Jim Johnson, in a short instructional YouTube talk, explains the importance of documenting home improvement work (photos before and during removal/installation of decking, roofing, siding, gutters, etc.) to both inform homeowners and protect the contractor from being held responsible for pre-existing damage. He recommends using photos, texting, and tools like CompanyCam to share progress and validate why components needed replacement.
Chapters
Let's come back over here and we'll go to the next component, which is documentation. This is one where a lot of people fall down on, but we want to document as we go exactly what's happening. So we want to take some pictures when we tear it off, take pictures of the decking and make sure it's a great deck. And if it's not, we have the validation for why a piece of decking needed to be replaced. Take pictures of the property before you even start, and then during the process, take pictures of the progress of the roof and share those off or siding or deck or whatever it is that you do and share those off to your homeowner. You can send them text messages with the pictures. You can use tools like CompanyCam to get those pictures to them. They have a link for it. But we want to document the entire process because for two reasons. One is to inform the homeowner and create a great experience. Two is to protect ourselves. That something out there, that was the way it was before we touched that house didn't become our problem just because we touched the house. Damaged gutters that a tree limb hit it six years ago now became our problem because they haven't looked at it. They didn't notice it, but now they notice it because they're looking at the house. Once you get done.
