Job Photo, Signature and Proof of Work App

Why job photos and signatures decide disputes

Most field service companies already ask technicians to take photos. The trouble starts when someone needs them. A homeowner disputes a card charge and says nobody came. A commercial client questions whether a quarterly filter change happened at every rooftop unit. A manufacturer denies a warranty claim because the serial number was not photographed. A property manager blames your crew for a scratched floor. In each case the answer depends on photos that are scattered across personal camera rolls, text threads and a shared drive.

A proof of work app replaces that habit with a standard. Tepia builds the app so each job type carries its own evidence rules, every photo is tied to the job, the address and the technician, and the customer’s signature sits next to a summary of what they approved. When a dispute arrives months later, the office pulls one record instead of interviewing the technician.

The same record helps in daily operations. Supervisors can review work quality from the office, new technicians learn what good looks like from past jobs, and customers receive a visit summary with photos that answers most questions before they call.

What a complete proof of work record contains

Tepia defines evidence by job type with your operations lead, then builds capture screens that make the right record the easy one. A typical record includes:

Required shots should be few and specific. Tepia usually starts with three to five per job type, because a list of fifteen trains technicians to snap the same wall repeatedly. For checklist heavy work, see our field inspection and checklist app page.

Making electronic signatures hold up

In the United States, the federal ESIGN Act and state versions of UETA give electronic signatures the same standing as ink when a few conditions are met. The signer has to intend to sign, the signature has to be tied to the record being signed, the business needs consent to transact electronically, and the record must be kept in a form that can be reproduced later. Tepia builds each of those into the signing step rather than leaving them to chance.

In practice that means the customer sees a plain summary of the work on the same screen as the signature pad, types or confirms their printed name, and receives a PDF copy by email or text. The system stores the signer’s name, the time, the device, the job location and a hash of the signed document. If the customer declines to sign, the technician picks a reason and the app captures a site photo, so a missing signature is explained rather than blank.

Tepia does not give legal advice, and some documents such as certain notices or regulated disclosures may need other handling. Your counsel reviews the signing language during Design, and Tepia builds what they approve.

Photos at scale: offline capture, storage and AI checks

A busy crew can produce thousands of photos a week, and most are taken where coverage is weakest. Tepia builds the capture flow offline first. Photos save to the device with their metadata, a compressed copy uploads as soon as signal returns, and the full resolution original follows on Wi-Fi so technicians do not burn through mobile data. Our offline first app development page explains the sync design.

On the server side, Tepia stores originals in AWS S3 or Azure Blob Storage with retention rules that match your contracts, moving older files to lower tier storage after a set period. Every photo is searchable by address, customer, serial number and technician.

AI can raise the floor on photo quality. Tepia adds image recognition that flags blurry or dark shots before the technician leaves, checks that a nameplate photo actually contains a readable serial number, and suggests the job’s required shots that are still missing. These checks run in seconds and catch the gaps that used to surface weeks later.

How Tepia approaches proof of work apps

Tepia runs its six phase process with evidence quality as the measure of success, and a US based project manager owns delivery.

1. Discovery: a review of your last twenty disputes and warranty denials, ride alongs to see how photos are taken today, and an inventory of where images currently live. Deliverables are an Investigation Summary, an Interview Summary and User Stories such as an office manager answering a card dispute with one search.
2. Design: a design questionnaire, moodboards and a style guide, then wireframes for the shot list, the signing screen and the visit summary customers receive.
3. Development and Testing: an Alpha with a small crew and a Beta across job types, with test plans for offline capture, upload recovery, hash verification and signature records.
4. Training: short hands on sessions showing technicians what a complete record looks like and what happens when a customer refuses to sign.
5. Launch: import of historical photos where useful, a switch from camera rolls and text threads, and support reps on the first weeks.
6. Support: issue resolution, bug tracking and feature requests such as a new shot list for a new service line.

Typically Discovery takes 1 to 3 months, development and QA 2 to 6 months, and deployment about a month, with standalone capture apps landing at the shorter end. See our process.

Add proof of work to your platform or build it standalone

Most field service platforms let technicians attach photos and collect a signature. If your disputes are rare and your platform’s attachments are easy to find, that is enough, and Tepia will say so. A dedicated proof of work app makes sense when:

• Different commercial clients require different evidence and your platform has one generic attachment field.
• You file warranty claims with manufacturers and need serial numbers read reliably.
• Disputes and chargebacks take hours of searching each month.
• You need tamper evidence that will stand up with an insurer or in court.

Tepia often builds the capture app as a companion that writes finished records back to your existing platform through its API, and can publish visit summaries to a customer portal. Browse our work or talk with Tepia about your evidence rules.

Frequently asked questions