The one photo you need is in a group chat from last spring
A customer says the lead flashing you fitted is leaking, and they think it was never replaced. Your roofer says it was, and he definitely took a photo. It is on his phone somewhere, or in the gang's group chat, among thousands of others. He has changed phones since.
The same thing happens when a customer disputes the invoice, when a guarantee needs stage photos, or when a main contractor wants evidence of what was done behind the tiles before they went back on.
Why roofing photos go missing
Roofers take plenty of photos. The problem is where they end up. Photos on personal phones have no job number, no address and no stage attached. Group chats compress them and bury them. And the most valuable ones, what the roof looked like once stripped, are only visible for a day or two.
- Photos are taken on personal phones with nothing linking them to a job.
- Group chats mix every job together.
- Nobody knows which shots are required on which jobs.
- Photos leave with staff who leave.
- Office staff ask for photos by text and wait.
What it costs when you cannot find them
Disputes are harder to settle without evidence, and some end in a free return visit or a written-off balance. Guarantee registrations and insurance claims stall. The office spends time chasing roofers for pictures. And you lose the best marketing material you have, which is the before and after of your own work.
There is a less obvious cost too. When a roofer knows the office will ask for photos by text, he sends the three that happen to be on top, not the ones that show the detail in question. The evidence exists; it just never reaches the file.
The photo capture we build
- Each job sheet on the gang's phone has a photo link. Photos taken through it are filed against the job, address, date and person automatically.
- Photos are tagged by elevation and stage: before, stripped, underlay and battens, detail work, finished.
- For each job type, you set the shots you require, such as the stripped roof, each flashing and the completed ridge. The job sheet shows which are still missing.
- Photos upload when signal allows, at full quality, and are stored in your own cloud storage, for example Microsoft 365 or Google Drive, as well as against the job.
- The office can search by address, customer or date and see a timeline of the job in pictures.
- Selected photos can be added to a customer's completion pack, a guarantee registration or an insurance report without downloading and re-attaching.
- Photos marked as suitable for marketing are collected in one folder, with the customer's permission recorded.
| Stage | Why it matters later |
|---|---|
| Before | Shows condition when you arrived |
| Stripped | Shows timbers and boards you found |
| Underlay and battens | Evidence of work that gets covered up |
| Details and flashings | Answers the most common disputes |
| Finished | Completion packs and marketing |
Roofers do not need to change how they take photos, only where they tap to take them.
After the photos are in one place
When a customer questions a flashing, the office finds the photo in a search. Guarantee packs assemble themselves from the right stage. Staff can leave without taking your evidence with them. And the marketing folder fills up as a side effect of normal work.
Sounds familiar?
- You have asked a roofer to dig through his phone for a photo.
- Your job photos live in a group chat.
- A dispute went against you for lack of evidence.
- You have few good before and after photos of your own work.