton Companies

Kansas City Downtown Marriott Sportsman of the Year: Colin Dougherty – Leavenworth High School

Burns & McDonnell Coach of the Year: Bill Snyder – Kansas State University

There are a lot of things to do this month in Kansas City!

International Auto Show This Weekend (March 6th – 10th)

This week is the annual Greater Kansas City International Auto Show at Bartle Hall downtown.  There will be more than 500 cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans and crossovers on display from dozens of manufacturers.  There will also be attractions and events throughout the show.  For complete information, check out the official website.

St. Patrick’s Day Run (March 9th)

This will be the 35th annual Saint Patrick’s Day Run in Westport.  The run begins at 10am on March 9th in the Westport area.  For more info on the run, go here.

St. Patrick’s Day Parade (March 17th)

March 17th is Saint Patrick’s Day, and it is celebrated in a big way in Kansas City.  There is a big parade on the 17th from 11am – 1pm.  It is in the Midtown/Westport area and begins at Linwood/33rd Street
and goes south to 43rd Street.  For detailed parade information, check out the official website.

Even More Stuff!

For a more complete listing of March events, be sure to go to VisitKC.com.
This link will show you upcoming events in the next 30 days.

You might have seen the January 15th blog post about our team building and process improvement meeting we had at the beginning of 2013.  The goal for that meeting was to update our processes and make sure that we had documented everything.  The most obvious choice for documenting all the flip charts we created was some kind of flow charting tool.  The first tool we though about using was Visio, but we didn’t have a copy of that software.  Since we had to buy something, we decided to look around before buying.  We wanted something flexible, easy to collaborate with and that worked “in the cloud”.

After some research, we found LucidChart and we love it!

LucidChart is an online flow charting tool that integrates seamlessly with Google Apps and is used by a ton of companies you would recognize (like Fidelity, USA Today, Groupon, Google, Disney and more)  You don’t have to install any software on your computer… the whole thing is done through your browser.  You can try it out for free, which we took advantage of to make sure it was going to work for us.  It works so well!  It is easy to use and when you are done with your flow chart, you can share it in so many ways.  A hyperlink to a PDF, a web page, you can download it and attach it to an email and more.

Lucid Chart Sample
(Click to Enlarge)