Do I really have to keep 20,000 photos each year? when do you guys get rid of them? i have the reports, obviously. Won’t those suffice if things go sideways on job I did two years ago?
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Your profile doesn’t say where you are. You should fix that.
In Maryland I have to keep all the reports for five years after the inspection. That includes all the notes and photos. I take photos as my notes so I must keep them.
My suggestion to you is to take less photos, although storage shouldn’t be much of a problem, just buy a standalone hard drive. You should have one for backups anyway.
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Tap Inspect lets me make a private comment to the report where I can upload extra CYA photos - the client doesn’t see them.
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Barring any specific rules in your area, the general rule of thumb for keeping business documents (which I consider inspection pictures to be) would be 7 years. It’s also not a bad idea to have a written “document retention and disposal plan.” That way it will be harder for someone to accuse you of destroying documents to avoid discovery, or things like that.
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External hard drives are cheap. It cost next to nothing to put files on one and throw it in the safe forever.
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You cannot predict which photo would save your bacon if you were sued, so best to save them all IMHO. Personally, I use Microsoft One Drive for cloud storage which goes for about $9/month for 1 TB of storage that could store around 200,000 photos. You can then tell One Drive to free up space on your computer (meaning that the only copy will be in the cloud). I only do that after I made a full backup stored at a second physical location from where I typically do my report writing. I can still access any of the cloud based files from any location, including from a different computer or even on my phone (using the One Drive app).
For the inspection reports, I first rely upon Spectora to maintain all of my active and historical reports online for both me and my clients. Spectora intends to maintain all reports for all users indefinitely. However, just in case something goes wrong with that, there is an option I use within Spectora to create PDF file backups of the all report(s), contract(s), and invoice(s) for every inspection into my Google Drive account automatically. The PDF backups have been working seamlessly for years now and all I do is check my Google Drive every month or so to make sure the backups are there. A really nice feature of Spectora.
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Morning, Christian. Hope to find you well.
Keep every report. Keep every image.
Reports only have the image you provided. As well the home inspection report images often have lower resolution and greater compression as compared to raw camera images due to several factors.
Sort camera image by date taken. Very easy to do. Saved my bacon more than once have an image to challenge suspect litigation.
Traditional, electro-mechanical storage devices are the cheapest I feel. I use a 8 tera byte and still have < 1.9 tera byte after 3 years.
Calculate: A 1 TB drive provides about 1,000 gigabytes (GB) or 1,000,000 megabytes (MB) of storage space.
Software: Horizon keeps my reports for 7 years.
Hope that helps.
You can buy a 1TB SSD for less than $100. It could hold up 200,000 photos depending on quality. If you have an Amazon account, you get free unlimited photo storage. I use both.
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Same for Ohio. All documents related to the inspection are to be kept for 5 years.
I have every inspection and picture going back 23 years stored on an external hardrives and discs.
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Ditto that!
I have never been concerned with the Court system, but the IRS is a whole 'nuther story!
I’ve been 'effed by Biden’s IRS (once), California IRS (Franchise Tax Board) once, and Minnesota IRS once (related to the Biden IRS BS)! Biden’s IRS accused me of non-payment, regardless that I produced a copy of the Cancelled check and Registered Mail receipt from the USPS! I wound up paying them another $650 to get them off my arse. A year later I received a Refund of $125 for overpayment!!
I trust no one! Like Kevin, I keep ALL physical records forever, including Receipts, Reports, Photos Files and Invoice Hardcopies, etc., with full redundancy on multiple External Hard Drives!
On a side note: NEVER trust the Cloud for your sole method of Archives!
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Why in the world would you not keep photos. Your dealing with Realtors and people who lie, you bet save all photos they are part of your notes.
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Two years is not a long time. Storage is inexpensive. If your photos are 8MP, which is much larger than you need, in JPEG format at 90% compression, you can put approximately a million photos on a 2TB drive. At 20,000 photos a year, you’ll be dead long before the drive is full.
if your photos are larger than 8MP, you can batch reduce them with an app like IrfanView (free from IrfanView.com). Irfanview will reduce hundreds of photos in a few seconds.
If something comes up four or five years after an inspection, you will probably be glad that you have the photos.
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I never get rid of them…..after two years they go into an external hard drive for long term storage…..
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Thank you for the info I was wondering this same question. I’ll be doing this also.
This may sound counter-intuitive, but there are a lot of reasons to systematically dispose of business records, following your state/fed laws, and a written document retention program. I’ll list what I consider the two most important below, but there are others. Just about every major company has a document retention program. Take their lead.
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Data security. Imagine if your storage location with 20 years of inspection data gets compromised/hacked. It is on you to notify each and every client that their data has been hacked.
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Discovery. If you are sued 10 years from now (as an example) but you have followed the law and your written document retention program, you can honestly say that you no longer have records pertaining to that event, which prevents data spoilation accusations and will further enhance your statute of limitations defense (if applicable).
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Ryan Who said keeping data for 20 years? Conversation overwith . Your conversing with an old fart that belongs to Internachi for the education which is great, I have never stopped learning but I think I am at the stage I can give out wisdom. Being in a high liability business as yoou know. Who said keeping records for 20 years. See Ya.
Will
Inspecting since 1989.
I simply used 20 years as an example. Nothing special about that number.
I still have every photo I’ve ever taken. You never know what the future holds. Twenty years ago, I never thought I would be teaching this stuff and using photos from my earliest days. Plus, as pointed out, you just never know what photo will save you some aggravation long after your liability has gone away.
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Agreed. Discovery can cost you a ton of time and money, even if you not the one being sued and are only an evidentiary witness. My hope is that my lawyer could keep discovery limited to a specific client or street address. The statue of limitations in CA for home inspections is four years, but it could be a longer period for realtors, home builders or sellers or some smart lawyer finds away around the statue. In which case, I would rather have all my photos available.