The day gets written down, without anyone writing it
Your foreman drops photos into the job folder from his phone, the way he already sends them to you. At six o'clock they become a proper daily log — who was on site, what the weather did, what went in, and what held things up.
Daily log — Halloway Ave duplex
Thu 8 May
- Crew
- 7
- Hours
- 54
- Weather
- Rain am
- Delays
- 1
Framing complete on the second floor rear. Inspection booked Monday.
Subfloor replacement at the bay window started — rot was worse than the opening suggested.
Electrician on site half day, rough-in for the island circuits.
Rain until 10:30 held up the roof deck; crew moved inside, no hours lost.
Written from 14 photos and two notes the foreman sent at 17:48.
Works with
- Google Drive
- Gmail
- Outlook
- Google Docs
- Google Sheets
The foreman uploads to a job folder from his phone, or emails the photos in. There's no app for the crew to install and no login for anyone on site — which is the only version of this that survives contact with a real crew.
The chore
How this goes right now
Your foreman is good. He sends you photos most days — a wall going up, a delivery that arrived short, a bit of rot nobody expected. They land in your phone at ten to six, you look at them in the truck, you reply with a thumbs up, and that is the entire record of that day's work.
Nobody writes a daily log because writing a daily log at the end of a twelve-hour day is a thing that gets promised at the start of a project and abandoned by week three. The ones that do exist are three lines long and say "framing continued".
That's fine until the day it isn't. Someone claims you were four weeks late. The homeowner says the rot was there when you started. A sub says his crew was on site the week you say they weren't. And you have a phone full of photos with no dates attached to anything except the file metadata, and no idea which job half of them belong to.
The difference
The photos already exist. The record doesn't.
Try it
Walk through it yourself
This is the actual shape of the workflow — the same trigger, the same steps, the same draft waiting for your say-so. Click through it.
Compile daily jobsite reports
Foreman uploads 14 photos — 17:48
Dropped straight into the Halloway Ave folder from his phone, with two short notes typed underneath.
What it does
Pick up what landed in the job folder today
14 photos, timestamped 07:20 to 17:41, plus two notes about the subfloor and the electrician.
Google DriveRead the photos and work out what they show
Second floor rear framing complete, subfloor opened at the bay window, island circuits being pulled, standing water on the roof deck before 10:30.
Google DrivePull crew numbers and the weather for the site
Seven on site, 54 hours logged. Rain recorded at the site postcode until 10:34.
Google SheetsWrite the day up in the standard format
Manpower, weather, work completed, delays and photos, laid out the same way every day so it's comparable week to week.
Google Docs
Draft document — nothing has been sent
Daily log — Halloway Ave duplex — Thursday 8 May
- Crew
- 7 (54 hrs)
- Weather
- Rain to 10:34, dry pm
- Photos
- 14
Work completed
- Second floor rear framing complete. Ready for inspection, booked Monday 12 May.
- Island circuits roughed in by Kessler Electric, half day on site.
- Subfloor opened at the bay window; replacement started.
Delays and issues
- Rain until 10:34 stopped work on the roof deck. Crew moved to interior framing — no hours lost, but the deck slips to Friday.
- Rot at the bay window extends roughly 600mm further than the opening suggested. Additional subfloor and one joist end affected. Photographed before removal.
Needs a decision
- The extra rot is beyond the scope of CO-005 as written. It needs either a revised change order or a note that it's being carried.
File this log against Halloway Ave and attach the 14 photos?
Correct anything it got wrong from the photos — it's reading images, and it will occasionally call a joist a rafter. What you approve is what goes in the record, so it's worth a read on days something went wrong.
Filed by project, dated, with the photos attached
The log is saved into the Halloway Ave folder under the date, photos attached to the day they were taken. Six months on, if anyone asks what happened on 8 May, the answer takes ten seconds instead of an afternoon.
That's the whole workflow.
It drafts, you approve, nothing sends on its own.
How it works
What it's actually doing
Built around a phone camera and a shared folder, because that's what a crew will actually use.
- 1
- Google Drive
- Gmail
The foreman uploads, and that's his whole job
Photos go into the project folder in Drive from his phone — share sheet, pick the folder, done — or he emails them to one address. No app, no login, no training. A new file landing in the folder is what starts this off.
- 2
- Google Drive
It reads the photos rather than just filing them
What's in the frame, what stage the work is at, whether anything looks like a problem. It's reading images, so it's right about most things and occasionally confidently wrong about a detail — which is why you approve the log rather than it being filed for you.
- 3
- Google Sheets
- ExExcel
It fills in the things nobody remembers to record
Crew numbers and hours from wherever you already track them, and the day's weather at the site location. Weather is the one that matters — a delay you can evidence with a recorded rainfall time is a different conversation from one you assert months later.
- 4
- GoGoogle Docs
- Google Drive
It writes the same format every day
Manpower, weather, work completed, delays, photos. Same order, same headings, every day. The value of a daily log is almost entirely in it being consistent and continuous, not in any single entry being well written.
It writes the day up. You confirm it before it becomes the record.
This one is a record that may be read out in a dispute years from now, so being approximately right isn't good enough. It drafts from photos, and you confirm — particularly on the days where something went wrong, which are exactly the days the log will matter.
Step one
It drafts
Step two — you
You read it and approve
Step three
Only then does it send
Nothing is filed unread
The log waits for you each evening. Approving takes under a minute on a phone. On a day where nothing unusual happened, that's all it needs.
It flags what it's unsure about
Where it can't tell what a photo shows, it says so rather than guessing. A log that admits uncertainty is more useful in a dispute than one that quietly invented a detail.
It doesn't editorialise about fault
It records that the subfloor rot was worse than expected. It does not record whose fault that is, whether it should have been caught at survey, or who should pay. Those are conclusions, and a daily log should contain facts.
Nothing gets sent to anyone
The log is filed, not distributed. If a client or an architect should see it, that's a decision you make. A daily log is an internal record first.
Setup
What setting this up involves
- 1
Connect
- Google Drive, with a folder per project
- Gmail or Outlook, if some photos arrive by email
- Google Docs, where the logs get written
- Your crew or timesheet tracker, for manpower numbers
- 2
Tell it how you work
- The site address for each project, so the weather is the right weather
- What time the day ends — usually the last upload plus an hour
- Which sections your log needs, if your contract specifies a format
- Who the foreman is on each job, so uploads get attributed
- 3
Then it runs
About 30 minutes, plus ten with the foreman
The ten minutes with the foreman is the important part. Show him the share sheet on his own phone once, and it sticks — everything after that is what he already does.
Edge cases
Where it's careful, and what it won't do
What it handles
Photos with no notes at all
Most days the foreman sends pictures and nothing else. The log gets written from the photos alone and flags where it's inferring rather than reporting — 'appears to show' rather than stating it as fact.
Days where nothing was uploaded
A gap in a daily log is itself a record, and a bad one. If nothing arrives by the cut-off, it drafts a short entry noting no site activity was reported and asks you to confirm whether that's right.
Photos in the wrong folder
It reads what's in the picture against what it knows about each live job. A photo of a roof in a folder for a basement conversion gets flagged rather than filed, because a misfiled photo is worse than an unfiled one.
Weekend and overtime work
Saturday work gets its own entry rather than being folded into Friday. Hours worked outside the normal schedule are the ones most likely to be disputed later.
What it does not do
It doesn't read your WhatsApp group
This is the honest limitation and worth stating plainly: the WhatsApp Business API cannot read group chats. Anyone telling you their tool pulls photos out of your crew's WhatsApp group is describing something that isn't possible. That's why this is built on a shared folder instead.
It doesn't track anybody's location
No GPS, no geofencing, no checking whether someone was where they said. It reads photos that were deliberately uploaded, and nothing else.
It doesn't count your crew from the photos
Manpower comes from whatever you already track. Counting heads in photographs would be guesswork presented as a number, and a wrong headcount in a daily log is worse than no headcount.
It doesn't prepare a delay claim
It builds the contemporaneous record a claim would be built from. Assembling and arguing the claim is work for you and, past a certain size, for someone qualified.
Time back
Six to ten hours a month, and a record you'd otherwise not have
- Time back
- Six to ten hours a month, and a record you'd otherwise not have
- Spent on
- The work that bills
- What it costs
- $49 / monthGrowthplan — see what’s included
How that’s worked out: Based on two or three live jobs at 15–20 minutes a day to write a log properly. Most contractors don't spend those hours, though — they spend nothing and have no log. The honest framing is that this buys you a record you weren't going to create, for roughly the time you already spend looking at the photos.
Fair questions
The things contractors ask first
My foreman is not going to use a new app.
He isn't being asked to. He takes photos on his phone the way he does now, hits share, and picks the job folder. That's the whole change. If even that's too much, he can email them to one address and it works identically.
Can it really tell what's happening from a photo?
For the obvious things — framing up, drywall in, a trench open, standing water — yes, reliably. For specifics like which joist or what gauge, less so, and it says when it's unsure rather than inventing a detail. That's the reason the log waits for your approval instead of filing itself.
We already have a project management platform that does daily logs.
Then use it, honestly. This exists for contractors whose daily log currently doesn't exist at all, because rolling out a platform to a seven-man crew is a bigger change than most outfits this size will make stick.
More construction chores
Other things that keep falling off the list
Chase change order approvals
A reminder to the client on anything unsigned past two days, and a running total of work you're performing without a signature behind it.
Collect subcontractor COIs
Thirty days before a certificate lapses, the request goes to the sub and their agent. What comes back gets filed and dated.
Triage warranty callbacks
Post-handover complaints acknowledged same day, sorted into warranty or chargeable, logged against the job and put in the diary.
Collect lien waivers
Which subs still owe you a waiver on this draw, chased automatically, checked for the right type and through date, and filed by job.
Chase unpaid invoices
Reminders that escalate with the age of the debt, the invoice attached, and a Monday aging summary that includes unbilled retainage.
Compare supplier quotes
One RFQ to every supplier, and the replies read into a single table so you can see who's actually cheapest line by line.
The same job in other trades and industries
FAQ
Questions worth answering properly
Why not just read the crew's WhatsApp group?
Because it isn't possible. The WhatsApp Business API can't read group chats — that's a platform restriction, not a limitation of this tool. Any product claiming to pull photos out of your crew's group either isn't doing what it says or is asking someone to hand over their personal WhatsApp. A shared folder is the honest way to build this.
What does the foreman actually have to do?
Take photos as he already does, then share them to the job folder — three taps on a phone. He can add a note if he wants, and most do after a week, but the log gets written either way.
Where does the weather come from?
Recorded conditions at the site location for that day, not a general regional forecast. That distinction matters if a rain delay is ever questioned, because 'it rained in the county' and 'it rained at this address until 10:34' carry very different weight.
What happens on a day nobody uploads anything?
It drafts a short entry noting no activity was reported and asks you to confirm. Gaps in a daily log get read as gaps in the work, so an explained blank day is much better than a missing one.
Can it handle more than one job at a time?
Yes — one folder and one log per project. It checks that photos match the job they were filed under and flags anything that looks misplaced rather than quietly filing it in the wrong record.
Is the log good enough to use in a dispute?
It's a contemporaneous, dated record with photographs attached, which is the thing disputes turn on. Whether it's sufficient for a particular claim depends on the claim and your contract — that's a question for your attorney, and this makes sure they have something to work with.
Start keeping the record you'll wish you had
Set up a folder per job and show your foreman the share button once. Tonight's photos become tonight's log.
Start free