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.

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 identify and describe each element of the inspection.

As a best practice, if you observe something that is unusual about the specific property you are inspecting you want 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 and what comments to include in the report summary. There are several default types of comments available in Tap Inspect. They are color coded for easy reference in the report.

• Safety Concern
• Repair or Replacement Needed
• Monitor Condition
• Information
• Private Information

By default, Safety Concern and Repair or Replacement Needed are displayed in the client facing report and report summary. Monitor Condition and Information comments are only diplayed in the body of the client facing report. Private Information comments are only displayed to the inspector.

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.