What is a deficiency?
A deficiency is a recorded problem, usually one found during an inspection. It comes from a compliance item on an inspection report: when a technician marks an item as failing, non-compliant (a Fail, or a No depending on how the item reads), the report opens a deficiency for that item. You can also create a deficiency directly from the Tasks page, without an inspection report — see Create a deficiency task — and, when your settings allow it, technicians can record one from a Work Acknowledgment or the job summary in the mobile app (see What creates Deficiencies tasks).
Each deficiency captures two separate notes. External Notes is the customer-facing description, written to be shown to the customer. Internal Notes is for your team only and is not meant for the customer.
The form keeps these distinct on purpose, and each has its own quick-suggestion helper to speed up writing them. You can also attach photos and files to a deficiency to document the issue (HEIC phone photos are supported and shown as thumbnails), and some report items include extra deficiency fields to fill in.
For a service-linked compliance item whose service is covered by the report's visit type, both Pass and Fail count as performed and can advance the service schedule. N/A or an unanswered item does not, unless the technician explicitly chose a completion date for that service.
The deficiencies you record roll up into a Deficiencies task tied to the property — and, for report-generated ones, the visit — which is where your office follows up. Deficiencies with advanced tracking also appear on Deficiencies tabs for the related asset group and property, so you can follow their status in the context where you are working; each of those tabs is hidden when that page has no tracked deficiencies. The job page has a Deficiencies tab too, always shown (even at zero), and it lists standard findings alongside tracked deficiencies rather than tracked ones only.
The asset group and property tabs share the same columns, including Visibility (see Clear below); property also shows an Asset Group column that the asset group page omits as redundant. The job tab has no Visibility column, and shows an Inspection Report column identifying the source report instead of Asset Group. On every tab, Asset identifies the asset's type — or "General" when the finding isn't tied to one asset — not the individual unit.
For report-generated deficiencies, click a row to open its source inspection report at the exact question; for an asset-level finding, Essential also opens the matching asset. Rows from a manually created deficiency task have no report behind them, so clicking them does not navigate — work those from the task itself. On the job tab, clicking a row opens its linked Deficiencies task instead (or the source inspection report, when no task is linked).
Use Clear in the Visibility column to hide an older tracked deficiency from these roll-up lists without deleting it or changing whether it is Open or Resolved. Select Show cleared to review cleared rows and use Restore to make one visible again. Essential records who cleared the row and when. If the same item fails again, Essential automatically restores its visibility.
There are two kinds of deficiency. A standard finding records what is currently failing on its source report and does not have an Open or Resolved status. A tracked deficiency comes from a compliance item set up with advanced tracking. It stays on record for its asset and is marked resolved (with a date and how it resolved) when the report is resubmitted without the failure, when a later inspection passes the same item, or when your office marks it resolved by hand. Deficiencies recorded by hand on a manually created deficiency task are tracked too, but aren't tied to a report item, so only Mark Resolved resolves them — see How tracked deficiencies resolve.
On report items set up for advanced tracking, the form also shows the asset's tracked deficiency history for that item—open and resolved findings from past reports—right under the answer. When the report is editable and the user has access, open findings offer Record Retest and Mark Resolved, while resolved findings offer Reopen.
Where to find it: Deficiencies are usually created inside an inspection report, on a compliance item that's answered Fail (or No) — the deficiency panel appears right under that item. You can also create one directly from the Tasks page: expand the Deficiencies group in the sidebar and select All. Either way, the resulting work shows up as a Deficiencies task.
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