Three things that make a snag list work
Everybody has kept one in a notebook or a phone note, and everybody has had the same three problems with it. The free templates have none of the fixes.
Location, before description
"Cracked tile" is not a job. Nobody can price it, find it or argue about it."Cracked tile, unit 4 ensuite, behind the door" is a job somebody can walk to.
So the location is the first field on every item, and it is carried over from the last one, because snags come in clusters. You find four things in one bathroom, not one thing in four bathrooms. The list is also grouped by location on the PDF rather than numbered straight through, so it is walked in one visit per room instead of chasing item order up and down a stairwell.
Somebody's name on it
A list with no trade and no name against an item does not get picked up by anybody. Trade is usually enough to route it, and a name is better when there is one.
Which is also why the export lets you pick a single trade. Hand a tiler the whole list and they read the tiling and skim the rest, or put it down. Hand them a page with eleven tiling items on it and it comes back done.
Four states, not two
Most lists have open and closed, and the gap between them is where handovers go wrong. There are really four:
- Open. Raised, not done.
- Fixed. The contractor says it is done. Nobody has looked.
- Accepted. Somebody looked and it is right.
- Back again. Somebody looked and it is not.
That last one is the state free templates cannot express, and it matters most on a second walk. A tile replaced from a different batch has been fixed and is still wrong.
Why the big number is outstanding and not open
This is the one design decision worth explaining, because it will look like the tool is exaggerating.
Fixed is a claim, not a check. If eleven items are marked fixed and nobody has verified any of them, a list showing "2 open" is telling you something untrue in the most expensive possible setting: a handover meeting with the client holding the same list.
So outstanding counts everything not yet accepted. It only reaches zero when somebody has looked at every item. That number is higher and less comfortable, and it is the number you want to know before the meeting rather than during it.
Items marked as stopping handover are counted separately, because five minor snags and one balustrade gap over 100mm are not the same situation even though both are outstanding.
Three priorities, on purpose
Stops handover, before completion, minor. Not five.
A five point scale on a snag list becomes four flavours of "not urgent" and nobody agrees which is which. Three forces the only decision that matters: does this hold up the day, does it need doing before the end, or is it worth noting and no more.
Built for walking round with
New items go to the top of the list. On a phone that is where your thumb already is, and scrolling past forty items to add the forty-first is exactly why people give up and go back to the Notes app.
One caution: nothing is saved to a server, which is the point, but it also means closing the tab loses the list. Download the PDF when you finish the walk rather than intending to come back to it.
What a signed snag list is not
It is not a certificate of completion. It records what one named person saw on one date, and it says nothing at all about anything nobody looked at.
Accepting an item means it looked right on the day. It does not mean it was built correctly, and it does not transfer responsibility from whoever built it. That is worth knowing on both sides of the handshake.
Common questions
What is the difference between a snag list, a defects list and a punch list?
Nothing, beyond where you are standing. Snag list is British, punch list is American, and defects list is what it gets called once it is attached to a contract. All three are the same document: what was found on a walk, where it is, who is fixing it, and whether it has been accepted yet.
Why does it say outstanding rather than open?
Because fixed is a claim, not a check. An item marked fixed by whoever did the work has not necessarily been looked at, so counting it as done is how a list says two open and the client finds eleven things nobody verified. Outstanding counts everything not yet accepted, and accepted means somebody went and looked.
Can I send one trade only their own items?
Yes, and this is how these get used. Pick a trade in the export box and you get a PDF with only their items on it. A subcontractor handed the full list reads the parts that are theirs and ignores the rest, or more often does not read it at all.
Does it work on a phone while I am walking round?
That is what it is built for. The room you are in is remembered and carried into each new item, so a run of four things in one bathroom is four taps rather than typing the location four times. New items go to the top of the list, because on a phone the top is where your thumb already is.
Is my list uploaded or saved anywhere?
Nothing is uploaded. It lives in the page while you work and the PDF is written on your own machine. That does mean closing the tab loses it, so download the PDF before you finish rather than after.
Does signing off a snag list mean the work is right?
No, and a document people sign ought to be clear about it. A snag list records what one person saw on one date. It is not a certificate of completion, it does not cover anything nobody looked at, and accepting an item means it looked right on the day rather than that it was built correctly.