How to create a move-in/move-out inspection workflow?

David Levinson

Hi All,

In property management, it's common for a tenant to do a move-in Inspection and for the landlord to do a move-out inspection. The two inspections are then compared to determine if the tenant owes money for damages.

I am trying to figure out how to use SmartSheet for this workflow. The steps are:

1. Tenant completes move-in form when they move-in
2. Onsite maintenance tech completes move-out form when the tenant leaves
3. A report is generated comparing the two inspections and fees are assigned as necessary.

Creating the forms (1) and (2) is easy, but I'm having trouble with (3).

I have a sheet with has columns for all the items checked during the inspections. The questions are the same for both inspections and the column names indicate if the question is for move-ins or move-outs (e.g., "Kitchen Issues-In" and "Kitchen Issues-Out")

The first step of the workflow sends the form to the tenant to complete when they move-in. I'd like to send a form to the on-site maintenance teams to use when they do the move-out inspection *that attaches to the same row as the move-in inspection* so that we can generate a report comparing the two.

It seems like I should use an update request, but I was hoping there might be a way to use a form (we've baked in lots of conditionals to make the form easier to manage for our tenants and techs). My question is how can I link the two forms together?

Any thoughts?

Malaina Hudson

Hi @David Levinson ,

Have you considered this?

• Create a standard template of the move-in form as a fillable PDF

• Map the fillable fields on the PDF to the data from the move-in report and generate a document

• Send the generated document to the tech upon a condition or trigger set in the sheet (date, checkbox, etc.)

• Tech can reference the PDF form from their mobile device while at the property

It's not quite as savvy as a full-on database where you can use a GUI to query a property and extract prior info, but I think this might achieve your objectives.

David Levinson

Thanks for your suggestion. We do a version of this to send the tenant a pdf copy of the inspection.

It doesn't quite work because the tech needs to complete the same form (so that they can be compared and used to generate move-out fees).

What I'm trying to do is to combine the two reports, while allowing the techs to use the form interface -- instead of an update request interface (there's a ton of questions, and the conditionals feature in the forms makes it much easier to manage).