An inspection submission always belongs to a jobcard. The jobcard owns its own jobs — labour and parts under each — so when an inspection turns up something that needs work, the place to record it is as a new (or updated) job on the same jobcard.
How the link works
- A submission is attached to a jobcard
- The submission's schema is snapshotted at creation, so the questions and statuses stay frozen even if the template later changes
- Any jobs added to the same jobcard sit alongside the submission. Advisory and Failure findings you've chosen to include appear under Recommendations on the customer-facing jobcard printout; the full inspection report prints separately from the inspection card
If you mark an item Rectified while filling the inspection, Pistonlog lets you update parts on the jobcard right there — see Rectified + update parts.
Linking a submission to a specific job
The jobcard-level link is the default, but you can also tie a submission to one job on that card. That's useful when a jobcard carries three separate pieces of work and only one of them was inspected.
Find the clipboard icon on the job
Every job on the jobcard has a small clipboard button in its header row. Hover it and the tooltip reads Linked inspections.
Tick the submissions
The popover lists every inspection on this jobcard, each with a checkbox and its current status. Tick the ones that belong to this job. If the jobcard has no inspections yet it says so instead.
Save
Click Save. Clicking a submission's name instead of its checkbox jumps you straight to that inspection on the Inspections tab.
Reading the badge
Once a job has linked inspections, a small numbered badge sits on the clipboard button. Its colour is the quick status read:
- Green: every linked inspection is complete
- Blue: at least one is still in progress
So a technician can glance down the jobcard and see which jobs still have inspection work outstanding, without opening anything.
Linking needs inspections.edit; viewing the links needs inspections.view.
Translating findings to work
Advisory and Failure items surface automatically in a From inspection block under the jobcard's Comments & Recommendations section, each with a checkbox controlling whether it's included with the recommendations the customer sees. There isn't a dedicated "create job from inspection item" button — when an Advisory or Failure prompts new work, add the job from the jobcard's Jobs section as you normally would, with a description that references what the inspection found.
The link also runs the other way: a saved job template can have linked inspection templates, and adding a job from that template adds the matching inspection sheets to the jobcard automatically.
Saved jobs with linked inspections need the Inspections plan
On Essentials, adding a job from a saved template that carries linked inspection templates fails outright with "This feature requires a plan upgrade", and the job isn't created either. The saved-jobs picker still shows the template with its inspection count and gives no warning beforehand, so you only find out on the click. On Essentials, either strip the linked inspection templates off the saved job or add that job manually.
When to add an Advisory vs a new job
- Advisory — flag it for the customer's awareness; not always work that's needed today
- New job marked
recommended— work you've offered the customer that they may want next visit (see Job authorisation statuses) - New job marked
authorised— work the customer has agreed to, do it now