Resources to help you navigate and use the Homeless Management Information System like a pro.
All HMIS users must review the following documents and watch the training videos to complete your HMIS training. Once you have completed your training, please refer to the email sent to you with directions on how to take your quiz.
The quiz is open book, so you can use any of these materials to find answers. If you have any questions about your training, please contact the HMIS Department or visit us during our open office hours.
Job Aids are here to walk you through how to use HMIS, tackling one task at a time, in detail, with screenshots and exact directions.
Do you want step-by-step guidance for an HMIS task, and we don’t have a job aid for it yet?
These Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are based on the most common questions we receive. If you can’t find an answer to your question, let us know.
If you have forgotten your password, use the “Forgot Password” link on the HMIS login page. You will receive an email to reset your password.
NOTE: If you have not logged into your account for over a month, your account has gone inactive. Please email hmis@sacstepsforward.org so we can reactivate your account.
HMIS will lock you out after three unsuccessful attempts to access the system. The good news is that you are only locked out for a few hours. For additional assistance, please email hmis@sacstepsforward.org.
For security reasons, our system automatically inactivates all users who have not logged in within the last 30 days. Most of the time, this will be why your account is inactive. To resolve this issue, please email hmis@sacstepsforward.org so we can manually reactivate your account.
TIP: For users who do not use HMIS often, we highly recommend that they set a calendar reminder every 20-25 days to avoid being inactivated.
You can log in to the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) for Sacramento and Yolo County at: https://sac.clarityhs.com.
HMIS security is a very important part of your responsibility as an HMIS end user. You have been sponsored by your employer, passed a background check, completed your training, and passed a quiz in order to gain access. You will need to log in every 30 days to maintain your access. You will also need to complete an annual recertification quiz and resign your user agreement yearly to maintain that access.
HMIS is designed to allow users like yourself to document the work you are doing with your clients. It is not meant to be a database for law enforcement, healthcare professionals, or non-participating organizations to search for information about suspects, patients, or clients. The information you find in the system must be kept secure.
For more information about these rules, please refer to the following documents:
Thanks for asking! Yes, it is important that you let HMIS know if any of the HMIS users on your staff are no longer employed at your organization. Not only is this a part of the HMIS Partner Agency Agreement, but this is part of our shared responsibility of keeping the information in HMIS safe and secure. Please let us know about this user’s change of employment status within 24 hours.
Please view our documents webpage for locating important HMIS documents pertaining to the following topics: HMIS Training Documentation, Releases of Information (ROIs) and Client Consent, HMIS Consumer Notices and Privacy Statements, HUD Data Standards, HMIS Access Documentation, and Getting Your Clients Doc-Ready.
To request additional agency access for an HMIS user, please have a supervisor or someone in a leadership position email hmis@sacstepsforward.org with the request.
Access Roles enable or restrict viewing and editing rights for HMIS End Users. This is a list of the most commonly used roles in order from the least to the most amount of access:
To begin searching for a client, click on the search tab in the upper right side of the screen. Beyond simply searching for the client’s full name, there are several ways to find a client in HMIS. You can pull up the last four digits of the client’s social security number or their date of birth. You can also search for the client’s first three and last three letters of their name. For example, you could search for San Cla to find the record for Santa Claus. For additional information on how best to search for a client to avoid creating duplicate accounts, please review pages 15-16 of our HMIS Training Manual.
NOTE: Before creating a new HMIS account for a client, please search for them carefully to avoid creating duplicate client accounts. If you find a duplicate client account, please contact hmis@sacstepsforward.org and provide us with the two UIDs so the accounts can be merged.
When adults or unaccompanied minors are seeking services together, they can be entered as a household in HMIS. First, verify that each family/household member exists in the HMIS. If they do not exist, complete the steps for “Adding a New Client” to create a profile for each family member. In order to be counted as “Family Members” in the HUD APR, clients must be entered in a household BEFORE enrolling in the Program. Please follow these steps to create or modify a household:
Please note: Clients cannot belong to more than one household. If they are no longer seeking services together, clients should be exited from the household.
For more information about households in HMIS – including how to create a household in the global profile and how to remove members from a household – please review pages 21-23 of our HMIS Training Manual.
Every household needs to have a client who is designated as the Head of Household (HoH). In almost all cases, this person must be an adult (over 17 years old). If a household is enrolled in a program without an HoH, it will cause data errors. There are two special cases where a client who is a minor (under 18 years old) can be designated as the HoH.
If you are unable to find the client, you may add a new client from the client search screen using the add client function. Please make sure you complete all fields on the intake screen with the proper response. Once you have created a new client account, please review your intake to ensure accuracy and completeness.
For further explanation on adding new clients please utilize pages 19-20 in the HMIS Training Manual.
Adding client files and photos to their HMIS accounts can help clients keep track of their documents and allow for easy access to for other community partners. Within the client’s profile, hover over the image box and select ‘Update Profile Photo’. To upload files, use the “File” category in a client’s program enrollment. For more directions on how to do complete this uploads, please review pages 40-47 of our HMIS Training Manual.
While our general guidelines state, “HMIS records should use a client’s full, legal name whenever possible,” the intent is to help users find records and avoid duplicate client accounts when clients have nicknames. Due to the amount of unintentional trauma that is caused by using deadnames (given names that do not match a client’s gender identity) and incorrect pronouns, which continually reminds clients of their trans-identity and otherness, we suggest that HMIS users put the client’s real chosen name in the main name section. If they have documentation with their deadnames on them, please put the deadname in the alias section on that same page. By doing this, any search in HMIS for their deadname will still pull the account up.
Additionally, we suggest that HMIS users update any client information on the global enrollment page to reflect the client’s current gender identity and sexual orientation. Name change issues are common and often challenging for transgender people. While these issues can be resolved if a client gets changes their legal name and gender with the state, the ability to do so is based on financial privilege and the ability to navigate bureaucratic barriers. If you have any clients who would like to legally change their name and/or gender, we recommend reaching out to community resources for assistance. In Sacramento, the Gender Health Center can assist clients with the court paperwork for a name and gender change. This paperwork includes a fee waiver request. If your client does not qualify for the fee waiver, they can contact the national Transgender Lifeline to apply for a microgrant to pay for court fees.
Every active client in HMIS must have a valid ROI in the system or have their client profile made private. If you are creating the client’s HMIS profile, you will have to answer the ROI question before you can save their profile. If your client is already in the system, they may already have a valid system wide ROI. Before enrolling a client in a new program, it is the responsibility of every agency to make sure the clients has a valid ROI on file. If the ROI is about to expire soon or they don’t have one, please make sure you get one and upload it into HMIS prior to enrolling them in your project. For more information, please check out our ROI Job Aids.
When you have clients in a household together, it can be a little difficult to figure out how to enter their ROIs. Firstly, you need to obtain ROIs for all members of the household that are legal adults (18 and older). Each adult ROI should be entered into the system the same way you would enter any individual client. For any clients who are minors (17 years old or younger) will will use the Household ROI category.
For more information on adding ROIs, please review our Adding ROIs for a Household.
If a client is missing a system wide valid ROI, HMIS will show a yellow banner across their account page to alert all users. To resolve this, you will need to add a new ROI for this client. To do so, simply select the security shield in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Choose “Add Release of Information” on the Release of Information bar. Then fill out the form and save it. You can choose from three ROI types:
You can find the Sacramento County HMIS ROI and the Yolo County HMIS ROI on our website. For more information on how to add missing ROIs to a client’s file, please review the top of page 17 of our HMIS Training Manual.
All HMIS clients need an ROI in the system. When clients with children sign ROIs, they are signing not only on their behalf but also for all of the underage clients that are in their care. To document this consent, HMIS users put in a Household ROI for each minor client, using the dates from the parent’s ROI to document that we have permission to share this minor’s information with other agencies. Please review our Adding ROIs for Households Job Aid and our Understanding ROI Categories Job Aid to make sure you are up to speed on the consent requirements for the system.
Clients are auto-exited from most HMIS programs if they have not had any services or assessments entered into the program within the last 90 days. You can avoid this by entering services regularly. HMIS recommends that every active client have at least one service a month entered into HMIS. Services help to document the length of a client’s homelessness (chronicity) and facilitates inter-agency communication regarding services, client location, and housing opportunities.
To “undo” an auto-exit, simply go to the exit screen, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the “Reopen Client Program” link. Turn on the “clear all exit data” toggle and hit save. Now your client is still enrolled in your program as if nothing happened. For more information on reopening an enrollment, check out our Reopening an Enrollment when your Client Has Been Exited Job Aid.
For definitions and direction on choosing a destination for your client when you exit them from a program, please review both HMIS Training Manual pages 36-37, 2024 HMIS Data Standards, and Appendix Documents.
To avoid data quality errors, the following steps should be taken before enrolling a client into a program.
To enroll a client or household into a program start by selecting the down arrow next to the applicable program under the programs tab in HMIS. If the client is part of a group, you will be given the option add group members. Toggle on those group members you wish to include, if applicable. Scroll down and select the “enroll” button. Complete all fields in the enrollment page for your client and click “Save & Next”.
If any other group members were included in this program, their Enrollment page will automatically come up next until each member has been completed. Continue to click “Save & Next” after completing each group member’s Enrollment. Enrolled group members will be listed in the right side bar under “Program Group Members”.
For information on enrolling clients into programs – including enrolling families or adding additional family members to already exiting enrollments – please review pages 23-25 of our HMIS Training Manual.
In the event a client doesn’t want to share their information with other agencies, it’s the responsibility of the user to make their program (enrollment information) private. Please follow these steps to privatize the enrollment:
For visual aids and more details on this process please review page 25 of our HMIS Training Manual.
Once you are in a client’s profile, click on Programs and edit the program that you’d like to enter services into. Once you are in the program, select the “Provide Services” tab to explore various services offered by the program. Once you have chosen a service, enter the Start Date and any other applicable information. Make sure you put a checkmark next to any household members who will also be receiving this service. For more information on how to add services, please review pages 26-27 of our HMIS Training Manual.
There are times when you need to edit or delete services in a client’s enrollment, such as an accidental program enrollment.
To edit or delete a service, simply go to the “History” tab in your client’s global profile. Scroll down until you see the service you’d like to change. If you hover next to the service you will see both an edit and delete option. Either delete the service or make any changes necessary and then save.
When a client is housed, the HMIS user needs to enter a move in date on the client’s program enrollment screen. This date is needed to avoid data quality errors, as the move-in date is what signifies to the system and other participating HMIS agencies that the client is no longer actively homeless. When inputting a move-in date for a group enrollment, you only need to enter the date for the Head of Household. Clients with a move-in date should be enrolled in a street outreach, shelter, or transitional housing program as they are already housed.
Please check out this page from the Bitfocus Help Center for more information about Move-In Dates,
All clients must be properly exited upon completion of a program. There are a few steps to take to complete this task:
For more information on client exits from programs, please review our How to Exit a Client Job Aid.
If you need to add or edit Program Housing Inventory in HMIS, please fill out the Sacramento CoC-503 Housing Inventory Form or the Yolo CoC-521 Housing Inventory Form.
The referrals tab can be accessed from the Client Search option. When a referral is sent to your agency and you are the person that has been identified to receive the referrals for a project in the system, you will receive an email notice that includes the Unique Identifier (UI) of the client that is being referred. Paste the UI in the search box in the Pending tab. For further instruction on referrals, please review pages 37-40 of our HMIS Training Manual.
The VI-SPDAT, or Vulnerability Index – Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool, A pre-screening, or triage, tool designed to be used by all providers within a community to quickly assess the health and social needs of homeless persons and match them with the most appropriate support and housing interventions that are available. For detailed instructions on how to utilize this assessment review our VI-SPDAT Training Manual and Appendix Documents.
Our Referrals to a Program from the Community Queue Job Aid details the most common tasks performed in the referrals tab of HMIS when a client is referred to the community queue and then re-assigned to be referred to a program. Please reach out to our help desk hmis@sacstepsforward.org for any additional assistance.
Please use our How to Process Referrals (CAS Shelter Providers Only) Job Aid to get detailed instructions on how to process program referrals from CAS. This process is intended for agencies participating in Coordinated Access System (CAS) shelter referrals ONLY. It is the responsibility of the shelter provider to:
Completion of Annual Assessments at regular intervals are required for all active clients. Annual Assessments are to be completed anytime from 30 days prior to 30 days after the anniversary of the Head of Household’s project entry date. Status Assessments are required to capture significant changes for the client and can be completed at any time.
For step-by-step instructions on completing status and annual assessments, please review pages 28-30 of our HMIS Training Manual.
For Sacramento CoC, we require the Current Living Situation assessment for Emergency Shelter programs, Street Outreach programs, and Services Only/Supportive Services Only (SSO) programs. The purpose of this survey is to record each contact with people experiencing homelessness by street outreach and other service projects. Additionally, it provides information on the number of contacts required to engage the client and to document a current living situation as needed in any applicable project. For directions on how to complete the assessment please visit pages 33-36 in the HMIS Training Manual.
For general HMIS support, system access questions, or help with data entry and reporting, reach out to us using the form below.
Note: Please do not include personally identifiable information (PII) in emails or when you submit a question below. Use the HMIS Unique Identifier instead.
If you are unable to find the information or resources you need, reach out via the form below. We will respond as quickly as possible. Thank you for your partnership!
