Keeping a record of what changed and when
Half an hour a week while there is anybody on site. It is the difference between a disagreement you can settle by comparison and one that comes down to whose memory a stranger believes.
What it is for
Most of it you will never read again
A job that goes well produces a log nobody opens. That is the expected outcome and it is still worth the time, because the weeks that turn out to matter are not identifiable while they are happening. The entry that settles an argument is a dull one written months before anybody was arguing.1
Photographs are the other half of this, and they have their own timing problem: work that is about to be covered up has to be captured before it disappears behind a wall.
The weekly entry
Five things, and it takes minutes
The date, and who was on site
How many people, from which company, and for roughly how long. Attendance is the record that answers a later claim about why a job ran over, and nobody reconstructs it afterwards.
What was actually done
One or two lines stating what stage the work reached, rather than how good it looked, so the entry can be compared against the payment schedule.
Anything that changed
A material substituted, a measurement adjusted, a decision asked of you in a doorway. These are the entries that matter most and the ones least likely to exist anywhere else.
What was said, and by whom
A promise about a date, a quoted price for an extra, an explanation for a delay. Written the day it happens, with the name of the person who said it.
Any money released
The amount, the date, and the stage it was released against. This is the column that turns a schedule from an intention into a record.
Why it outweighs a better memory
A dated note made before anyone was arguing
Everyone in a dispute remembers events in the shape that suits them, and that is not dishonesty. It is what memory does under pressure. A record written when there was nothing at stake was made by somebody with no reason to shade it, and that is exactly why a board, an insurer or a judge will weigh it above anything either of you says afterwards.
Three habits
What separates a record that holds from one that merely exists
Write it the same day
A note made on Friday about Tuesday is a memory. Contemporaneous is the quality that gives a record weight, and it is entirely a function of when you typed it.
Confirm the important ones by email
When something is agreed in person, send a short message repeating it back. An unanswered email saying we agreed X is far stronger than a note only you hold.
Keep it plain and keep it dull
A log written in the language of a complaint reads as a case built after the fact. One that records what happened, including the weeks where nothing went wrong, reads as what it is.
Next
If it has already gone wrong
Where there is already a dispute, the question changes from what to capture to what to assemble. The evidence checklist is the same subject in that tense, and a follow-up schedule is what turns a run of unanswered calls into a record of its own.2
Disclosures
- 1.Satisfy is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. This page describes how to keep your own record of work on your property. It does not assess any dispute or say what any record proves.
- 2.Whether a recording of a conversation may be made, and by whom, is set by each state and the rules differ materially. Nothing on this page suggests recording anybody, and your state’s law is the authority if you are considering it.