Answer

What should a construction defect report include?

Enough that someone who was not there can find the defect, see what was wrong, and see what happened to it. Per defect that is a number, the location down to the room, a dated photo, a plain description, the classification and trade, the type and who pays, who raised it and who typed it, the status with the dates it moved, the trade it is issued to with a due date, and the close-out evidence. Across the whole report it is a filter you can state in one sentence and a count that matches it. In IssuesId every report reads the same register, so the Summary you send a trade and the Internal Detailed you keep disagree on nothing, and the match count shows how many defects a report covers before you generate it.

ANSWERED FROM THE PRODUCT DOCS·UPDATED OCTOBER 2026
Before the tool

A report is a filter with a date on it

The defect reports that cause trouble are not the ones missing a column. They are the ones nobody can reproduce. “The list we sent the client in June” turns out to be a spreadsheet tab somebody filtered by hand, saved over, and emailed as a PDF, and when the client’s count and yours differ by nine, there is no way to tell which nine. A report worth sending is one you could regenerate: this project, open and ready-to-inspect, level 3 and above, issued to the tiler, as at Friday. State that in a sentence, print the count, and the argument about the nine is over before it starts.

Per defect

Ten things on every line

01
A number that is the same everywhere
ABC-214 on the screen, on the PDF, in the email to the trade and in the client’s pack. A defect with three names is three defects when it comes to arguing about it.
02
The location, down to the room
Building, level, unit, room. “Level 3 bathroom” is not a location on a floor with fourteen bathrooms. In IssuesId the room comes from the location tree or the QR label on the door frame, so it is a filter and not a sentence.
03
A photo with its capture time
The original device timestamp where the file has one, and who took it. One marked-up photo of the right thing beats six of the wall around it.
04
A description a stranger could act on
What is wrong and where on the thing it is wrong. Not “tiling”, but “grout missing, shower niche, left return, 300 mm run”.
05
Classification and trade
What kind of fault it is, from the organisation’s own list, and whose work it is. These are the columns the report sorts and groups on, so a report of “all waterproofing, by trade” is a filter rather than an afternoon.
06
Type and cost attribute
Is this a defect, incomplete works, a warranty item or a variation, and who pays: defect, variation or backcharge. The accounts team reads this line and nothing else.
07
Who raised it, and who entered it
The resident who complained and the site user who typed it in are different people. Both are on the record, because the one you need to ring in month eleven is the first one.
08
Status, and the dates it changed
Open, issued, in progress, fixed, ready to inspect, closed, with the date and the name against each move. A status with no date is a mood.
09
Who it is issued to, and when it is due
The trade, the contact, and the fix-by date. Overdue should be a column you can sort on, not something you work out.
10
The close-out evidence
The after photo the trade attached, and the person who verified it. Without this a “closed” count is a measure of optimism.
Which report for whom

One register, nine ways to print it

The trade does not want the client’s pack and the client should not get the trade’s. In IssuesId these are the same data at different scopes, each one role-filtered on the server, so a client running their summary sees only what the project lets a client see. Filter first, read the match count, then generate; photo-heavy layouts stop at twenty photos per defect, because past that nobody reads it.

ReportWhat it is forFormat
SummaryOne row per defect, photos optional. The general-purpose list you send to a trade or a consultant.PDF
Internal DetailedEvery note, photo and drawing on every defect. The version you keep rather than send.PDF
Client Defect SummaryClient-scoped and client-worded; respects the project’s client-visibility filter end to end.PDF
Defect NotificationPer contractor, worded for its cost attribute, carrying the raised-by details and your coordinator’s signature.PDF
Issued ToOpen items grouped by who they are issued to. The trade review and the per-contractor burn-down.PDF · Excel
Quality ControlGrouped by location, then status. The level-by-level walk.PDF · Excel
Door SheetOne page per location, for the walk-through and the per-room handover sign-off.PDF
Executive SummaryProject health and counts, for the steering committee and the client update.PDF · Excel
Defects ExportEvery defect, every field, for spreadsheets and whatever system comes next.CSV · Excel
Related questions

Asked alongside this one

What should a construction defect report include?
For every defect: a number that is the same on every screen and document, the location down to the room, a photo with its capture time, a description a stranger could act on, the classification and trade, the type and who pays, who raised it and who entered it, the status with the dates it changed, who it is issued to and when it is due, and the close-out evidence. For the report as a whole: the filter it was generated from, stated plainly, and a count that matches. In IssuesId every report reads the same register and shows the match count before you generate it.
Should a defect report include photos of the fix?
Yes, and the name of the person who verified it. A closed defect with only the before photo is a status, not evidence. In IssuesId the trade cannot mark work complete without attaching a photo of the finished work, and the defect is closed by a different role, so the Internal Detailed report carries both photos and both names for every closed item. Photo-heavy layouts stop at twenty photos per defect.
Which defect report do you send to the client?
The Client Defect Summary, which is client-worded and respects the project’s client-visibility filter end to end, so a client sees only what the project lets a client see. The Executive Summary covers project health and counts for a steering committee. The trade gets the Summary or a per-contractor Defect Notification, and the auditor gets the Defects Export or Internal Detailed. All of them read the same register.
Can a defect report be exported to Excel?
Five reports export as a native Excel workbook as well as a PDF or CSV: Defects Export, Executive Summary, Quality Control, Issued To and Defect Type. The Defects Export carries every field on every defect for spreadsheets and downstream systems. Saved reports can also be scheduled, in PDF, to generate and email on their own daily, weekly or monthly.
Read on

Where this answer comes from

The docs behind this answer are reports (the catalogue, filters, saved and scheduled reports) and defects (the fields on a record). The construction defect software page shows an example page from an exported report with the audit trail printed under the entry, and the anatomy of a compliance-ready defect report is the longer argument. If you are still on a spreadsheet, the defect register template carries these same columns.

IssuesId