About Comments

Comments provide the best way to communicate with the reader of your reports. No one wants to read long checklists. Comments let your voice as a home inspector ring through.

This article will cover the biggest concepts about using comments in your Tap Inspect reports and how to make the most of them.

Things to Know

Here are some key things to know about comments in Tap Inspect.

• Deficiency comments are what make up the Report Summary
• Your Saved Comments are part of your account and available in every report
• It's better to add photos to a comment instead of an item.

What is a Comment

A comment provides a way to record your observations as a narrative and can include photos to help support and clarify that narrative. This is in contrast to the report checklist items that identifies and describes each element of the inspection.

As a best practice, if you observe something that is unusual about the specific property you are inspecting you wan to to add a comment to tell your client about it.

Each comment is made up of three parts.

1. The comment type.
2. The text of the comment.
3. Comment photos.

Comment Types

The comment type tells Tap Inspect how to display the comment in your report. There are two types of comments available in Tap Inspect.

• Deficiency
• Informational

All new comments added to a report default to the Deficiency type. These comments are displayed in the body of the report and also displays it on the report summary if a report summary is enabled for the report.

You can set the comment type to Informational if you only want the comment displayed in the body of the report. For example if you add a comment stating hat the furnace operates as expected and is 5 years old. There is no need for that to be on the summary.

Comment Text

The text of the comment communicates the details about your observation. As a best practice the comment text should include the following parts. 

• What you observed.
• Why it is important.
• What you recommend to do next.

The text can be added to the comment in several ways.

• Search the entire database of comments
• Select a comment from the list of comments saved in the category 
• Manually type or dictate the comment text.

You can add the text from a saved comment either by searching or by selecting the comment and then manually edit the text before saving it to the report.