Digital inspections

Digital vehicle inspections turn the walkaround into work customers actually approve, because they can see it.

Inspections are fully optional. Nothing in the workflow requires one. If the work is already known (a fleet requests specific repairs, say), skip straight to quoting and the job flows exactly the same.

Running an inspection

Open Inspection on a vehicle. The checklist comes from your shop's inspection template. The page reads top to bottom: Back on its own line, then the inspection's title with the car under it. The title is also the switcher: click it (it has a small chevron) to see every inspection on this car and to start a new one. At the right, two controls: a New inspection button and a ⋯ menu with Rename, Print, Customer note, Link and Delete. Under that, a progress strip: 12/69 inspected with a bar on the left; on the right one selector with four segments, All, 3 attention, 1 with photos, 56 not inspected. Those segments are the filters: press one and every section shows only those lines (the rail's counts follow). Then the body in two columns. The section rail on the left lists every section (Tires, Brakes, Fluids, whatever the template defines) with how far along it is and an orange dot when something in it needs attention; click one and its lines fill the card on the right.

Every line is the same row: its name, the three-way control (Good / Monitor / Needs attention), and two small buttons for media and a note. There are no row types and no measurement fields: any line can be rated, any line can carry a note, any line takes photos, video or a PDF. A tire or brake pad line is rated like every other line; a number you want the customer to see goes in the note. On the web, click anywhere on a line to open it: the note, the template's quick findings as one-tap phrases, and every photo, video and PDF on the line at full size; click the line again, or another line, to close it (one line is open at a time). The status control and the two small buttons keep their own clicks. On the phone, tap the line to open its sheet. Mark all good at the top of the card sets every line in the section that is still unset to Good and never touches one already set or carrying a note or a photo (the notice says so and has an Undo). On the web, J and K walk the rows, G, A and U set the focused line.

Rows do not drag on the inspection page. A checklist's order, its sections and its items are edited on the Templates page; you can still add a line or a section to this one inspection from the card and the rail, and take one away: Remove line sits at the foot of an open line and Remove section beside Mark all good on the section card (on the phone, in the open item's sheet and on a collapsed section). Both ask first; removing a line with photos says they go with it, removing a section names how many lines it takes. Removed lines and sections leave the customer's report too.

Naming, switching, starting and deleting

The page title is the inspection's name. A new inspection is named after its checklist ("Complete Vehicle Inspection"); run the same checklist again on the same car and the next one is numbered ("Complete Vehicle Inspection (2)", then (3)), so two inspections on a car never read the same. Rename under the ⋯ menu lets you call it something else: "Pre-purchase inspection", "Brake check after the noise complaint". The name shows on the car's inspection row, as the heading of the customer's report, and in the text and email when you send it. Clear the name to go back to the checklist's name.

A visit can carry more than one inspection. Click the title to switch: the menu lists every inspection on the car with its state in words ("Draft · 12 of 69", "Sent Oct 20 · 3 findings"), and its last row, New inspection, starts a fresh checklist. The New inspection button at the right does the same thing. Either way, when your shop has more than one template, a second menu asks which checklist; with one template the inspection starts at once. Everything else lives under the ⋯ menu: Rename; Print opens a paper copy; Customer note is a line the customer sees at the end of their report; Change checklist swaps the template under a draft; Link (see below); and, last, Delete this draft or Delete this inspection, which asks first; deleting a sent inspection ends the customer's link on the spot.

Rows can carry photos and video shot on the spot from the mobile app. Every line takes any mix of photos, videos and PDFs: the door reads Add photo, video or PDF (or drop the file on the row). Photos, videos and files show on the row; tap one to open it. Open the line and every attachment sits at full size, a PDF as a tile with the file's name and page count. The customer opens it from the report.

Every file uploads straight to storage, from the web and from the app, so size is rarely the problem: photos up to 100 MB, videos up to 4 GB (a full walk-around at your phone's native resolution; the app caps a single recording at 90 seconds), PDFs up to 200 MB. The app itself refuses no file a camera or scanner makes; the one ceiling is your CarSignal storage account's upload limit, and a file over it is refused with that said, never dropped quietly. Videos are MP4 or MOV, kept as recorded, with a still frame stored beside each one so a browser that cannot play the clip still shows the picture and an Open video link. On a weak connection the app shows the progress on the tile; if the connection drops, the tile reads "Upload failed · Retry" and the file waits on the phone and goes out the next time the app comes to the front, whichever screen is up, then lands on its row by itself; leaving the inspection while a file is still moving changes nothing. On the web an upload keeps going when you leave the inspection, open another car or reload the page: a line in the top bar shows what is still moving, a dropped connection picks up where it stopped, and the file lands on its row by itself. On both, an upload that loses its connection resumes from where it stopped instead of starting the file over, so a long clip on a weak signal still gets there.

Pricing the work

The inspection itself creates no jobs and no estimates. It records what the tech saw: each line's state, its note, its photos. Press the attention segment in the progress strip to walk every flagged line section by section; when a flagged line has no note yet the section card says so ("showing 3 attention · 2 need notes"), a nudge, never a requirement. Pricing happens where pricing lives, on the car's Jobs, with templates, auto-price, MOTOR times and parts search, and the customer approves that work on the estimate the normal way (customer approval).

One Send

Send to customer in the footer sends the inspection report: an email and text with the link to the report, where the customer sees every Monitor and Needs attention line with its note and photos, the good items folded away (a good line that carries a note, photos, a video or a PDF shows them inside that fold). The footer's only fact is how far along you are ("56/69 inspected"); the counts sit in the strip at the top. Lines you skipped get one confirm and go out marked as skipped.

Send is instant: the button reads Sent the moment you press it and the car line says Sent; the message goes out behind that. If it cannot be sent, the page goes back to how it was and one notice says why.

Once an inspection has been sent it is final, so what the customer saw is always exactly what your tech showed them: a change to its states, notes or photos is refused, on the web and on the phone, with the words "This inspection was sent on Oct 23. Start a new inspection to change findings." Send again resends it as it stands; new findings go on a New inspection.

The link

Every inspection is its own link from the moment it exists. Link under the header's ⋯ menu shows its state, Active or Off, and opens the link's actions:

• Copy link copies the customer's report URL. Send it however you like.
• A new inspection's link is Off. Sending turns it on. Turn on before you send shares the work in progress: the report shows the findings so far with an "Inspection in progress" line.
• Turn off makes the report answer "This link is no longer active" to anyone who has it. Turn on brings it back.
• New link replaces the URL. The one you shared stops working; the new one is copied for you.

Marking up photos and video

Point at the problem instead of describing it. While an inspection is still a draft, any photo can be annotated, on the web or in the mobile app: draw arrows, circles, and boxes, sketch freehand, or drop a text label, in red, yellow, and green to match the finding's severity. The markup is baked into the photo the customer sees.

Video gets the same treatment, live: choose Markup video, pause anywhere in the clip, and draw right on the frame. The marks play back over the video at the moment you drew them (a circle around the wobbling ball joint appears while it wobbles), and the customer gets small time chips under the player to jump straight to each mark. The original clip is never altered.

Prefer a still? Annotate this frame grabs the paused frame as a photo, marked up and added right next to the video.

Templates

Build inspection templates on the Templates page as sections with items under them, exactly how the checklist reads during an inspection: name the section (Brakes, Tires, Fluids), add items inside it, and mark one template as the default. The editor is one sheet: the checklist name, three pills on one line (Default checklist, Start on every check-in, Internal only), then the sections split by hairlines, each item on one line (its name and a quiet Details link), so a 69-item checklist reads as a list, not a wall of boxes. Drag any item by its grip to reorder it or move it into another section, and drag whole sections to rearrange the checklist. This is where a checklist's order is edited; the inspection page itself does not drag. Multi-point, brake-check, seasonal, whatever fits.

Every item is the same row (Good / Monitor / Needs attention, a note, media). Under an item's Details sit its fix template and its quick findings. There is no measurement field: tread depth and the other readings are gone, so a Tires line is rated like any line and a number goes in the note. Checklists built before this (status, photo and measurement rows) open in the editor as the same lines; a photo row or a measurement row is simply a line.

Two pills sit on every template. Start on every check-in opens a draft from that checklist the moment a car is checked in, on the web, from the check-in write-up, and on the phone, once per visit. Internal only keeps a checklist for the shop's eyes: it never goes to the customer, and the send controls stay hidden on it.

Any item can carry quick findings (under its Details): short phrases (Leaking, Worn, Cracked) the tech taps during the inspection instead of typing. They land in the item's note, and the tech can still type after them.

Every template also has a Print button that opens a paper version of the checklist: Good/Fair/Poor bubbles per item, blank lines for vehicle, mileage, and technician, and a notes area. Handy while techs are still getting onto the phone flow, or when a customer asks for a physical copy.

What the customer sees

The report answers the customer's three questions in order: what is wrong, how bad, and what to do next. Your logo, name and address sit across the top with Call, Text and Print; under the title, the car and who inspected it and when. Then three numbers in one row (need attention, to monitor, good) with a one-sentence verdict under them ("1 item needs attention, 2 to monitor and 14 looked good."); each number jumps to its group.

The findings are grouped by urgency, not by checklist section: Needs attention first, then Monitor, then Photos and files (walk-around photos, videos and attached PDFs on lines with no verdict), and the good items folded behind one quiet line, "14 items looked good", that opens on tap. Anything attached shows: a good item that carries photos, a video or a PDF sits under that line with its media as small tiles while the fold is closed, so nothing is hidden behind a press (tap a tile to open it), and inside the fold it is the same full row as everywhere else; good items with nothing attached are just their names. Each finding is the same row: its name with the checklist section as a small label above it, the status word in its color (never a badge), the number with its unit in words when the line has one (3/32" · under 4/32"), the tech's note, and the evidence: photos large on Needs attention findings (one fills the row, two share it), smaller elsewhere, videos playable in place, and attached PDFs as a row that opens the file right on the page (a sheet on a phone, a panel beside the finding on a laptop) with page thumbnails; a quiet "Open in new tab" is there for anyone who wants the file itself. Nothing is priced on the report; when you price work from what you found, the customer gets the estimate the normal way. Your note to the customer, the Text the shop door and your inspection fine print (Settings > Quotes and invoices > Fine print: CarSignal's inspection-scope line until you change it, nothing if you clear the box) close the page. No Draft or Sent label ever prints on it.

Print and the browser's Save as PDF produce one document with the same grouping: letterhead, counts and verdict, every finding including the good ones, photos as captioned grids, attached PDFs as "Attached: name (PDF, 3 pages)", page numbers at the foot.

Photos have to display in every browser, so the app and the web store JPEG, PNG and WebP stills. The app asks the phone for a JPEG when you pick an iPhone HEIC from the photo library, so the pick just works; a HEIC that still arrives (an older build, a file from another app) is refused with the reason: shoot with the camera in the app, or save the photo as a JPEG first.

The email that carries the link uses the same layout as every other CarSignal email (your logo or name over the accent rule, one button): the heading says how many items need attention, the three counts follow, each flagged item is a row with its reading and status word, lines that carry only photos or files say how many wait in the full report, and the one button is View full report.