Answer

How does a subcontractor answer their part of an inspection checklist?

From the checklist, issue a share link against that contractor with a due date. It goes to their nominated contact and opens on any phone with no account, no invitation and no app. They answer the questions in their stretch of the checklist, and every No raises a tracked defect exactly as it would for a signed-in inspector. The link reaches only the live segment between hold points, recalculated every time it is opened; the hold point at the end of their stretch still waits for your inspector. Reminders go out before and after the due date, and a forwarded link dies the moment you re-send.

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

The two bad options

A pre-completion checklist has forty questions and six trades in it. The waterproofer owns six of them. Today you either walk those six yourself, which means you are answering for work you did not do, or you email the waterproofer a PDF and get back a photo of a signed sheet on Thursday, which is a document about the checklist rather than the checklist. The third option, giving the waterproofer a login to the whole thing, is worse than both, because now a trade can see every other trade’s answers and, if you are unlucky, change one. The question is how a sub answers their six questions inside your checklist without being inside your workspace.

How it runs in IssuesId

Five steps, and only one of them is yours

  1. 1Issue a share link against one contractor
    From the running checklist, issue a link against the contractor whose stretch it is and set a due date. It is emailed to their nominated contact, or to the company address if there is none. The app shows you the raw link once, at the moment you issue it, in case the email does not land; after that panel closes it is not retrievable, and the fix is to re-send. See inspections.
  2. 2They open it on any phone, with nothing installed
    No account, no invitation, no app. The link opens the checklist at their stretch. If the contractor already has an account because they are in your contractor directory, the experience is the same; the link is the route, not the login.
  3. 3They reach only the live segment
    Not the whole checklist. The questions after the last hold point answered Yes, up to and including the next hold point that has not been. That scope is recalculated every time the link is opened and every time an answer is submitted. Reordering questions, adding new ones, or editing the checklist after the link went out cannot widen what it reaches.
  4. 4Their answers land through the same path as yours
    A No raises its linked defect, with the photo, exactly as it would for a signed-in inspector, and the defect runs the normal lifecycle. The record shows the answer arrived through the share link rather than pretending a user gave it, and every attempt against the link, including refused ones, is logged.
  5. 5The hold point still waits for you
    Their stretch ends at a hold point, and a hold point is answered by your inspector, not by the trade. That is what makes the segment safe to hand out: the sub can tell you the membrane is down and photograph it; they cannot pass their own hold point.
The sub answered six questions on their phone. The No became a defect on its own. The hold point waited for the inspector.
A link in flight

What happens to the link after you send it

01
Active, due soon, overdue, completed, revoked
Each link carries one of five statuses, so the checklists list tells you which subs have answered and which are past their date without opening anything.
02
Reminders, to them and to you
Reminder emails go out before the due date and again once it has passed, to the subcontractor and to the project’s managers. The managers’ copy never contains the link itself.
03
Revoke, extend, re-send
Revoke kills a link immediately. Extend moves the due date. Re-send issues a fresh link and retires the old one in the same step, so a forwarded copy stops working.
04
A dead link says which kind of dead
Expired, revoked and already-completed each get their own wording, rather than one shrug of an error page, so the sub who opens an old email knows what to ask for.
Limits

Three things to know before you rely on it

Said plainly

The raw link is shown once. At the moment you issue it, in case the email does not land. Once that panel closes it cannot be retrieved, by you or by us; the fix is to re-send, which also retires the old one. That is a security property, not an oversight.

The checklist does not export as a PDF on its own. What you hand over comes from reports: the Door Sheet for a per-location walk-through, the Purchaser Report for a per-defect pack. Because failed checks are defects, everything a sub’s No raised is already in the register those reports read from.

The sub cannot pass a hold point, and neither can the link. Which is the point, but it means the inspector still has to attend. If what you wanted was a trade signing off their own work with a finger on a tablet, IssuesId does not do that; sign-off is a status, set by a role that did not do the work.

Related questions

Asked alongside this one

How does a subcontractor answer their part of an inspection checklist?
From the checklist, issue a share link against that contractor with a due date. It goes to their nominated contact and opens on any phone with no account, no invitation and no app. They answer the questions in their stretch of the checklist, and every No raises a tracked defect exactly as it would for a signed-in inspector. The record shows the answers arrived through the link, and every attempt against it, including refused ones, is logged.
Can the subcontractor see or change the rest of the checklist?
No. The link reaches only the live stretch: the questions after the last hold point answered Yes, up to and including the next hold point that has not been. That scope is recalculated every time the link is opened and every time an answer is submitted, so reordering questions, adding new ones or editing the checklist after the link went out cannot widen what it reaches.
What happens when the link is forwarded, or the due date passes?
Re-send issues a fresh link and retires the old one in the same step, so a forwarded copy stops working. Revoke kills a link immediately; Extend moves the due date. Reminders go out before the due date and again once it has passed, to the contractor and to the project’s managers, and the managers’ copy never contains the link itself. A dead link says which kind of dead it is.
Read on

Where this answer comes from

The mechanism is documented in full under inspections; how contractors get in more generally is trades, tenants and clients, and the directory the link matches against is contractors. The pages for the jobs this shows up on are the builder’s practical completion page, snagging for the UK reading of the same walk, and manufacturing, where the sub is a supplier answering a line check. For the wider question of chasing what an inspection raised, read how do you track overdue inspection items across a large site?