What the inspection report page shows
An inspection report page is one inspection of an asset group at a property. On the left you fill out the report form: the inspection's questions step by step, per-asset answers, any deficiencies (problems found, with internal and customer-facing notes), service completion dates, and signature and photo uploads.
Sections are shown without numbers. Sections with no visible content stay in place, grayed out with “No applicable questions.” They cannot be opened until an answer makes their questions applicable. Review & Publish stays available. The progress bar counts only applicable sections.
On the right is a live preview of the report, shown as the PDF or template once there is something to render (a draft shows 'Publish report to view preview'). The header has Save Draft, Download PDF, Publish (shown as Save and Publish when you have unsaved changes), and Delete; the "..." menu holds submitted-report actions such as Duplicate and sharing or filing actions that are enabled for your business.
If any assets referenced in the saved report have been deleted from the property, a notice above the form and preview shows how many. It uses the assets’ current status, so an older report can show the notice after an asset is removed through another report. The notice appears only on this page, not in the report or downloaded PDF.
The live template preview keeps the template’s portrait or landscape width and scales proportionally to fit the pane. Light horizontal page guides show the approximate paper height, and horizontal separators mark page breaks explicitly set by the template. Reports with mixed orientations use the template’s page boundaries instead of repeating height guides. This keeps large reports responsive while you edit. Guides follow the template’s paper dimensions. Downloaded PDFs use Letter sheets; custom paper sizes may be scaled or centered on those sheets. Guides are approximate: use Download PDF for exact page breaks, repeated headers, and page footers. When page guides cannot represent a template’s layout, the preview stays continuous and shows a notice. Templates that run scripts, including inline event handlers, also use continuous preview so their dynamic content and styling remain intact. Download the PDF to see its final page layout.
On any submitted report with a generated PDF, Send Report in the "..." menu emails just the inspection report PDF. For a report attached to a Job, the same menu can also show Send Job Summary, which publishes a broader recap link that can include the inspection report with the rest of the job. The Job task offers these sharing methods too. They are separate features with separate Settings controls; see Download or email an inspection report for the difference.
A report is a Draft until you Publish it, which moves it to Submitted; publishing finalizes its deficiencies (they become follow-up items) and records the service completions that reset the recurring-service schedule, then generates the PDF.
A Timeline at the bottom tracks activity: who created, saved, published, or re-published the report, and — for each save — what changed. Each edit is its own entry: the answer that changed (with its old and new values), assets added, removed, skipped, or reordered, deficiencies recorded, updated, or removed (with the customer-facing note), photo and video attachments and signatures added, and service completion dates the technician picked. A save with many edits — a bulk pass, for example — shows the first 30 and collapses the rest into one "…and N more changes" entry. The timeline can be searched and filtered like any other; see Timeline events and comments.
You can ask Essential about the report you're viewing - its status, the property and asset group, how many deficiencies it found, or whether it's been submitted.
Where to find it: Inspection Reports page, then open a report (or Create Inspection Report)
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