HMIS Data Quality review for Point in Time Count and Housing Inventory Count Instructions!
PIT night has come and gone. Now it’s time to make sure your HMIS data is in good shape!
PIT Night was January 28, 2026. Major shout-outs to everyone across the state who conducted surveys, entered data, coordinated volunteers, and everything in between. And an extra big thank you to all the individuals who shared a piece of their story and experience through this effort. That does not go unnoticed.
With the data collected, we now move on to the work of reviewing that information to make sure it is complete and accurate. Local PIT leads review the survey data while all the HMIS-participating programs now have the chance to review their HMIS data. That starts now!
If your organization has any of the following types of projects in HMIS, this news alert is for you:
Emergency Shelter (ES)
Transitional Housing (TH)
Permanent Housing (PSH, OPH, RRH)
I thought PIT was just about counting people in shelters or unsheltered situations only?
The official PIT report that goes to HUD does specifically look at sheltered, transitional, and unsheltered numbers for the PIT night. That said, the Housing Inventory Count also requires a PIT Count for Permanent Housing programs for that same night. We take that number directly from the HMIS data, so that's why those programs are also included in the clean-up efforts.
What do I need to do?
All organizations with the above project types must read through and follow the instructions below to review and clean up your PIT night data.
ICA will do some targeted, direct outreach to certain agencies with a higher volume of incomplete, missing, or inaccurate data. If you get an email from our Helpdesk, make sure to read that!
What if I need help?
You can reach out to Helpdesk (mnhmis@icalliances.org) at any time. If you need one-on-one live support, learn more about scheduling that HERE.
Data Clean-Up Instructions
STEP 1 - Check to see if your enrollment counts in HMIS match what you know to be true in real life.
To see if HMIS is accurately representing the clients you have in a program, run the Active Client List report. You can do that by following the steps in this Knowledge Base article: How do I find out how many people are in my program?
If you are part of an emergency shelter that uses the Facilities function, you will want to check the client count using the Check-In Roster Report for PIT night. You can follow the steps in this article: How to run the check-in roster report.
Permanent Housing projects should also run the Housing Move-in Date Checker. This will help you see if anyone who is actively housed in your program is missing a Housing Move-In Date.
If you need to complete any new enrollments and/or exit any enrollments, do that before moving onto Step 2.
STEP 2 - Review data quality for those open enrollments on PIT night.
Regularly running the Common Data Checker for all the projects in your agency is a good standard practice. For this data clean up, the Common Data Checker is a quick way to address many data issues that are seen in the PIT and HIC. Simply run the Common Data Checker for the date of the PIT – January 28, 2026 – and address any errors that are identified. Instructions on how to run the Common Data Checker
If you run a Night-by-Night shelter, you will want to make sure everyone who stayed in your program on PIT night has a bed night recorded in their Services for that night. Here’s how to record services.
If your agency has multiple projects and you’d prefer to look at data quality for all of them in one report, try out our recently-released The Data Quality Report. This can be found in the Reports Workspace in the MN General Reports folder. Follow the instructions embedded under each prompt to run this. Note this report is brand new!! So if you run into anything funky, definitely let us know.
STEP 3 - Review your project-level data in the HIC Data Collection tool.
In addition to ensuring your client-level data for PIT night is in good shape, we also need to agencies to review their project-level data (things like Bed/Unit Inventory, Funding Sources, etc). You should do this through our HIC Data Collection tool – visit our HIC webpage and follow the link at the bottom of that page for the CoCs you operate in. Locate your organization’s projects and complete the Verify button for each one.
In Closing…
We want to thank you for all of your work on everything PIT & HIC related. A reminder that if you need assistance, please reach out to our Helpdesk. We are here to help!