How do I receive reports from my builders?

Reports reach you through email and, if you hold a Buildsnapper assessor account, through the portal and assessor app as well — the two channels are sent together, from the builder's phone, at the moment they send.

What a send actually delivers

When a builder sends a plot's report from Buildsnapper:

1. The report PDF is generated on their device and uploaded.
2. The plot's photos are zipped and uploaded as a photo archive.
3. An email goes to your address with one link, to the report's page. Enter the address the email was sent to and the page opens the PDF and downloads the photo ZIP (opening a report from its email link). Any site managers on the project are copied in, and open it with their own address. Emails from builders on versions before 2.1, and the occasional newer one sent when the report's page couldn't be linked, carry the PDF attached and a 7-day download link for the photo ZIP instead.

If your email address is registered as a Buildsnapper assessor, the upload in steps 1 and 2 is itself the delivery: the report appears in your portal reports list and in the Buildsnapper Assessor app immediately, organised by client, project and plot. The email is a convenience copy.

If you are not registered, the email is the only channel — which is one good reason to claim the free portal account, since every report ever sent to your address is linked to it on approval.

An expected report has not arrived

Work through these in order:

1. Check spam and junk. The email comes from the builder's own email app, not from a Buildsnapper server, so filtering varies.
2. Check the portal. Sign in and look under the client's name on the reports page. If it is there, the send worked and only the email went astray.
3. If the email arrived but its link will not open the report, check you entered the address the email was sent to — see opening a report from its email link.
4. Ask the builder to check the send result. Buildsnapper tells the builder plainly whether a send succeeded or failed — a failed send never claims success. Sends also require the builder to have signal, so a send "done on site" may still be pending.
5. Check whether the report was superseded. If the builder re-sent the plot's report to a different assessor afterwards, your copy is revoked and disappears — see the report lifecycle article.

If none of that explains it, ask us through the support page with the project and plot name and we will look at the server side.

The demo project

A new assessor account starts with a Demo project at the top of the portal's reports list, and in the latest version of the Buildsnapper Assessor app: a builder's finished plot, with its report and photo ZIP, so you can see what arrives before your first real report does. It stays until you delete it — Delete the demo project, in the portal or the app, removes it from both. The page a builder's report email opens has a demo too, linked from the portal's login and sign-up pages.

Revisions

When a builder re-sends a plot's report to you, your existing entry is updated in place rather than duplicated, and the portal marks it as revised until you next view it. The PDF you download is always the latest version the builder sent you, and a report link in an earlier email opens that latest version too.