Digital Inspection Checklists Your Technicians Fill In on Their Phone

Picture this: your technician opens the air handler, checks the filter, reads the supply air temperature and spots a cracked fan belt. Instead of a clipboard form that gets typed up later (or lost), they tap the answers into their phone. You see "Fan belt: Worn" in the office before they've closed the panel.

In about 5 minutes you'll have:

A reusable inspection checklist with pass/fail checks, number readings, multiple choice and notes.
The checklist attached to the job, on any work order or built into a preventive maintenance plan.
Technicians filling it in on their phone, step by step, with progress shown as they go.
Results in the office straight away, saved with the work order for audits and follow-up.

Start free and build your first checklist

There's a free plan, so you can try it with your own inspections today.

Illustration: four steps. 1 Build the checklist, 2 Attach it to the job, 3 Fill it in on the phone, 4 Results in the office

Illustration: from template to completed inspection in four steps.

Before and after

With paper forms, inspections get done differently by every technician, readings are hard to read or missing, and the forms sit in a truck until someone types them up. When an auditor asks for last month's inspections, someone goes through a filing cabinet.

With MaintainNow, everyone follows the same steps, answers are typed or tapped instead of scribbled, and every completed checklist is stored with its work order. It's your maintenance SOP, built into the job.

1. Build the checklist once

Go to Checklist Templates and click Add Checklist Template. Give it a title, then add steps. For each step, pick an answer type:

Inspection Check: Pass, Fail or Flag.
Number: a reading such as a temperature, pressure or hours.
Multi Choice: your own options, separated by commas (here Good, Worn, Replaced).
Short Answer (Text): notes and observations.

Monthly Air Handler Inspection checklist template in MaintainNow with four steps: Inspection Check, Number, Multi Choice and Short Answer

Reorder steps with the arrows and click Preview Checklist to see exactly what technicians will see. Editing a template later only changes future uses, never checklists already completed.

2. Attach it to the job

Attach the template to any work order with Add checklist, from the web app or right on the phone. For recurring work, add it to a maintenance plan and every work order the plan creates arrives with the checklist already attached. That's a preventive maintenance checklist that runs itself.

Illustration: a technician inspects an air handler and fills in a checklist on a smartphone

Illustration: the inspection happens at the machine, with the checklist on the phone.

3. Technicians fill it in on their phone

In the MaintainNow app, the checklist sits right on the work order. The technician picks PASS, types the reading, ticks Worn and adds a note, and the counter shows 4/4 when every step is done. Save Checklist stores it.

Completed Monthly Air Handler Inspection checklist in the MaintainNow phone app: filter PASS, supply air 55 °F, fan belt Worn, a follow-up note and 4/4 progress

4. See the results in the office

On the web app, the work order's Checklist tab shows 4 / 4 completed with every answer. The worn belt and the note are there for whoever plans the next visit, and the whole inspection stays on record with the work order.

Checklist tab of the work order in the MaintainNow web app showing 4 / 4 completed with each step's answer

Once the work order is completed, its checklist can no longer be changed, so your inspection records stay as they were filled in.

Questions people ask

Can technicians fill in inspection checklists on their phone with MaintainNow?

Yes. Checklists attached to a work order appear in the MaintainNow phone app, where technicians answer each step and save.

What types of questions can a checklist have?

Four: Inspection Check (Pass, Fail or Flag), Number, Multi Choice with your own options, and Short Answer text.

Can checklists be added to preventive maintenance automatically?

Yes. Add a checklist template to a maintenance plan and each work order it creates includes that checklist.

Can I see completed checklists from the office?

Yes. Each work order's Checklist tab shows how many steps are complete and every answer.

How many checklists can one work order have?

One checklist template per work order. Put everything for that job into a single template.

Related guides

Retire the clipboard

Turn your most-used paper form into a checklist today.

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