Snagging, from the walk to the signed list.
IssuesId is snagging software for site managers and the trades who clear the list: walk the plot with no signal, log each snag with a photo and a pin on the plan, send it to the trade in two taps, re-inspect against the original photo, and export a snagging list with a name and a time against every line.
A snag is small. The list is not.
A snag is what you find on the walk before handover: mastic missing to the bath edge, a door that binds on the top hinge, a paint run down the architrave, a cracked tile at the threshold. None of them is structural and every one of them is somebody’s to put right before the client’s surveyor finds it first. The snagging list is that walk written down, plot by plot, room by room.
The list gets contested for a reason that has nothing to do with the snags. It gets contested because of what it cannot prove. The decorator says the scuff was there when he left and the tiler says it happened after. The client’s snagging inspector turns up with a hundred and forty items, half of them already on your list, except yours is a spreadsheet with no photos and theirs has a photo of every one. A snag with no evidence is an opinion, and the person holding the retention decides whose opinion wins.
So the job of snagging software is not to make the list prettier. It is to make each snag a record that stands on its own: where it is, what it looked like when it was raised, who was told and when, when they said it was done, and who checked. The rest of this page is that record at the four points where it gets tested.
No signal in the stairwell. The snag still gets logged.
Practical completion walks happen in the places the phone signal does not: the stairwell, the plant room, the en-suite in the middle of the block, the basement car park. A snagging app that needs a connection makes you choose between logging the snag now and losing it, or writing it on the back of your hand and typing it up tonight. Both lose snags, and the ones you lose are the ones the surveyor finds.
IssuesId saves the snag to the phone the moment you tap save. The photo, the location picked off the plot’s room list or scanned from the QR label on the door frame, a pin dropped on the floor plan, and a voice note that comes out as text so nothing is typed on a landing. It syncs itself when you walk back into signal. The capture time is stamped on the device before any network is involved, so the record says 09:41 in the en-suite even if it did not reach the office until eleven.
It is a web app you install from the browser: nothing in an app store, nothing for IT to approve, and the same on a three-year-old Android as on a new iPhone.
Two taps, and the record shows who was told
Pick the trade, set a fix-by date, and the snag belongs to one sub-contractor rather than to a WhatsApp group with fourteen people in it. They get an email with a link to their own snags on that plot. No app to install, no account to set up, no licence to buy for a plumber who is on site for two days. They open the link, see the photo and the pin, do the work, and upload a photo of the finished job against the same snag number. It will not let them mark it done without one.
The part that matters later is underneath. The record shows the email was delivered at 10:04 and the link was opened at 10:11, by whom, from which company. “Nobody told us” stops being an argument anyone can have. And if the plumber opens it and it is the tiler’s fault, they hit dispute rather than ignoring it, and you find out from the register instead of from a phone call three weeks on.
Re-inspect against the original photo, not against memory
This is the round most snagging apps skip. The trade marks the snag done and the app closes it, which means the trade has just signed off their own work. On a real job, done is a claim; cleared is a verdict, and someone other than the person who did the work has to give it.
In IssuesId a snag the trade has marked fixed goes to ready to inspect, not to closed. Whoever de-snags opens it and has the original photo and the trade’s proof-of-fix photo on the same record, with the pin in the same place on both, and either signs it off, which puts their name, their role and the time on the line, or refuses, with a photo and a note, and it stays on the trade’s list. A sub-contractor account cannot make that last move. That one rule is most of what makes the list defensible.
309:41 · K. HARTLEY311:22 · ACE PLUMBINGThe snagging list at practical completion is an export
When the last snag on the plot clears, the list is already written. Export it as a PDF: every item with its photos, its location on the plan, the trade, when it was raised, when it was fixed and who signed it off, with the trail printed under the entries rather than living in a system the client cannot open. Filter it by plot, by trade, by floor or by the client’s own reference, because the list you want at handover is not the list you wanted mid-build.
Signed off is a status here, not a squiggle. There is no signature pad; what the document carries is the name, the role and the time against every line, which is what a claim actually turns on. The export is tamper-evident and carries a document reference, and the register it came from cannot be edited afterwards without leaving a line in the trail. Retention conversations go a great deal better when the list is that kind of document, and so does the month-eleven call in the rectification period, because the same file answers it.
| No. | Snag | Location | Trade | Raised | Cleared | Signed off |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #217 | Cracked tile at threshold | FF · EN-SUITE | Precision Tiling | 21 Apr | 23 Apr | S. Okonkwo |
| #218 | Mastic missing to bath edge | FF · EN-SUITE | Ace Plumbing & Htg | 21 Apr | 24 Apr | S. Okonkwo |
| #219 | Paint run to architrave | FF · LANDING | Coastline Decorators | 21 Apr | 23 Apr | K. Hartley |
| #221 | Door binds on top hinge | FF · BED 2 | Hanley Joinery | 21 Apr | 24 Apr | S. Okonkwo |
| #223 | Extract fan not commissioned | FF · BATH | Voltec Electrical | 22 Apr | 24 Apr | S. Okonkwo |
| … 33 further entries, each with its photos and trail on the following pages | ||||||
Snagging software or defect management software?
The same software, and we use both words without apology. Snagging is what a UK or Irish site calls the last walk and the list that comes out of it. Defect management is the machine that walk runs on: every issue since the first slab, caught, sent to whoever owns it, fixed, checked and closed, and still running through the rectification period after the keys are handed over. IssuesId keeps one register for both, so nobody opens a fresh spreadsheet on the Friday before PC. The snagging list is that register, filtered to the plot and to what is still open.
If you want the longer argument about where the two words stop being interchangeable, and the week a snag list in a spreadsheet stops being enough, we wrote it up: snagging vs defect management. If you are choosing between tools rather than words, the guide to construction defect management software goes through the full workflow with an example report and the six things to test on a live job.