Reports and handover

The same defect list serves three audiences. The print options are how you produce the right version of it.

Print options

Option	What it does
New Page for Each Location	Starts each room on its own page
Hide Suppliers Column	Removes who is responsible
Fixed Defects Print Options	Controls whether fixed items are included
Disputed Defects Print Options	Controls whether disputed items are included
PDF Summary Report	A summary rather than the full detail
Excel	Exports for further work

For a trade

One list, their items only, with locations and photographs.

Turn New Page for Each Location on. A carpenter working through a house can take one page per room rather than cross-referencing a single long list, and can tick items off as they go.

Include fixed items? No. They want what is outstanding.

For the client

The full list, with fixed items shown as fixed and disputed items shown as disputed.

Hide Suppliers Column — yes. Which subcontractor caused a defect is your business, not the client’s, and naming them invites the client to deal with them directly.

Include everything else. A client seeing 63 of 78 items marked fixed can see the job is being worked through; one shown only the outstanding 15 has no sense of progress.

For handover

At handover the client wants two things: that the list has been dealt with, and a record of anything outstanding.

Produce:

1. The full list, showing fixed, outstanding and disputed.
2. A summary — the counts, so the position is clear at a glance.
3. Photographs of anything disputed, supporting your position.

Attach the whole thing to the project in Documents. It belongs with the handover pack, and it is one of the first things anyone looks for if something comes up later.

Hand over the list even when it is complete

A signed-off defect list showing every item fixed is a valuable document. It is the record that the job was inspected, the issues were found, and they were resolved — which is exactly what you want if something is raised in twelve months’ time.

The summary report

PDF Summary Report gives the position without the detail: counts by location, by trade, and by status.

Useful for a weekly update to the client during the defects period, and for your own sense of whether the list is actually shrinking.

Excel export

Excel exports for further work — sorting, filtering, or handing to someone who wants to work in a spreadsheet.

Useful when an independent inspector wants the list back in their own format, or when you want to analyse defects across several jobs to find the patterns worth acting on.

What the client signs

At handover, the client signs off the defect list as part of accepting the works.

Make sure what they sign matches what they can see: every fixed item genuinely fixed, every disputed item explained, and every outstanding item with a date against it. A list signed on the understanding that four items remain, with dates, is a clean handover. One signed as complete when it is not is a problem deferred.