Paper reports work until they don't: they arrive late, in handwriting nobody can read, with missing data, or they simply never arrive. And once they reach the office, someone has to key them into the computer. Digitising them doesn't mean taking a photo of the report and saving it: it means the data is recorded only once, where it happens, and goes straight to where it is needed. This article explains how to do it without your team feeling it's a punishment.
Which reports you have and what they are for
Before designing anything, collect one copy of every paper that circulates in the company. There are usually more than you think:
- Work or service reports: what was done, where, how long it took and with what materials.
- Maintenance reports for machines or vehicles.
- Production or shift sheets.
- Incident, breakdown or non-conformity reports.
- Delivery or collection notes signed by the customer.
- Checklists: safety inspections, cleaning, start-up of an installation.
For each one, ask what is done with it afterwards. If the answer is "it gets filed and nobody looks at it", it may not be needed. If the answer is "it gets copied into Excel for invoicing" or "it is used to calculate the cost of the job", that is the one most worth digitising, because that is where the duplicated work is.
What you gain and what you have to change
| With paper | With digital reports |
|---|---|
| The report arrives when the worker gets back | It arrives when the job is finished or when coverage returns |
| Empty or illegible fields | Mandatory fields and closed lists |
| Someone types it up in the office | The data goes straight into the software |
| Materials noted by hand | Materials chosen from the catalogue, with their price |
| Photos on a personal phone | Photos attached to the report |
| Hard to know what is still to be invoiced | What is closed and what is pending, at a glance |
In return, you need to equip staff with devices, decide who maintains the catalogues (customers, jobs, materials) and set aside time for training. It isn't much, but it has to be counted.
How to design the digital report
The most common mistake is to copy the paper form onto the screen as it is. A good digital report is shorter than the paper one, because many things fill in by themselves.
- Remove what the system already knows. Date, time, worker and, where relevant, location fill in automatically.
- Use lists instead of free text. Customer, job, type of work and materials are selected, not typed. That way they can be totalled and filtered later.
- Leave one free-text field, only one. For comments. If there are five text fields, nobody fills them in properly.
- Mark what is mandatory. Just enough for the report to be useful: without hours or without a customer it can't be closed.
- Add photos when they add value. Before and after shots of a repair avoid arguments.
- Plan for a signature if you need one. Having the customer sign on the screen at the end is common in services and construction work.
- Think about the person filling it in. Big buttons, few steps, usable with one hand.
Coverage and the device
If your people work on farms, building sites, industrial units or roads where the signal comes and goes, the report must be fillable offline and sent only when the connection returns. This is a requirement to ask for from the start; adding it later is far more expensive. We explain it in detail in the article on choosing between a native app and a web app.
As for the device, think about the environment: an ordinary phone may do in a technical office, but on a building site or in a warehouse a shock- and dust-resistant one may be worth it. And decide whether the devices will belong to the company or to the worker, because it changes how the app is installed and controlled.
How to roll it out without it failing
- Start with a small group. One crew or a couple of technicians for a few weeks. Gather their complaints and make corrections.
- Pick someone keen. The first group should include someone comfortable with a phone and patient enough to explain it to the others.
- Run alongside paper for a while, but not for long. A few days of double recording gives confidence; weeks of it wear everyone out.
- Review the reports every day at the start. You will spot badly thought-out fields and people who need a different explanation.
- Show the result. When the team sees that their report reaches the invoice without anyone phoning to ask questions, they accept it more readily.
- Withdraw the paper. As long as there are pads in the van, there will be paper reports.
Common mistakes
- Digitising the report but not connecting it to the management software: the administrator keeps copying data, only from a screen instead of a sheet of paper.
- Asking for too much data. If the digital report takes longer than the paper one, people will find a way not to use it.
- Not maintaining the catalogues. If a new job doesn't appear in the list, the worker will pick any other.
- Forgetting whoever reviews them. The supervisor or administrator also needs a screen to validate, correct and close reports.
How we do it at Infonet
At Infonet Consultores we have been developing business apps for Android and iOS since 2013, and many of them are precisely work reports: hours, materials, photos and customer signature from the phone, with apps that keep working without coverage and sync when it returns. If your case fits coded jobs and their cost, GControl already solves it; if not, we build the report to order and connect it to your management software. You can see how we work in app development and what we do for the sector in software for industry.
