The photo and the note are two halves of one fact
A close-up of cracked flashing is unarguable and uninterpretable. Which elevation? Which slope? Was that before or after the repair? Six months later, in a dispute, the photo alone proves that something somewhere was cracked at some point.
The pairing is what carries: 'North slope, second skylight, flashing separated — this is the source of the ceiling stain in the back bedroom', attached to the photo, on the job. Now it is evidence.
What to photograph on a site visit
- Wide shot first — the elevation, the room, the equipment in context.
- Then the defect close enough to see, with something for scale.
- Anything that changes the price: access, damage, obsolete equipment, code issues.
- The state of the property before you start work.
- Completed work, from the same angle as the before shot.
What uploading does and does not guarantee
Uploading is a network operation that either finishes or does not. On a weak signal it can stall, and walking away from the screen too early is how a photo is never actually stored. Watch it complete before you leave the record.
Attaching a file to your job record also does not put it anywhere else. It is not synchronised into an accounting system, a shared drive or a customer's inbox unless a specific process does that on purpose.
Keeping attachments findable
- Attach to the most specific record: this job, not the customer in general.
- Write the note in the same visit — captions added later are always vaguer.
- Prefer several labelled photos over one dump of forty unsorted images.
- Treat files with signatures or versions as documents, not attachments.