The Problem
Small residential contractors — roofers, plumbers, HVAC techs, handymen — lose thousands of dollars every year to two things that happen after the job is done.
The first is disputes. A homeowner calls two weeks later: "You broke my sink." "There's a leak that wasn't there before." "The flashing looks wrong." The contractor has no proof of what the site looked like before they arrived, no documentation of what they did, and no easy way to defend themselves. Even when they're in the right, they often eat the cost to avoid the conflict.
The second is missed reviews. Happy customers don't leave reviews unprompted. By the time you follow up, the moment is gone. The contractor who showed up on time, did clean work, and left the site tidy gets zero reviews. The one who followed up twice gets five stars.
These aren't edge cases. Reddit's r/Roofing has the same thread posted multiple times a day: homeowners asking "does this look like quality work?" with photos. Not because the work is bad — but because there's no shared standard, no documentation, no proof. The anxiety flows in both directions.
Sources:
- r/Roofing — "New roof, is this okay?" — 37 comments, same question posted daily
- r/Roofing — "Does this look like quality roofing work?" — recurring pattern
- r/HomeImprovement — plumber's post on communication gaps — 71 comments
The contractor with 55 years of family roofing experience who shared his detailed job documentation template said it plainly: when everything is documented upfront, "it rarely has questions."
The existing tools don't solve this. CompanyCam and OpenSpace are built for large commercial construction — too complex and too expensive for a 3-person roofing crew. Jobber and ServiceTitan are scheduling and invoicing tools. There is no simple, affordable documentation tool built for small residential contractors.
The Insight
Truck drivers use dashcams not because they expect accidents, but because one dispute can cost thousands. The dashcam doesn't change how they drive. It just means that when something goes wrong, they have proof.
The same logic applies to contractors. Most disputes aren't about bad work — they're about the absence of evidence. JobShield is the dashcam for contractors.
What We Built
JobShield is a web app (PWA) a contractor opens on their phone at the job site. No account required. No app store. Just open, tap New Job, and start.
The flow is designed to take under 5 minutes per job:
- Create a job — select trade type, enter customer name and address (both optional)
- Before photos — the app guides through 4–5 contextual prompts specific to the trade ("Overview of roof area", "Close-up of existing damage", "Gutters and drainage"). One prompt at a time, large tap targets, camera opens directly.
- In progress — a simple screen that marks the job as active with a running timer
- After photos — same guided flow for the completed work
- Completion report — auto-generated PDF with all photos in before/after pairs, timestamps, GPS data, and job details
- Review request — a pre-written SMS the contractor can send while the customer is still standing there, happy
All data stays on the device. No server, no subscription needed to try it.
Product Decisions
Start with roofing, generalize to four trades. Roofing had the clearest Reddit signal — highest volume of "did they do it right?" anxiety threads. But the guided prompt model works for plumbing, HVAC, and general handyman work too, so we built all four trade types in the MVP. Each has its own set of photo prompts tuned to what actually matters for that trade.
No login to start. The biggest friction point for a contractor on a job site is being asked to create an account before they can do anything. We removed it entirely. Photos and job data are stored locally in the browser. Cloud sync and account creation are a later problem — first we need to prove the core habit is adoptable.
PDF built programmatically, not via screenshot. The first implementation used html2canvas to capture the report page as an image. It failed reliably across different browsers and CSS configurations. We replaced it with native jsPDF rendering — the PDF is built directly from data, not from the DOM. More reliable, faster, and produces a cleaner document.
PWA over native app. A contractor isn't going to find this in the App Store. They'll get a link from someone who used it. PWA means the link just works on their phone — and they can add it to their home screen if they want. No download friction.
Try It
Create a test job, walk through the photo flow, and download the PDF report. Works on desktop but designed for mobile — open it on your phone for the real experience.
What's Next
The prototype proves the core habit works. A real product would add:
- Cloud sync and accounts — jobs accessible across devices, shareable with office staff
- Team support — multiple crew members on one job, each documenting their section
- Customer-facing report delivery — email or SMS the completed report to the homeowner on completion, before they have a chance to forget what the site looked like
- Integrations — connect with Jobber or ServiceTitan so documentation happens inside the tools contractors already use
- Legal weight — timestamped, GPS-verified, cloud-backed reports that hold up in a dispute or insurance claim