Inspections FAQ
Answers to common setup, access and day-to-day questions about Inspections.
For what the app is and how to set it up from scratch, see the
Inspections Overview.
Setup
What do I need to configure before anyone can run an inspection?
You need at least one active inspection template. A template holds the checklist questions, scoring, pass threshold and category. Create or activate one under Templates in the Inspections sidebar.
A new template is saved switched off. Add its items, then choose Activate from the More actions menu on its page; it can’t be activated with no items. Until then it isn’t offered for schedules or cycles, or when someone starts a new inspection. This holds however the template was made: from the template gallery, drafted by Ask AI or AI Template Generation, converted from a PDF or photo, or imported.
By default only admins and Inspections app admins can author templates. To widen that, open Settings → Access & Visibility and change Who can create and manage inspection templates? to managers or to a named group. Admins keep authoring rights whatever you choose.
What are the modules and how do I choose which ones to turn on?
Inspections is split into six modules you switch on or off in Settings → Modules:
- Inspection Templates — always on; included with either execution module.
- Checklist Inspections — ad-hoc and per-item inspections, recurring schedules and barcode Quick Scan.
- Facility Coverage Sweeps — aisle-by-aisle rack sweeps, the coverage dashboard and the exceptions ledger.
- Corrective Actions, Approvals & Reporting — the corrective action register, approval queues, compliance dashboards, analytics and reports. Needs Checklist Inspections or Facility Coverage Sweeps on.
- Regulatory Knowledge Base — regulatory reference content the AI assistant can cite.
- Visit Logs — external surveyor and auditor visits. Off by default.
Keep at least one of Checklist Inspections, Facility Coverage Sweeps or Visit Logs on. Settings refuses to save a configuration with all three off.
Permissions and access
Who can create, edit, sign off and delete inspections?
Anyone who can open the app can start and conduct their own inspections. The assigned inspector, managers and admins can edit, start or cancel an inspection.
Recording answers and signing off are narrower. Only the assigned inspector, a business admin or an Inspections app admin can do either.
Deleting is off by default. An admin must first turn on Allow deleting inspection records under Settings → Access & Visibility → Permissions. The same switch governs deleting sweep exceptions, corrective actions and started cycles. Even then, only the assigned inspector or a manager or above can delete.
How do I control which inspections my team members see?
Three settings under Settings → Access & Visibility decide it:
- Default visibility — Location (the default) shows inspections at the viewer’s assigned locations. Department shows inspections by inspectors who share any of the viewer’s departments, primary or additional. No scoping is the widest setting: every user in the business can open every inspection in full, including answers, photos, GPS and signatures.
- Manager visibility — Own locations (the default) or All locations. All locations gives managers the same business-wide view as admins.
- Member visibility — Same as Default visibility (the default) follows the default visibility above. Own only limits regular members to inspections they personally conduct. Managers and admins are not affected.
To add viewers to a single inspection, turn on Allow Managing Per-Inspection Visibility. Managers and admins can then grant specific people, groups, departments, locations, roles or job titles. A department grant matches a person’s primary or additional department. A location grant covers people at that location or any location beneath it. Grants only add access; they never hide an inspection.
I manage a region — why do I see inspections at stores I’m not assigned to?
A manager of a region sees every location beneath it in Inspections. This applies when Manager visibility is Own locations and the default visibility is Location.
Your reach covers the Team Inspections list and its location filter, coverage sweeps, cycle items, Quick Scan’s due schedules, the Exceptions ledger and the AI assistant. Regular members still see only the locations they are assigned to.
When per-inspection visibility is on, an inspection’s Manage visibility panel names this group with a chip such as “Managers above Store 12”. Only active locations count.
Who can open the Visit Log?
The Visit Log access setting offers Everyone, Managers & admins (the default) or Admins only. Managers & admins covers managers, business admins and Inspections app admins. Admins only covers business admins and Inspections app admins.
Access is not narrowed by location. Everyone admitted sees every visit at every location, including uploaded agency reports.
Day-to-day
How does scoring work, and what does auto-fail mean?
Each question carries a weight, 1.0 by default. The score is the share of earned weight out of total weight, from 0 to 100. Questions answered N/A, skipped, or hidden by a conditional rule do not count.
An inspection passes when its score meets the template’s pass threshold. The threshold defaults to 80% and can be set from 0 to 100 per template.
Auto-Fail overrides the score. If a question marked Auto-Fail gets any failing answer — a No (or a Yes on an inverted question), a failed checkbox, or a number, rating or slider reading outside the item’s range — the whole inspection fails, whatever its score.
How are corrective actions created, and when are they due?
A corrective action is a follow-up task to fix a failed item. With Auto-Create Corrective Actions on (the default), completing an inspection creates one for each failed item that does not already have one. The same switch also adds every corrective action in the Inspections register to its assignee’s Tasks list; turning it off stops both for corrective actions raised from then on.
Each one the app raises is assigned to the first person who can open the inspection, looking in this order: a manager of the inspection’s location, then a member of the failure alert group, then an Inspections app admin, then an organization admin. The inspector’s completion message says how many were created and who got them, and each action says why it went to its owner until someone reassigns it. Settings → Corrective Actions → Who gets them lists the order and where each is set.
Priority comes from the failure severity the inspector chose: Critical, Severe → High, Moderate → Medium, Minor → Low. With no severity, a critical question gets Critical; otherwise weight decides, with 5 or more High, 2 or more Medium, and below that Low.
The due date follows priority:
| Priority | Due |
|---|---|
| Critical | 1 day |
| High | 3 days |
| Medium | the Default Due Date setting (default 7 days, allowed 1–90) |
| Low | twice the Default Due Date |
The action goes to the location’s manager first. If the location has none, it goes to the group set in Route failed-inspection alerts to this group, then an Inspections app admin, then a business admin.
Can I require a photo, a note or a signature before an inspection can be submitted?
Yes. Each is enforced on every submission path: desktop, mobile, the API and the AI assistant.
- Photo evidence — turn on Require Photo Evidence on a question. The inspection cannot be submitted until every flagged, visible item has a photo. Items answered N/A or skipped are exempt.
- Note — turn on Require a note on a question. Every flagged, visible item answered pass or fail must carry a note. Items answered N/A or skipped need none, and a text question never asks for one.
- Failure details — under Failure follow-up prompts, turn on Prompt for details when an item fails and set Severity, Comment, Photo evidence or Action item to Required. Every failed item must then carry those details before submission, including one that failed because its reading was out of range and no failure form opened.
- Signature — turn on Require signature on the template. The inspection cannot be submitted without the inspector’s typed signature.
How do inspection cycles work, and what are the assignment strategies?
A cycle is a recurring inspection period: Quarterly, Annual, Monthly or Custom. Its generation mode decides what happens at activation:
- Notify only (the default) — notifies the audience; each person starts their own inspection.
- Per item — creates one inspection per cycle item, such as one per location or asset.
- Coverage sweep — seeds a facility coverage sweep per selected layout, split into aisles.
Per-item cycles assign work by Location manager, Single assignee, Distributed (round-robin across a pool) or Claim pool (people claim items). The generation mode locks once the cycle leaves Draft.
A cycle closes Manually (the default), On end date, or On all complete. Admins create and activate cycles; managers can view cycle progress.
How does the approval workflow work for submitted inspections?
When an approval workflow applies, submitting moves the inspection to In Review and sends it to reviewers. Approving at the last step completes it; once an earlier step is approved, it moves to the next. Rejecting returns it to In Progress on the same record for rework.
The template’s own workflow applies while that workflow is enabled. Otherwise — no workflow on the template, or a disabled one — the most recent enabled business-wide workflow with the trigger Inspection submission applies. With neither, the inspection completes as soon as it is submitted.
A step can be limited with Only approvers at the inspection’s location. Of the step’s approvers, only people assigned to the inspection’s location can approve, and only they are asked. An inspection with no location goes to every approver on the step.
Flag overdue requests marks a request overdue when it isn’t approved within the workflow’s hours. It escalates nothing and sends nothing. The Inspection approval reminders on Settings › Notifications chase the pending approvers and then bring in Inspections app admins.
What’s on a finished inspection?
- Since last visit — once an inspection is submitted, its page, report and PDF compare it with the previous completed inspection of the same place or asset on the same template: the score change and how many items Failed again, are New failures, or are Fixed. The first visit has no comparison.
- AI summary — while AI-Generated Reports is on, a completed inspection gets an AI-written summary of its results on its report and PDF. It is read-only.
- AI Photo Check — off by default. Once an admin turns it on in Settings, a checklist item can carry a Photo standard (a reference photo from the Asset Library, a written standard, or both), set from the item’s row in the template builder. Each photo attached to that item is compared with the standard by AI, and the item shows whether it matches, may not meet the standard, or couldn’t be told. It never answers the item. Each check uses AI credits.
Can the completed report be emailed to managers?
Yes. Settings › Notifications has two rows, both off by default: Completed report to the location’s managers and Completed report to managers above the location (the managers at the nearest level above, such as a district or region).
When an inspection with a location is completed, each recipient who can open it gets an in-app notice. Those with an email address also get an email with the report PDF attached, or a link when the report is too large to attach. The inspector who did the inspection is not sent it.
Which locations haven’t been inspected?
Open the Compliance Dashboard from the Reports page and choose By Location. Compliance by Location lists every location’s completed inspections, average score, change, last inspection, and the inspections due in the period that went overdue, whatever started them (Missed (overdue)). A location whose inspection is waiting on a reviewer shows Awaiting review; one with nothing completed and nothing in review in the period is marked Not evaluated.
Filter by Not evaluated, none in review, Failed or Missed (overdue), narrow to a region when your locations are grouped into regions, and download the list with Export CSV.
Can I pick up an inspection that was assigned to someone else?
Yes, in two cases. An In Progress inspection can be taken over by a manager or above, or by anyone assigned to the inspection’s location. A Scheduled inspection can be picked up by the same people, but only while Allow Inspection Pickup is on (the default).
The original assignee is recorded in the inspection’s history. Turning pickup off keeps scheduled inspections with their assignee. Takeover of in-progress inspections stays available either way.
What happens to an asset’s condition when an inspection fails?
When a failed inspection is linked to an asset, the asset’s condition is downgraded, never upgraded. A score below 50% sets it to Poor. A score from 50% to 69% sets it to Fair.
A score of 70% or above leaves the condition alone, even on a fail caused by an auto-fail question.
When something looks wrong
“I set up a recurring schedule but no inspections are being created”
Check these things:
- The schedule is Active, not paused.
- Today, at the location, falls between the schedule’s start and end dates.
- Enable Scheduled Inspections is on in Settings.
- The Checklist Inspections module is on.
- The schedule’s template is active. A deactivated template generates nothing until you reactivate it; the schedule’s badge reads “Paused — template inactive”.
- The template is not run by inspection cycles. A cycle-managed template’s timing belongs to its cycle, so schedules on it are skipped; the badge reads “Paused — template runs in inspection cycles”.
The scheduler checks every hour. A schedule creates its inspection at its Preferred Time on the location’s clock (or at the start of the location’s day when no time is set), and the inspection is due by the end of that day. A schedule that already has a pending inspection for the location’s today is skipped until its next date.
“It says I need training before I can start this inspection”
The template lists required training courses. You must finish every listed course before you can start an inspection from it. The message names the courses still missing.
The check runs when you press Start. It does not block the inspection being created, assigned or picked up.
“My inspection scored above the pass mark but still shows as Failed”
An Auto-Fail question caused it. When a question marked Auto-Fail gets any failing answer — a No, a failed checkbox, or a reading outside its range — the whole inspection fails regardless of score. The inspection’s score card names the question that triggered it.
“I’m a manager and I can open the inspection, but I can’t record answers or complete it”
That is by design. Answers and sign-off belong to the assigned inspector, a business admin or an Inspections app admin. This keeps the signature honest.
To finish the work yourself, take the inspection over first. You then become the inspector and can answer and sign off.
“I turned off a module but I can still see its data in some places”
Turning a module off hides its navigation and blocks its pages, but it deletes no data. Dashboards and analytics can still show records created while it was on.
To remove data, use Clear all inspections data under Settings → Data Reset. It needs Allow deleting inspection records on. It deletes every inspection, their corrective actions and evidence, and all sweep progress for your business. Templates, cycles, schedules, visit logs and settings are kept. It is not per-module.
Licensing and limits
Does Inspections require a licence?
Yes. Inspections requires a licence and is disabled by default. An administrator turns it on from Admin → Apps → All Apps.
What are the limits and allowed ranges I should know about?
| Setting | Range or limit |
|---|---|
| Inspection score | 0–100 |
| Pass threshold | 0–100% per template (default 80%) |
| Corrective action Default Due Date | 1–90 days (default 7) |
| Corrective action priorities | Low, Medium, High, Critical |
| Corrective action statuses | Not started, In progress (once someone starts the work), Completed, Cancelled |
| Template name | Up to 255 characters |
| Question text | Up to 500 characters |
| Question weight | 0 or above (default 1.0) |
| Template categories | Safety, Quality, Compliance, Equipment, Food Safety, Environmental, General |
| Inspection statuses | Draft, Scheduled, In Progress, In Review, Completed, Cancelled |
| Schedule frequencies | Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Annually |
| Cycle types | Quarterly, Annual, Monthly, Custom |
| Question types | Yes/No, Checkbox, Rating, Text, Number, Slider, Date/Time, Photo, Signature, Single-select, Multi-select, Find Asset, Instruction |
| Visit Log access | Everyone, Managers & admins, Admins only |
| Visit Log tracking modes | Detailed (full plan-of-correction lifecycle), Simple (record only) |
| Asset condition downgrade | Below 50% → Poor; 50–69% → Fair; 70%+ → no change |
| Deficiency trend alert | A citation code appearing 3 or more times in 12 months |
More help
- Inspections Overview
- Ask AI — the assistant answers Inspections questions from these articles.