Answer

What makes a defect record stand up in a dispute?

Six things, on one record: when it was captured, as the photo’s own device timestamp rather than the upload time; where, as a named location a person can walk to; who raised it; the photo itself, kept as the original; the chain of status changes, each stamped with a name, a role and a time; and a history none of the parties can edit afterwards. A dispute is rarely about whether the defect existed. It is about when it was raised, to whom, and what happened next, and a record that answers those three questions without needing a witness is one that stands up.

ANSWERED FROM THE PRODUCT DOCS·UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2026
Before the tool

The dispute is never about the defect

The builder says the crack in unit 12.04 is settlement and the tiler says it is the membrane. The strata committee says the lobby leak was raised in March and the builder says the first they heard of it was August. The tenant says the pump has been playing up for months and the manufacturer asks for dates. None of these is an argument about whether something is wrong. They are arguments about the record, and the party with the better record wins them, whether or not they are right. So the question is what a record needs to carry before it can do that job on its own.

01
When
The moment it was captured, as the photo’s own device timestamp and the record’s created time, not the day someone got round to uploading it. A dispute about a leak is a dispute about which week it started.
02
Where
A named location a person can walk to. Unit 12.04, bathroom, the wall behind the vanity. “Level 12 bathroom” is an argument about which bathroom.
03
Who raised it
A real person, by name and role. A photo in a shared drive with no author is a photo anyone could have taken, any time.
04
The photo itself
Kept as the original, with any markup as an overlay on top of it rather than baked into it. The other side’s first move is to ask whether the image was altered.
05
The chain of status changes
Raised, issued, disputed, fixed, verified, closed: each one stamped with who did it, in what role, and when. This is the part that says who knew, and when they knew.
06
A history nobody edits
Every step appended and none of them rewritable by the parties, including you. A record you could tidy up is a record they can say you tidied up.
How the register keeps all six

Four things the person on site does; the rest is done for them

  1. 1Capture it where you are standing
    A photo, the location off the tree or from the scanned label on the door, a description or a dictated note, in one action, offline if the basement has no signal. The record’s created time and the photo’s device timestamp are written then, by the phone, not later by a person. Photos keep their original; a markup is a layer on top of it.
  2. 2Issue it to one party with a due date
    The trade gets an email with a link that opens the work. Whether they opened it is logged. If they think it is not theirs, they dispute it on the record: the defect pauses, the reason is kept, someone adjudicates, and the ruling is kept too. Nobody argues in a corridor and then remembers it differently.
  3. 3Let only the right role move it
    Transitions are gated by role. A trade marks work complete, with a photo, and cannot close it. A resident or a client can comment and cannot change a status. A manager closes. Each move is appended with name, role and time, and the sequence cannot be reordered afterwards.
  4. 4Read the history, and hand it over
    Every defect has a full history view, which is the source of truth in a claim. When it needs to leave the building, the Internal Detailed report carries the photos and the trail under each line, the Summary is the version you send, and the Defects Export is the spreadsheet a lawyer’s office asks for. See reports.
One disputed defect, as the record keeps it. The dispute and the ruling are states on the record, not an email thread someone has to find.
What the record does not do

Three honest limits

Said plainly

It cannot backdate what nobody captured. The record is only as good as the day the defect was logged. A leak first photographed in August is an August leak, however long it was dripping. The discipline is capturing at the time, and the tool makes that a thirty-second job; it cannot do it retrospectively.

It does not put GPS on photos, on purpose. On a building site a GPS pin is metres out, indoors it is worse, and a wrong pin is worse than none because it invites the argument. Location comes from the tree or the label on the door, which says which room. We wrote up why in photo metadata as evidence.

There is no signature pad. Sign-off is a status only certain roles can set, stamped with name, role and time. Nobody signs with a finger. What a claim actually turns on is who accepted the work and when, and that is what the record carries; a squiggle on a tablet adds nothing to it.

Related questions

Asked alongside this one

What makes a defect record stand up in a dispute?
Six things, all on the one record: when it was captured, with the photo’s original device timestamp rather than the upload time; where, as a named location a person can walk to; who raised it; the photo itself, kept as the original alongside any marked-up copy; the chain of status changes, each one stamped with a name, a role and a time; and a history that none of the parties can edit after the fact. A record with those six answers the questions a dispute actually turns on, which are rarely whether the defect existed and almost always when it was raised, to whom, and what happened next.
Does a photo on a phone count as evidence?
A photo on its own is an assertion the other side can wave away. A photo that carries its capture time, the person who took it and the location it was filed against is a different object. IssuesId keeps the original file, the upload time and the device timestamp where the phone supplies one, and annotations are an overlay that never destroys the original. It does not stamp GPS coordinates on photos, on purpose: on a building site a pin is metres out and proves nothing, while the location tree and the QR label on the door say which room.
Who can change a defect’s history?
Nobody edits history. Transitions are role-gated, so a trade cannot close their own work and a resident cannot change a status; every transition is appended with who made it and when. If a trade disagrees, they raise a dispute on the record, the defect pauses, and both the dispute reason and the adjudication are kept. The full history view is the source of truth in a claim, and it exports with the report.
Read on

Where this answer comes from

The mechanics are in defects (the lifecycle, disputes and the history view), photos and annotations (originals, overlays, capture metadata), roles and dashboards (who can move what) and reports (getting it out). The security page covers encryption, residency and access. For the argument about who pays once the record exists, read correspondence that decides who pays; for the strata version, the common-property register; for the builder’s, the construction defect software guide.