Site report: what goes in it, with an example for your installation projects

What is a site report?

A site report is a short, written update on the state of a building site: the date, who was there, what work was done, the hours, the materials used or missing, photos, problems and decisions, and the next step. On an installation project, the lead technician writes it each day or each week, for the office and often for the customer as well.

On a large building site, the minutes of the site meeting are also called a site report, and are often drawn up by the architect or the main contractor. This article is about your own site report.

Why a site report on an installation project?

A heat pump, a new boiler room or a water treatment installation takes several days. Without a report, information gets lost along the way:

• The office does not know how far the site has got. Every question from the customer becomes a phone call to the technician.
• Missing materials are noticed too late. The technician spots it in the morning, the warehouse hears about it in the evening.
• A decision taken on site disappears. The customer asks for the outdoor unit to be moved a metre further along. Two months later, nobody remembers who decided that.
• Extra work is not invoiced. An extra pipe is not described anywhere, so it is not on the invoice either.

Three documents are often mixed up. Each has its own moment:

What belongs in the report for the customer is explained in the intervention report to the customer. The handover at the end is covered in the acceptance report for works.

A daily or a weekly site report?

• A daily site report suits a site lasting a few days to a few weeks, with a team on site every day. Five minutes at the end of the day.
• A weekly site report suits a longer site where you are not there every day, or a project owner who wants to know each week where you stand. It brings the daily notes together, with the schedule for the following week.

A practical rule: a short note for the office every day on site, and a weekly report if the customer or the architect asks for one.

What goes in a site report?

1. Date and site: address, customer, quote or project number.
2. Present: which technicians, from when until when, and who else was there (electrician, contractor, customer).
3. Work done: what was finished today, in short sentences, with the task or phase it belongs to.
4. Hours: per technician. Travel separately if you charge it separately.
5. Materials: what was used and delivered, and above all what is missing and by when it is needed.
6. Photos: of what will soon be covered up, such as pipes in a duct, and of the state at the end of the day.
7. Problems and decisions: what went wrong, what differs from the quote, and who decided what. Extra work separately, noting whether the customer has already confirmed it.
8. Next steps: what happens tomorrow or next week, and what you need from the customer or from another party.

Points 5 and 7 weigh the most: the warehouse must know what is missing the same day, and extra work must be on paper before the invoice goes out.

A site report example to copy

Copy this example into a Word document, a PDF form or your software. It is not an official template. The examples come from a fictitious site: a water softener with a filter in a sports hall.

Keep each section to one to three lines. If there is nothing to report, write “nothing”: that way the reader knows the section was not forgotten.

Who writes the site report, and who receives it?

• The lead technician writes it. One report per site, even if there are several technicians.
• The office reads it every day. The planner for the next few days, the warehouse for the materials, accounts for the hours and the extra work.
• The customer receives a version, as agreed. Every week, or when there is a decision they need to confirm. Leave out internal remarks and prices.
• The architect or the main contractor, if you are a subcontractor and your contract asks for it.

A site report does not replace a legal registration. For work on immovable property (werken in onroerende staat / travaux immobiliers) of €500,000 or more excluding VAT, the presence of every person on the site must be registered through Checkin@Work before they start work (socialsecurity.be, in Dutch, consulted on 31 October 2026). If in doubt, ask your social secretariat (payroll provider) or your legal adviser what applies to your site.

Keeping site reports short

• Write on site, at the end of the day. By the evening at home, you have forgotten half of it.
• Write facts. “Drain point 40 cm higher than on the plan” says more than “problem with the drain”.
• Put a name to every decision. Who decided, when, and has it been confirmed?

An example: a school boiler room during the autumn holiday

A heating company is renewing the boiler room of a primary school, within the autumn school holiday. The lead technician writes a short report for the office every day at four o’clock; the school receives a weekly report on Friday.

On Tuesday, he notes that the flue connector does not fit the new boiler, and that it is needed by Thursday. The warehouse reads it the same afternoon and orders the right part. On Wednesday, the head teacher asks for the expansion vessel to be hung on the other wall. The technician records it under decisions, with “extra work, still to be confirmed”. The office emails the price, and the school confirms.

The weekly report brings the five days together: what is finished, the decision about the expansion vessel and what still has to happen after the holiday. Acceptance follows later, with a separate acceptance report.

How it works in Digitalnatie Service Suite

Service Suite has no dedicated site report. What goes into one is in the project, the interventions on the site and the hours.

• The project: the site becomes a project with the customer, the site, the lead technician and the planned start and end dates. Each project card shows the progress, the completed tasks, the hours and the team.
• The tasks: each task has a type (including preparing materials, delivery, installation and test), a technician and a deadline. The project tasks view counts the tasks that are overdue and those without a technician. The technician finds their tasks in the app and in their calendar, starts them and marks them as done, offline too.
• The work on site: you link an intervention to the project or to a task. In the app, the technician fills in the work report (work done, problem found, solution), with internal notes and remarks for the customer. They add photos before and after, and the parts used.
• A day on site that is not finished: when ending the work, the technician chooses, for example, partly finished or waiting for parts, with a reason for rescheduling. The intervention goes back to be rescheduled.
• At the office: the intervention form shows the report, the photos and the log (notes, changes and attachments). You attach a document of up to 10 MB there, for example a site report you drew up in Word.
• The hours: in the staff and hours screen, the daily entries show the date, the staff member, the start and end, the activity, and the intervention or project. You filter by project and by activity type, including project hours.

Good to know:

• There is no site report template and no daily report per project. You draw up a report for the customer or the architect yourself, using the data above.
• Internal notes never appear on the customer’s report; remarks for the customer do. So internal matters about the site belong in the internal notes.
• Linking an intervention to a task does not create an intervention and does not schedule one. You schedule the work on site in the schedule.
• There are no push notifications, and tasks only appear in the app if your organisation uses them.

More about the projects and tasks module. How to plan and follow up the stages of a site is explained in installation project tracking. How the hours come in is covered in technician time tracking.

Frequently asked questions

What is a site report?

A site report is a short, written update on the state of a building site, per day or per week. It states who was there, what work was done, the hours, the materials used and missing, the problems and decisions, and the next steps. On an installation project, the lead technician writes it.

Is a site report mandatory?

That depends on your assignment: specifications, a contract or the arrangements with the customer may require one. Separately, legal registrations apply on some sites, such as Checkin@Work for work of €500,000 or more excluding VAT. A site report does not replace that registration; if in doubt, ask your legal adviser.

What is the difference between a site report and an acceptance report?

The site report follows the site while the work is in progress, per day or per week. The acceptance report records at the end what is handed over: the tests, the remarks with their deadline, the documents and whether the customer accepts the work.

How do I make a site report in Word or PDF?

Use fixed sections: site, date, present, work done, hours, materials, photos, problems, decisions and next steps. Put them in a one-page table and fill in each section in one to three lines. You can copy the example in this article as it is.

Can I make site reports in an app like Service Suite?

Service Suite has no site report template. In the app, the technician fills in the work report for each intervention, with internal notes, photos and parts used, and marks their project tasks as done. You draw up the report for the customer yourself.