Proof of Service

"The visit happened" is a claim, and everyone downstream of it wants evidence. The customer wants to know what was done to their home. The regulator wants a record of every regulated product applied, by whom, where and how much. Billing wants to know whether to send an invoice. The quality team wants to know whether the work was good. And six weeks later, when a customer says "you never came" or disputes a charge, the company wants something better than the technician's memory.

A field operation that treats completion as a button press ends up with visits that are complete in the system and unprovable everywhere else. This chapter is about the rules that turn a visit into a record: what has to be captured before a visit can close, what the slip carries, how the record is protected after the fact, and how each visit is judged against the schedule it was supposed to keep.

Who the Record Is For#

One completed visit answers different questions for different readers, and the record has to serve all of them at once:

Reader	Question	What answers it
Customer	What did you do, and what do I need to know?	The service slip: findings, treatments, precautions, next visit
Regulator	What was applied, where, by whom, how much?	The material record, with license numbers, kept for years
Billing	Is this billable, and for what?	Completed work orders and their products
Operations	Was it on time, and how long did it take?	Check-in, check-out and timer events, judged against the window
Quality	Was the work good?	Photos, notes, findings, and later complaints or callbacks
Disputes	Did it happen at all?	All of the above, plus location and notification history

The design follows from that table. The record is built from facts the technician captures in the field (photos, notes, products, times), the platform adds what it knows (who, where, which license, which window), and different documents are generated from the same facts for each reader. Nothing a reader sees is typed twice.

The Checkout Rules#

A visit can't be completed until its record is good enough. Checkout rules run when the technician taps complete, on the device, offline, and again on the server when the completion arrives. A typical set:

• Photos: a minimum number, often of specific things (the perimeter, bait stations, the problem area).
• Notes: at least one, describing findings and what was done.
• Work orders: every work order on the visit either completed or explicitly deferred or cancelled with a reason. A visit with an untouched work order isn't complete.
• Material records: for every regulated product applied, a record with product, amount, method and target. A pest control visit where a treatment was performed must have at least one.
• Blocking documents: some visits can't complete until a document is signed. A first visit commonly waits on the customer's signed service agreement, or on an intake questionnaire about the property.
• Trainee approval: if a trainee did the work, a licensed technician on the route reviews and completes it (The Technician App).

Store the rules as data, not code: by service type, by state, by branch. A termite inspection needs different photos than a quarterly perimeter treatment, and states differ in what the record must hold (see Material Records). When a rule changes, the app picks it up with the rest of the catalog, and the visits already completed keep the rules they were completed under.

When checkout fails, say exactly what's missing ("Add 2 more photos; record the product used on work order 1033") and keep the technician on the visit. A vague "Incomplete" sends a technician back through every screen in someone's driveway.

Material Records#

Where the work involves regulated products, the record of each application is the part a regulator inspects, and states write their contents down precisely. Two examples of how detailed it gets:

• Texas requires pest control use records to hold the customer's billing name and address, the service address, each product's name and EPA registration number, the amount applied (or the mixing rate and total), the target pest or purpose, the date, and the name and license number of everyone applying, training or supervising. Termite work adds the square footage treated. Records are kept for two years and produced when the department asks.
• Minnesota requires a structural pest control applicator to record the date, target pest, product brand name, EPA registration number and amount, the time the application was completed, the customer, and the applicator and company with license number, within five days of the application, and to keep it for five years.

The specifics differ by state and change over time, so treat these as examples and check each state you operate in. The system requirements don't change:

• Capture what the strictest state asks for, everywhere. It's cheaper than branching the field workflow by state, and a technician who crosses a state line between stops shouldn't need a different app.
• Snapshot the product at the moment of use. Copy the product name, registration number, active ingredients and label version into the record. Catalogs get edited and products get discontinued; the record has to say what was true that day.
• Derive what you can. Concentrate from the mix ratio and amount; the license numbers from who was on the route; the service address from the visit. Every field a technician doesn't type is a field they can't get wrong.
• Keep it for the longest retention that applies, and make it exportable per state, per date range, per technician, in the form an inspector asks for.

Regulated Materials covers the products themselves: labels, registration, restrictions and the catalog behind the record.

Conditions at the Time#

Some records need the conditions at the time of application, especially for outdoor work where drift is the risk. Minnesota's rules for commercial and noncommercial applicators include wind speed and direction, for example. Capture weather automatically: at check-in, ask a weather service for temperature, wind speed and direction at the property's coordinates, attach it to the visit, and let the technician correct it if the reading is wrong. If the device is offline, fetch the historical reading for that time and place once it reconnects, and record which source it came from.

Weather is also evidence in a dispute about drift, and context for a visit that was skipped (When the Visit Doesn't Happen).

The Service Slip#

The service slip is the customer's copy of the visit: what was found, what was done, what to watch for, and when the next visit is. Generate it from the completed record; never let anyone type it separately. A complete slip carries:

• The company, its business license number, and the branch.
• The technician and any supervisor, with license numbers, and everyone else who worked on the visit.
• The property and the date and time, arrival and completion.
• Findings and notes: what was seen and where.
• Products applied, with registration numbers, amounts, the areas treated and any precautions from the label (keep children and pets off treated areas until dry, for example).
• Conditions, where they were recorded.
• Photos, or a link to them.
• The technician's signature, and the customer's if one was taken.
• What happens next: the next scheduled visit, and how to ask for a free return visit if pests come back, if the plan includes one.

Deliver it the way the customer prefers (email, text, a printed copy), and keep the PDF the customer received alongside the data it was built from. If the data is later corrected, the slip already delivered doesn't change; a corrected slip is a new document, sent again.

Signatures#

Two different signatures appear on field records, and they mean different things:

• The technician's signature attests that the record is accurate. Capture it once, at onboarding, store it as part of the technician's profile, and apply it to each slip at checkout, with the attestation recorded as a fact (who, when, which device). Asking for a fresh scrawl at every stop adds nothing.
• The customer's signature acknowledges the work. For recurring exterior service it's usually impractical: most customers aren't home. Require it where it carries weight: authorizing repair work and its price, accepting a first visit, agreeing to a change to the agreement, or consenting to reschedule a visit outside its window.

Electronic signatures and records have the same legal effect as paper in US commerce under the E-SIGN Act, provided the record can be kept and reproduced accurately for the people entitled to it. That last condition is a system requirement: a signature captured in the app has to be stored with the exact document it signed, not a template that may change later.

Location and Time as Evidence#

The strongest answer to "you never came" is a record that puts the technician at the property, with timestamps the technician can't edit:

• Stamp check-in and check-out with location, and record the distance from the property's coordinates. A completion recorded three miles from the house is either a geocoding problem or a visit that didn't happen, and both are worth knowing.
• Keep the device's timestamps and the server's. The device's clock says when it happened; the server's says when it arrived. A large gap is normal for an offline day and suspicious for a connected one.
• Corroborate with the vehicle. Telematics shows the truck stopping at the address (Fleet, Inventory & Safety). Photos carry their own capture time and, where allowed, location.

Use location as evidence of the visit, not as continuous surveillance of the person. Record it at the moments the record needs it (check-in, check-out, photos), tell technicians what's recorded and why, and follow whatever state law says about tracking employees.

When the Visit Doesn't Happen#

Not every scheduled visit ends in service, and a missed visit needs a record as careful as a completed one, because it changes what the customer is owed and what the company has promised. Record not serviced with a reason from a fixed list, grouped by who it's on:

Group	Examples	Consequence
Not serviced, company side	Technician unavailable, ran out of time, vehicle problem	Company owes a prompt reschedule; customer is told
Not serviced, conditions	Rain, high wind, extreme heat, a storm	Reschedule; the weather record supports the decision
Not serviced, customer side	No access, locked gate, dog in the yard, customer refused	Reschedule or skip per the agreement; customer is told
Internal	Duplicate visit, data error	Fixed quietly; no notice

The record of a missed visit still carries the arrival time, location and a photo where possible (of the locked gate, for example). The reason decides what happens next: whether billing waits, whether the visit cycle is waived or must be made up, which message the customer receives (Customer Communications), and whether the missed visit counts against the schedule's on-time rate. Where the agreement or state rule requires a visit within a period, a customer-side miss may need documented attempts to reach the customer before the cycle can be skipped (Recurring Schedules).

Editing After Checkout#

Records get corrected: a wrong amount, a missing photo, a note added after a call from the customer. The rules for changing a completed record are stricter than for creating one:

• Corrections are new entries. Keep the original, record who changed it, when and why. A regulator who sees an amount change after the fact should also see the history.
• The minimum still applies. Photos and material records can be added after checkout, but not deleted below what the checkout rules required. The visit was completed on the strength of that evidence.
• Close the edit window. Some state rules set a deadline for completing records (Minnesota's is five days). After the window, edits need a supervisor and a reason, or are refused.
• Regenerate, don't overwrite, the slip. A corrected record produces a new slip; the customer's original copy stays in the history.

Was It On Time?#

Each completed visit is also judged against the schedule. Recurring service promises a visit within a window around a target date (Recurring Schedules), and every completion should be classified at the moment it's recorded:

Classification	Meaning
On time	Inside the window
Late	After the window closed
Early, with consent	Before the window, with the customer's recorded agreement
Early, violation	Before the window, with no consent
Return visit	A free callback between scheduled visits, not counted against the cadence

Store the classification with the visit, along with the window it was judged against, because windows get recalculated when schedules change and the answer for last March must not change with them. The on-time rate per branch and per technician is one of the numbers that runs the business (Operating Metrics), and in states that regulate how far service can drift from the agreed frequency, it's a compliance record too.

"You Never Came"#

Disputes arrive by phone, by review, through a card chargeback, or in a regulator's complaint. They all ask the same question, and the record should answer it in one place: an evidence bundle for the visit, assembled on demand.

• The scheduled window and the notifications sent before it.
• Check-in and check-out times with location and distance from the property.
• The vehicle's stop at the address, from telematics.
• Photos with their capture times.
• The material records, the slip and how it was delivered.
• Any not-serviced reason, with its photo.

For card disputes, the same bundle is the merchant's evidence that the service was provided. Disputes & Chargebacks covers how that evidence is submitted and judged. The bundle only exists if every visit was recorded as if it would be disputed, because there's no way to know in advance which one will be.

What This Means for the System You Build#

• One record per visit, many documents from it: slip, regulatory export, invoice lines, evidence bundle, none typed twice.
• Checkout rules as data by service type, state and branch, run on the device offline and again on the server, with specific failure messages.
• Material records that capture the strictest state's fields everywhere, with the product snapshotted at use and derived fields computed, kept for the longest retention.
• Weather attached automatically at check-in, with its source.
• The technician's stored signature applied as a recorded attestation; customer signatures where they carry weight, stored with the exact document signed.
• Location and both clocks stamped at check-in and check-out, with distance from the property, corroborated by telematics.
• Not-serviced reasons from a fixed list grouped by fault, each driving billing, scheduling and notifications.
• Append-only corrections with history, a minimum that can't be deleted below, and an edit window.
• Each completion classified against its window at the time, with the window stored alongside.
• An evidence bundle per visit, available to support, billing and disputes.

References#

Specifications

• 4 Tex. Admin. Code 7.144: Pest Control Use Records, required fields, termite square footage, two-year retention and availability to the department
• Minnesota Statutes 18B.37: Records, structural applicator records completed within five days, kept five years, and wind speed and direction for commercial applicators
• 15 U.S.C. 7001: Electronic signatures and records, electronic signatures given legal effect, and the requirement that records can be retained and reproduced accurately