Required Job Photos Before Leaving Site | JobProof

The short answer

A required-shot checklist is only worth having if something refuses to work until it is complete. In JobProof, that something is the report. A new job starts from the standard repair plan: 8 required shots across three stages — Before, During and After — and the report service will not build a PDF until every required shot has a photo attached to it. Tap Create report with a gap and you get "Finish required photos" instead.

The check also appears where you need it. When a capture run ends, the app shows a "Before you leave" checkpoint: it names what is still missing, at which stage it belongs, and what that photo is supposed to show, and gives you one tap back into the camera for it. You can dismiss it with "Leave anyway" — the job stays incomplete, and the report stays unbuildable until you come back. If everything is filled, the checkpoint says so and tells you the report can be created now.

Why the searcher is here

The failure is almost never "I forgot to take a photo." It is "I took the photo and could not later prove which photo covered what" — and the second version only announces itself weeks later, when the customer asks why the crack next to the window was not repaired, or when a dispute turns on whether the old damage was there before you arrived.

By then the site is gone. The wide shot of the wall exists, but so do eleven other wide shots of walls from other jobs, in one camera roll, with no job attached to any of them. The moment where missing coverage costs nothing is before you leave. A checklist that only runs at invoicing time is an audit; one that runs before you leave is the last chance to walk back into the room.

What the 8 default shots actually are

The standard repair plan is not "take 8 photos." Each slot names what it is for and carries one line of guidance, which is shown in the viewfinder and in the checkpoint:

Before (3 required)

• Existing condition — show the full affected area before work starts.
• Work area context — include adjacent surfaces and access points.
• Damage detail — a close view of the reported issue.

During (2 required)

• Work in progress — show the repair method before it is covered.
• Materials used — include labels or identifying details.

After (3 required)

• Finished detail — show the completed repair at close range.
• Wide view after work — show the repair in the surrounding room.
• Clean work area — show that tools, dust and debris were removed.

The Before and After pairs are doing the actual evidentiary work: existing condition against wide view after work is the before-and-after pair a customer or an insurer will look for first, and damage detail against finished detail is the pair that answers "was it already like that, and is it actually fixed now." Clean work area is the one crews skip, and it is the one that settles the most small disputes.

The plan is the default for a new job that has no template, and it is also the Turnover built-in template, summarised in the app as arrival condition, work progress and room-ready result.

How the leaving-site checkpoint actually behaves

The camera runs as a run across the plan: a rail of slots, a "3 of 8 captured" counter, and a per-job scope. You can switch to a different job mid-run, and the camera opens at that job's next unfilled required shot. Each shot is reviewed before it is assigned — Retake or Use Photo — and only on Use Photo is the photo bound to the job and slot, with an optional note for the report and non-destructive markup available. The original file and its local hash are recorded at that moment. If camera access is denied, the same slot accepts an import from the Photo Library instead.

When the run ends, three things can happen:

• Some required shots are missing. The checkpoint lists each one by stage and guidance ("3 required shots are still missing at …"), explains that the report cannot show the missing work until they are captured, and offers "Capture …" to go straight back to that slot. "Leave anyway" dismisses it without penalty.
• Nothing is missing. "Every required shot captured — nothing is missing at …, the report can be created now."
• A note failed to save. The photo is kept; the app says the note could not be added rather than losing either.

The job workspace carries the same idea as a permanent label: while anything required is unfilled, the dock shows "Leaving site? Check 3 missing" under the primary command. A job that is not archived and not report-ready stays in the capture-eligible queue, so the incomplete work is the work the app keeps pointing at.

Editing the plan, and the templates you can start from

The plan is per job, not global. You can rename it, add and remove shots, reorder them, flip a shot between required and optional, and write the guidance each one should show. Two rules keep it honest: at least one shot must stay required, and a slot that already has evidence attached cannot be removed out from under a photo. Photos already captured are kept when the plan changes.

Three templates ship built in:

The Inspection template is the interesting one: it keeps the same eight stages but marks only the context, finding and measurement shots as required, with access, work in progress, finished detail, wide after and clean area available as optional slots. That is the right shape for a diagnostic visit where the answer is a finding and a number, not a finished room. Custom templates — build a plan once per trade and reuse it — require Pro. The built-ins do not.

How it compares to the camera roll

The obvious alternative is what most crews already do: photos in the camera roll, a shared album per customer, and a message to the customer at the end of the day. It works until the job is not straightforward.

• The camera roll has no notion of a required shot. Nothing prevents the 4-of-8 evening, because nothing was ever going to tell you.
• The camera roll has no stage. A photo taken before work and a photo taken after look the same, and six months later that is a problem.
• The camera roll is a delivery you assemble by hand, which is why it usually does not happen at all.
• The camera roll cannot refuse. JobProof refuses to create a report until every required shot is filled. That refusal is the feature; a checklist that only advises is a habit, and habits lose to deadlines.

The cost of the structured version is that the plan has to fit the job, and a plan with eight required shots is wrong for a fifteen-minute punch list item.

What JobProof does differently, and where it stops

The gate is the product. JobProof keeps the captured original immutable inside the app and computes local SHA-256 hashes of the image and its canonical manifest, so a later change to file consistency is detectable; corrections create a new report version rather than replacing a delivered one, and a customer acknowledgement with an optional signature is bound to the exact version they reviewed. That is a different category from a camera roll — but it is file integrity, not proof. It does not establish identity, capture time, legal ownership or third-party certification, and JobProof does not claim it does.

Local-first, with the cost stated. No account, no app-managed cloud sync; jobs, photos, signatures and reports stay on the device unless you share them, and analytics are limited, carry no ad tracking, and never include job content. In exchange, a wiped phone takes the jobs with it, and there is no team sync between two people on the same job.

The free tier is about delivery, not about capture. Capturing photos, editing the plan, creating the report and re-opening delivered reports are always available. The first delivery for three unique jobs is included, and re-shares and later versions of a delivered job stay included forever. After that, sharing a new job's report needs Pro at $19/month or $149/year, auto-renewing, cancelled any time, with no free trial and no lifetime purchase. The app says this before you hit it: creating the report is fine, and the paywall only appears at the share step.

The decision

If your work is a repair or a turnover where a customer will later ask "was it like that before, and is it fixed now", the default plan is the right starting point: run it once, see which slots you genuinely never take, and mark those optional per job or build one custom template for the work you repeat most. If you are doing inspections rather than repairs, start from Inspection rather than turning 8 shots optional one at a time.

If you need two people on one job, scheduling and invoicing, or a record that survives the phone, JobProof is the wrong tool and says so — it documents and delivers one job, locally, on one iPhone. See JobProof on AgentsMesh for the product page, and how it detects later edits to a photo for what the hash does and does not establish.