A maintenance request app is sold on convenience, which is the smaller half of what it does. The larger half is that it produces a dated trail from the moment a tenant reported a problem to the moment it was resolved, in a form nobody can edit afterwards. That trail is what answers a habitability complaint, an insurance question or a deposit dispute, and it is the reason to insist the app is used even when a phone call would be faster.
What a request has to capture at the moment it is made
The date and time it was reported, who reported it, what they said in their own words, and a photograph. The tenant's own description matters because a paraphrase written by an office is evidence of what the office understood, not of what was reported. Photographs at the point of report also settle an enormous proportion of later argument about when damage occurred and how bad it was.
Access, permission and the awkward middle
Most jurisdictions require notice before entry except in an emergency, and the request itself is often the permission. An app that records the tenant agreeing to access on a stated date closes the gap where a contractor arrives and nobody is sure whether entry was agreed. Make agreed access a field rather than a note, because a field can be reported on and a note cannot.
The status trail, and why it should not be editable
Reported, acknowledged, assigned, scheduled, attended, resolved, with a timestamp on each and the person who set it. Nothing removed, corrections appended. The value is entirely in the fact that it cannot be tidied up later. An app where a status can be back-dated produces a record that looks like evidence and is not.
Closing, and who gets to close
A request closed by the contractor who attended is a claim that the work is done. A request closed by the tenant confirming is a fact. Products differ on whether the tenant is asked, and the ones that ask produce far fewer repeat visits for the same fault, because a repair that did not work gets reported as the same job rather than a new one three weeks later.
Questions people ask about maintenance request app
Do tenants actually use these apps?
Take-up follows response. If reports through the app get answered faster than a phone call, the app wins within a couple of months. If not, tenants revert.
Should emergency reports go through the app?
Give emergencies a phone route and log them into the same trail afterwards. An app is the wrong channel for a burst pipe and the right place for the record of one.
How long should maintenance records be kept?
At least as long as the tenancy plus the period a claim could be brought, which is longer than most people assume. Storage is cheap; reconstruction is not.