Organize Inspection Reports and the Photos That Come With Them
The deposit dispute arrives in November about a move-out in July. The inspection form is filed. The forty photographs that prove the carpet was already stained are in a phone belonging to someone who left in September.
The short answer
An inspection is a form plus a set of photographs, and they are worth nothing apart — the form without the photos proves little, and the photos without the form are unidentifiable. File them as one unit: a folder per inspection, under the unit, named by the date and the inspection type. A workflow uses the Read Details from File step to pull the address, unit and date off the report, and the Move step to file it. The photographs carry nothing readable, so they are routed by the upload they arrived in and land in the same inspection folder.
Steps this uses
Before and after
What actually changes
As they arrive
- inspection.pdf
- IMG_2201.jpg
- IMG_2202.jpg
- moveout form scan.pdf
After the workflow
- Maple Grove/12B/2024-06-01 move-in/2024-06-01-inspection-report.pdf
- Maple Grove/12B/2026-07-14 move-out/2026-07-14-inspection-report.pdf
- Maple Grove/12B/2026-07-14 move-out/2026-07-14-001.jpg
- Maple Grove/12B/2026-07-14 move-out/2026-07-14-002.jpg
Two inspections two years apart, each holding its own report and the photographs taken the same day.
Setting it up
Described once, then it runs
This is the sentence. Send it to the builder and the steps below appear on a canvas, wired and named, for you to change before anything runs.
When an inspection report arrives, read the address, the unit, the date and the inspection type off it, name it date-first, and file it into a folder for that inspection under the unit, with the photos it came in with.
One folder per inspection
Not per unit and not per year. A move-in, a mid-term and a move-out are three separate events, and the photographs only mean something next to the form from the same day.
Name by date and type
The Rename step writes both, so the unit folder reads as a history: moved in, inspected, moved out. That sequence is exactly what a deposit dispute turns on.
Route photos by upload, not by content
A photograph has no address written on it. The batch uploaded from one inspection goes to that inspection's folder because of where it was sent, which is the only reliable way to keep the set together.
Let the report carry the identity
The Read Details from File step reads the address, unit and date off the inspection form, so the folder gets its name from the document rather than from whoever created it.
The photographs are the evidence
An inspection form records somebody's opinion on a day. The photographs record the condition, and in a dispute they are what settles it. Filing the form carefully and letting the photos stay on a phone means keeping the weaker half of the record, which is the usual way a deposit case is lost — not because the evidence never existed, but because it was never anywhere findable.
Move-in is worth more than move-out
Everyone documents the move-out, because there is a dispute in view. The move-in inspection is the one that proves what the damage is being compared against, and it is taken when nobody is thinking about disputes at all. A structure that puts both under the unit, in date order, makes the comparison possible years later without anyone having planned for it.
What it does not do
It files reports and keeps their photographs with them. It does not assess damage, compare two inspections, calculate a deduction, or tell you the carpet was worse in July than in June. A person looking at two folders does that. The system's job is making sure both folders still exist and still hold their photographs.
FAQ
Common questions
How should inspection reports be organized?
A folder per inspection, under the property and unit, named by the date and the inspection type — move-in, mid-term, move-out. Keeping each inspection as its own folder is what keeps the report and the photographs from that day together, which is the whole point of the record.
Where should inspection photos be stored?
In the same folder as the report from the same inspection. Photographs carry no readable address or date on their face, so they have to be routed by where they were uploaded — one upload destination per inspection keeps the set intact without anyone naming files.
Why keep move-in inspections at all?
Because a move-out inspection only means something compared to one. The deposit question is always what changed during the tenancy, and the move-in record is the baseline. It is taken at the moment nobody expects a dispute, which is exactly why it gets filed carelessly.
Can it compare two inspections for me?
No. It keeps both, with their photographs, in a structure where a person can open them side by side. Judging whether damage exceeds fair wear and tear is not something to hand to an automated comparison, and a confident wrong answer there is worse than no answer.
The photos stay with the report.
One folder per inspection, so the evidence is intact four months later.
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