A job-site photo system is a written routine that tells every technician what to photograph, when to ask permission, how to name the files and where to put them. Done well, it turns ordinary service calls into a steady supply of publishable proof without anyone carrying a professional camera. We design the routine; your crews run it.
We are a marketing service. We don't install or service equipment, and we don't attend your jobs.
What the system includes
The answer is five short documents and one weekly habit. Each fits on a phone screen.
- Shot lists by job type. Separate lists for furnace or boiler replacement, heat pump and ductless installs, water heaters, maintenance visits and repair calls. Each lists the frames that matter, in the order a technician meets them.
- The consent step. One sentence at the door, a yes or no in the job notes, and what to do when the answer is no. Built with our consent and privacy workflow.
- The do-not-shoot list. Faces without permission, house numbers, licence plates, mail, family photos, children's rooms, alarm panels and anything with a name on it.
- Naming and filing. A pattern such as
2026-10-14_kelowna_furnace-replacement_job4471_03.jpg, so a search for "boiler" or a city returns the right sets. - Phone settings. Location tagging off for the camera, or metadata stripped before upload, so a published photo cannot reveal a customer's address.
The weekly habit is a 20-minute review where someone in the office picks the strongest three to five sets and flags jobs with missing photos.
Who it is for
It suits HVAC companies with two or more technicians who already take some photos but cannot use most of them. It is less useful for a solo operator who does every job personally; one person can usually keep a mental list.
It matters most when you:
- run several crews whose photos never reach the office
- want to publish galleries or post to Google weekly
- have had a customer complain about a photo they did not expect to see
Timeline
Most companies have the routine running within three weeks.
| Week | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | We review 20–40 of your existing photos and current tools, then draft shot lists and the naming rule. |
| 2 | A 30-minute crew briefing by video call, and the first week of photos under the new routine. |
| 3 | First weekly review, feedback to technicians, and the first publishable sets passed to the website or Google profile. |
| 4 onward | Monthly check of capture rates and photo quality, with shot lists adjusted by season. |
How we measure it
We track a few numbers you can verify yourself in the shared folder.
- Capture rate: share of completed jobs with at least the minimum frames. A reasonable early target is half of eligible jobs, rising over a few months.
- Consent rate: share of asked homeowners who said yes, and whether the yes was recorded.
- Usable sets per month: sets that pass the weekly review.
- Time to publish: days from job completion to the photo appearing on your site or profile.
We do not claim that a capture rate produces a number of leads. The system creates the raw material that your galleries and profile depend on.
Common mistakes
These are the problems we see most when companies try this alone.
- Shooting only the nameplate. Nameplates help the office, not the homeowner. Keep them, but tag them as internal.
- Photographing too much of the house. A wide shot showing the laundry and a family calendar is unusable. Frame the equipment and its immediate surroundings.
- No before photo. Once the old unit is out, the comparison is gone for good. The before frame comes first on every list.
- Photos on personal phones only. When a technician leaves, so does the library.
- Leaving location data on. Geotags in a published file can point straight to a customer's home.
Where it leads
Once photos flow reliably, they feed before-and-after galleries and the Google Business Profile. The full twelve-frame install list is in our shot list guide. If the capture step also needs automating inside your dispatch software, HVAC.Run covers dispatch-to-review workflows in depth.
Photo work is included in the plans on our pricing page. To see whether your current photos are a usable starting point, call, text or email with a few examples.
Frequently asked questions
Will this slow my technicians down?
It should add about three minutes per job. Most of the shots are taken at moments when the technician has stopped anyway: on arrival, before shutting off the old unit, and after the final test.
What app do technicians need?
Whatever you already use. If your field-service software attaches photos to jobs, we build around it. If not, a shared cloud folder with a strict naming rule works fine for small teams.
Who owns the photos?
Your company. We recommend that photos taken on jobs for the company are stored in company accounts, not personal phones, and that your employment terms say so. Ask your own lawyer how to word that.
What if a technician forgets?
Some will, at first. The weekly review shows which jobs have no photos, and short, specific feedback fixes most habits within a month.