How many photos should a move-in inspection include?

Enough that every surface a resident could be charged for later appears in at least one frame, undamaged. In practice that means the boring shots matter most: clean carpet, intact cabinet doors, unmarked walls. A template is the reliable way to get them, because it lists the required shots per room instead of relying on the inspector to decide what is worth photographing.

Can the resident do the move-in inspection themselves?

Yes. You can send a resident a link that lets them document condition without creating an account. The link expires, can be revoked, and locks once they submit, so the submission is a fixed record rather than something that can be quietly revised afterwards. Resident-submitted condition is a useful complement to your own capture, not a replacement for it.

What happens if there is no signal at the property?

Capture continues as normal. The iOS app writes photos to the device before it attempts any upload, queues them, and uploads in the background when a connection returns. Nothing about the inspection depends on having service at the unit.

Do move-in photos need to be timestamped?

Every photo ProFlow360 stores carries the moment it was captured, held separately from when it was uploaded. That distinction matters: a photo captured in a basement on Tuesday and uploaded from the office on Thursday keeps Tuesday as its capture time.

Does ProFlow360 replace my property management software?

No. It documents condition and works alongside whatever you already run. It has no rent collection, no accounting, no leasing, and no maintenance dispatch. Rentvine is currently the only property management system it reads from, and it only reads.

Use case

The move-in inspection is the one that decides the move-out

Almost every deposit dispute is really an argument about what the unit looked like on day one. The move-out walkthrough just reveals whether anyone recorded it properly.

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Why it matters

A baseline is only a baseline if it is complete

An incomplete move-in record is worse than an obviously absent one, because it looks like diligence until someone tests it.

The failure is predictable. A leasing agent walks the unit before handover, takes twenty or thirty photographs of the things that catch the eye, and files them. Eleven months later a resident disputes a carpet charge, and the question becomes whether the carpet was clean at handover. There are photographs of the kitchen, the bathroom fixtures, a scuff on a bedroom door — and nothing that shows the living room floor.

The charge may be entirely legitimate. It does not matter. Without the photograph, the conversation is one person's recollection against another's, and the party holding the money is the one who has to justify the position.

This is why move-in capture should be a checklist rather than a judgement call. The photographs that turn out to be valuable are almost never the ones that looked interesting on the day.

How it works

Templates carry the standard between people

One template, applied to every unit, is what makes two inspections done by two people six months apart comparable to each other.

A template defines the rooms. Each room defines its required shots, and each shot can carry written instructions and a reference image showing the framing you want. Rooms can repeat per bedroom, so a single template covers a studio and a four-bedroom house without being maintained twice.

The inspector works through it in order, and a room cannot be marked complete while required shots are missing. What you get back is not a pile of photographs — it is a structured record where a specific requirement in a specific room maps to a specific image.

That structure is what makes the move-out comparison possible later. Photographs of the same subject, taken to the same brief at both ends of a tenancy, can be put side by side. An unstructured album cannot.

Guided capture — move-out inspection, Unit BIllustrative

Offline. 12 photos saved on device, queued to upload

Kitchen
Complete
- Counters and backsplash
- Appliance interiors
- Under-sink cabinet
Bedroom 2
In progress
- Walls, all four
- Flooring
- Closet interiorOptional
Bathroom 1
Not started
Garage
Not started

A diagram of templated capture: each room carries its own required shots, and the queue holds anything captured while the unit had no signal.

Resident participation

Let the resident put their own condition on the record

A resident who documented the unit at handover and agreed with your record is considerably less likely to dispute a charge at the end of it.

You can send a resident a link that opens an inspection they can complete on their own phone, with no account and no app install. They photograph what they see, answer the questions on the form, and submit.

The link is issued as a hashed token, expires on a schedule tied to the inspection's due date, and can be revoked at any time. Once the resident submits, the submission locks: photos in it cannot be added to, altered, or deleted through that link. Both sides end up with a record neither can quietly rewrite.

A move-in inspection is typed as a move-in and scoped to the tenancy it opens, so the comparison workspace can pair it against the move-out capture later without anyone matching folders by hand. The baseline you record today is what that comparison reads from.

Questions

Move-in inspection questions

How many photos should a move-in inspection include?: Enough that every surface a resident could be charged for later appears in at least one frame, undamaged. In practice that means the boring shots matter most: clean carpet, intact cabinet doors, unmarked walls. A template is the reliable way to get them, because it lists the required shots per room instead of relying on the inspector to decide what is worth photographing.
Can the resident do the move-in inspection themselves?: Yes. You can send a resident a link that lets them document condition without creating an account. The link expires, can be revoked, and locks once they submit, so the submission is a fixed record rather than something that can be quietly revised afterwards. Resident-submitted condition is a useful complement to your own capture, not a replacement for it.
What happens if there is no signal at the property?: Capture continues as normal. The iOS app writes photos to the device before it attempts any upload, queues them, and uploads in the background when a connection returns. Nothing about the inspection depends on having service at the unit.
Do move-in photos need to be timestamped?: Every photo ProFlow360 stores carries the moment it was captured, held separately from when it was uploaded. That distinction matters: a photo captured in a basement on Tuesday and uploaded from the office on Thursday keeps Tuesday as its capture time.
Does ProFlow360 replace my property management software?: No. It documents condition and works alongside whatever you already run. It has no rent collection, no accounting, no leasing, and no maintenance dispatch. Rentvine is currently the only property management system it reads from, and it only reads.

Use caseMove-out inspectionsThe other end of the tenancy, and what the move-in baseline gets compared against.Read more Use caseSecurity deposit documentationRecording classifications and amounts so a charge is legible to someone who was not there.Read more ProductThe iOS capture appOffline capture, background upload, and what happens in a unit with no signal.Read more ProductEvidence packagesWhat the assembled chronological record contains and how it is shared.Read more PlansPricingFree and Portfolio Unlimited, and the limits on each.Read more Talk to usBook a demoWalk through templated capture against one of your own units.Read more

Set the baseline on your next move-in

Build one template, run it on the next unit that turns over, and see what a complete move-in record looks like.