The repair audit trail: what you need to hold in a dispute

A dispute about a repair usually comes down to four questions. Did the tenant report it, and when? How quickly did you respond? What did it cost? Who agreed to that cost? If you can answer all four with a dated record, most disputes are short. If you cannot, they turn into one person's account against another's.

What the record needs to show

1. The report. What was reported, by whom, with any photos, and the time it arrived.
2. The response. When your team first acted and what they decided: triaged, assigned, rejected as a duplicate.
3. The work. Who attended, when it was marked in progress, and the contractor's photos of the finished job.
4. The cost. The invoice itself and the figure, kept with the job.
5. The approval. Who signed off the amount, by name, and when.

Why it has to be append-only

A record that can be edited afterwards proves little, because the other side can ask whether it was. The strongest record is one where every event is added to the job's history and none can be quietly changed or removed. A correction is a new entry and the old one stays. That is how FixDocket works: statuses are a summary, and the history is the source of truth. Each entry says who made it (your team, the tenant, the contractor, the landlord's link, or the system), so a suggestion is never mistaken for a human decision.

Evidence that stands up with others

Deposit schemes, landlords and tenants' advisers all judge a claim on the evidence behind it. What helps is dated photos, an itemised invoice, and a clear line from report to approval. What does not is a screenshot of a chat or a spreadsheet row with no history. Hand over a PDF that shows the whole sequence and the conversation moves on from "who is right" to "what is fair".

Keep it, then let it go

A good record is also one you can end. Photos and contact details are personal data, so keep a retention policy and be able to delete the record for a job, a flat or a building when it applies. See how information is handled. For the product side, read the repair audit trail page, and for the earlier part of the chain, tenant reporting with a QR code.