Working with Checklists On A Project
A checklist run is one pass through a checklist on one project — an inspection on Tuesday, a production walk two weeks later. The run holds the check-offs, answers, photos, and notes from that visit, and it stays on the project as the record of what was seen. Runs do two jobs. They give you a report you can hand a homeowner or an adjuster, and they give XBuild’s AI the facts of the visit, so your estimate is built from what your rep found instead of from questions you have to answer twice. Steps 1 through 8 describe the web app. Reps working on site will be in the mobile app, which runs the same checklist with a camera-first flow and different controls — step 9 covers it. Someone has to build a checklist before you can run one. See Checklists for that.1. Add A Checklist To A Project
- Open the project and find the Checklists section.
- Click Add checklist. The Pick a checklist dialog opens — “Adds it to this project — nothing is required to start.”
- Choose one. It lands on the project as a row reading Not started — adding a checklist commits you to nothing.
2. Start The Run
Click a Not started row and the run opens. From that moment the run holds its own copy of the checklist, so edits the office makes to the template later won’t move the ground under you. The run header shows the count as you work — 3 of 12 done · 8 photos tagged by step — and the project’s Checklists row shows the same, so the office can see progress without opening anything. View all on that section lists every run and checklist on the project. Once a run is finished or removed you can run the same checklist again from the picker’s Run again list. A re-inspection is a second run, not an edit of the first.Assign The Run
The run header carries a dashed circle with a person icon. Click it to assign the whole checklist to a teammate, and Unassign in the same menu to clear it. The assignee shows on the project row, which is how a coordinator hands a site visit to a specific person. A Not started row can’t be assigned — there’s no run yet.3. Work The Steps
Each step is a card inside its section, with its title, the office’s notes, its photos, and its questions.- Answer the questions. Tap an answer on a Yes / No / N/A or Multiple choice question, type into a Text question, or set the number on a Count. Answers save as you go — there’s no separate save.
- Attach photos. Click the dashed + tile on the step. The Add photos dialog lets you pick from the project’s existing photos and Attach them, or Upload from device — uploads land in the project album as well as on the step.
- Leave a note. Add note is in the step’s ⋯ menu (Edit note once there’s one). It’s for what a question didn’t ask, and the editor tells you where it goes: Visible on shared reports and PDFs.
- Check the step off. Click the circle beside the step title when the step is done.
Find What’s Left
Three chips at the top of the run filter it, each carrying its own count — All 12, Open 9, Done 3. Open is the one to work from on site: it hides everything already checked off and leaves you with what’s outstanding. Skipped steps and sections appear under All only. Once you’ve skipped something it’s out of your way under Open and Done, which is the point — but All is where you go to find it again and restore it.4. Skip What Doesn’t Apply
Not every checklist fits every house. Open a step’s ⋯ menu and choose Skip this step, or Skip section “Chimney” for a whole group — useful on a house with no chimney. Skipping is honest rather than destructive:- Skipped steps stay on the run, greyed out, with Restore to bring them back. They show under the All filter only.
- They drop out of the counters, so a checklist with a skipped section can still read as complete.
- They’re left off the report you share outside the company.
- The AI leaves them alone entirely. It won’t ask you about a skipped step, because skipping it was your answer.
5. Finish The Run
Click Finish when the visit is done. A toast confirms where it landed — Checklist finished, with “8 of 12 done · 20 photos. Reopen the checklist to continue filling it in.” Finishing with open steps is allowed and normal — a run is a record of a visit, not a test you have to pass. The one exception is Required steps. While any are still open, a warning banner sits under the progress bar:Checklist can’t be completed yet — Checklist cannot be completed because there are 3 unskippable steps.Underneath it lists the steps blocking you, grouped by section when more than one section is involved, and each of those cards also reads Required — complete this step to finish the checklist. The banner is live: it shrinks as you complete the steps and clears itself when the last one is done. You can dismiss it if it’s in your way. Work through the listed steps, then finish. A completed run locks. The cards go read-only, and hovering one tells you why: Reopen the checklist to keep editing it. Sharing, downloading, and opening photos all stay live — reading isn’t editing. Click Reopen to keep working. Reopening is never blocked, and an edit made after a run was finished flows into the AI’s picture on its own — you don’t have to finish again to make it count.
6. Share The Report
Click Share on a run. The Share inspection dialog offers one option under Share externally and one under Share internally.Share External Link
Share external link creates a read-only web report for someone outside your company — a homeowner, an adjuster. Copy the link from the Inspection link view and send it. What a recipient sees: your company name and logo, the project address, the date it was shared, and then the run itself — each section, its steps, the office’s instructions for each step, the photos, and the answers. What it leaves out is deliberate:- Skipped steps and sections never appear.
- Steps with nothing to show — no photos, no answers, no note — are left out, and so is a section left empty by that. A half-finished run reads as a shorter report, not as an incomplete one.
- Only answered questions print. There are no blank rows and no open-item markers.
- Internal detail stays internal: the run’s assignee, the done/open counts, and photo requirements are all excluded.
Share With Your Team
Share with your team hands you the run’s own URL to paste in a group chat. Anyone with access to this contractor in XBuild can open it and will see the full run — open items, skipped markers, and the assignee included. It’s not a public link; someone outside your company can’t use it.Download The PDF
Download on the run gives you the full internal report as a PDF: every section and step, open items included, and each step’s photo count against its minimum. Recipients of an external link get their own Save to PDF on the report page, which applies the same filtering as the page they’re looking at. Very photo-heavy runs are the one place the two can differ — a PDF embeds up to 60 photos and past that a step keeps its count line instead of the images.7. How Answers Reach Your Estimate
This is the part that pays for the checklist. Everything on a project’s runs is in front of the AI whenever you work on that project — you don’t attach it, send it, or ask for it. On a project with a great many runs, the ten most recent are the ones it reads. What that changes:- It won’t re-ask. A question your rep answered on site is not a question you’ll answer again in chat.
- Counts become quantities. “Downspouts: 2” arrives as a quantity, not as prose the AI has to interpret.
- “No” and “N/A” are real answers. A No to “Skylights present?” registers as confirmed absent and an N/A as not applicable — either way the AI drops those line items instead of asking.
- Only genuine gaps get asked about. A gap is an unanswered question on a step you haven’t skipped, or a step with no questions that hasn’t been checked off. Those are the AI’s list of what it still doesn’t know, and its first questions come from that list. A step whose questions are all answered isn’t a gap, checked off or not.
- It knows which checklist this was. Each run reaches the AI under its name, type, and completion state, so answers from a production walk aren’t mistaken for answers from the original inspection.
- Late corrections count. The AI reads the current state of every run each time it works, so an answer fixed after the run was finished is used as fixed, and an answer you clear goes back to being an open question.
8. Remove A Run From A Project
If a run was started on the wrong project or against the wrong checklist, remove it: either the ⋯ menu inside the run, or the ✕ on its row in the project’s Checklists section. Both ask you to confirm. The run and its answers come off the project, and it can’t be reopened afterwards. Photos already taken stay in the album — they’re project photos, and removing a run doesn’t throw away site evidence. The ✕ on a Not started row does something gentler: it just unassigns the checklist, with no confirmation, and the picker offers it again straight away. Removing is permanent. For a run that’s simply unfinished, leave it: an unfinished run costs nothing, and finishing it with open items is a normal outcome.9. On The Mobile App
Reps run checklists from the phone, and the mobile flow is built around the camera rather than around a page of cards. Everything about the checklist itself is the same — the same steps, questions, photo requirements, required steps, and gates — but the controls differ enough to be worth knowing. Starting one. The project’s Checklists card lists the runs on the job and carries an Add checklist button; the camera has a Checklists tab that reaches the same place. Either way you get Start a checklist — pick one and confirm with Begin checklist mode or Confirm and begin. A checklist you already ran here says “Completed before — starts a fresh run”; one still open appears under Resume. Picking always starts the run, so there’s no way to park a checklist unstarted from the phone. A checklist assigned on the web shows on the card as Not started, and tapping that row starts it on the spot without the picker. Starting needs a connection — those rows and the picker’s confirm button go inactive offline. Reps can also build one on the spot: name it, list the step titles, and Create and begin. It publishes immediately and shows up under Published in Settings. Taking photos. This is the real difference. In checklist mode every shutter press attaches to the step you’re on, so working the checklist and shooting the job are one motion. The step’s + tile offers Take a photo or Add from library — the library being your device’s, not the project’s existing photos. Working the steps. Answers and check-offs behave as they do on the web, including the two gates — every question answered, and at least one photo on a step that requires photos. The Minimum photos number doesn’t gate anything here either: one photo checks the step off however high it’s set, and falling short of it won’t stop you finishing the run. They also survive a dead zone — answers, check-offs and skips queue on the device and replay when you’re back on signal. Starting or finishing a run is the exception and needs a live connection. Text answers are typed. Skipping a single step is the Skip chip on the step card, and it behaves exactly as it does on the web — the step greys out, keeps a Restore, and drops out of the counters. Skipping a whole section is on the web for now and is coming to the mobile app. Until it lands, a section skipped from the web shows on the phone as a collapsed Skipped · 4 steps row with Restore — so the state travels, it’s only the control that’s missing. There’s no ⋯ menu on the phone either, so notes, removing a run, the team link, and revoking a link are web-only as well. Finishing. From the camera, Mark checklist complete → Finish checklist? → Mark complete, or Keep inspecting to carry on. If required steps are still open you get “Finish the required steps first” instead — “This checklist can’t be marked complete until every required step is checked off. Other steps can still be skipped.” A finished run shows a green Checklist completed banner with Reopen to make changes and a Reopen checklist button. Sharing. The mobile share sheet has two options: Share report link and Download report as PDF. The link is the same live external report described in step 6. Assigning. Tap the avatar tile on the run’s row in the project’s Checklists card for Assign to and Unassign.10. Troubleshooting Common Issues
- The Checklists section isn’t on my project. Checklists isn’t enabled for your company yet — contact XBuild Support. A company that has it but hasn’t published anything still sees the section, with Add checklist and a prompt to create one.
- I can’t check a step off. Something the step asks for is missing. A step with questions needs every question answered; a step with photos required needs at least one photo. The card names what’s outstanding when you click the circle.
- Finish shows a banner naming steps I can’t skip. Those steps were marked Required by whoever built the checklist, and a run can’t complete while one is open. Complete the listed steps — the banner shrinks as you go — or ask an Administrator to turn Required step off for the ones that don’t apply. That change reaches runs started afterwards, so you may also need to start a fresh run.
- A step’s ⋯ menu has no Skip option. It’s a required step, or it sits in a section holding one. Required steps can’t be skipped, and their section can’t be skipped out from under them.
- A step I skipped has disappeared. It’s still there. Skipped steps only render under the All filter, so switch to All and scroll to the section it lives in — the card will be greyed out with Restore on it.
- The run went read-only. It’s finished. Click Reopen to keep editing — every card comes back.
- I want to run the same checklist again and it’s not in the picker. A checklist with a run still in progress isn’t offered. Finish that run, or remove it, and the checklist reappears under Run again — where picking it starts a fresh run straight away.
- My homeowner says the report is missing steps. The external report leaves out skipped steps and any step with no photos, no answers, and no note. That’s intentional, so an unfinished run doesn’t read as a list of failures. Fill the step in and the report picks it up — the link is live, so there’s no need to re-share.
- Photos are missing from a shared PDF but visible on the link. A PDF embeds up to 60 photos; past that, a step shows its photo count instead of the images. The web report has them all.
- I revoked a link by mistake. A revoked link can’t be brought back. Click Share external link again for a fresh one and send that.
- A photo I attached to a step isn’t in the album. It should be — photos uploaded to a step land in the project album too, tagged with the step’s section and title. If it’s genuinely absent, the upload failed; re-attach it.
- I can’t find the ⋯ menu on my phone. There isn’t one. Notes, removing a run, the internal team link, and revoking a share link are web-only — see step 9.
- I can skip a step on my phone but not a section. Section skipping is coming to the mobile app; for now do it from the web, and the phone will show that section collapsed as Skipped · N steps. Skipping each step in the section individually gets you the same working list in the meantime.
- The AI is asking about something my rep already answered. Check that the answer is on a run attached to that project, and that the step wasn’t skipped — a skipped step is treated as “doesn’t apply” and is left out. Confirm too that you’re in the right project’s chat. If the answer is plainly recorded and still being asked about, contact XBuild Support.
- An assigned checklist shows a warning that it’s no longer available. The checklist was archived after it was added here. An Administrator can unarchive it in Settings → Checklists, or you can remove the row from the project and pick a different one.