The Quickler Format for Field Compliance Reports

Why a format

Field compliance work — van checks, gas tightness tests, structural inspections, retrofit verifications — is recorded thousands of times a day across the UK by people whose phone is the only computer they carry.

Most of that data is captured in WhatsApp messages, voice notes and photos that never become structured records. The few systems that do capture it use proprietary apps engineers refuse to install.

The Quickler Format is an open specification for how a compliance check should be recorded over messaging, and how the resulting report should be structured, so that:

Engineers do not need to install or learn an app
Office managers receive a consistent, machine-readable record
Building control officers, insurers and certifying bodies can read the report without a vendor-specific viewer
Any vendor can implement it; clients are not locked in

This document is a working draft. Comments and pull requests are welcome.

Scope

The format covers three things:

The check definition — what the engineer is asked
The capture conversation — how the engineer responds
The report artefact — the PDF or JSON the office and third parties receive

It does not cover scheduling, pricing or how engineers are dispatched — those are the vendor's problem.

1. Check definition

A check is a JSON object describing one repeated process. Example:

{
  "id": "weekly-van-check-2026-04",
  "name": "Weekly van check",
  "owner": {
    "firm": "Example Trades Ltd",
    "firm_id": "GB-CH-12345678"
  },
  "fields": [
    { "key": "tyres",        "label": "Tyres OK?",        "type": "boolean", "required": true },
    { "key": "lights",       "label": "Lights working?",  "type": "boolean", "required": true },
    { "key": "fluid_levels", "label": "Fluid levels OK?", "type": "boolean", "required": true },
    { "key": "odometer",     "label": "Odometer photo",   "type": "photo",   "required": true },
    { "key": "fault_notes",  "label": "Any fault?",       "type": "text",    "required": false }
  ]
}

Field types

text — free text
boolean — yes / no
number — numeric (whole or decimal)
photo — one or more JPEG/HEIC images
voice — one audio clip; transcribed automatically
signature — captured as an SVG path or PNG

2. Capture conversation

The engineer is messaged via WhatsApp (or any other compliant transport). The system asks one question per field, in order. The engineer replies in any combination of text, photo, voice. The system parses the reply into the typed value.

Compliant implementations MUST:

Allow the engineer to skip non-required fields with a single reply (e.g. "skip" or "n/a")
Allow the engineer to correct a previous answer at any time before finalisation, by sending the field name and a new value
Respect WhatsApp's 24-hour session window — pre-approve a Meta Business template for any conversation that may span longer

3. Report artefact

Each completed check produces:

A PDF report rendered from a deterministic template, containing:
- Firm name, registration number, branding
- Engineer name, mobile number (E.164), date and time of completion
- Each field's label, value and any attached media (rendered inline)
- A SHA-256 hash of the underlying JSON record, printed in the footer
A JSON sidecar with the raw structured record, embedded in the PDF as an attachment per ISO 32000-1 §7.11

The hash makes the report tamper-evident: any third party can re-render the PDF from the JSON and compare hashes.

Compliance levels

A vendor can claim:

Quickler-Format Capture — supports section 1 and section 2
Quickler-Format Reporting — supports section 3
Quickler-Format Full — supports all three

Reference implementation

A reference implementation is maintained by Quickler Ltd. To request access or discuss commercial use of the Quickler-Format mark, email philip@quickler.co.

Open questions for v0.2

Schema for non-photo evidence (CAD files, IFC models)
Multi-engineer sign-off (one capture, two engineers attesting)
Localisation beyond English (Welsh, Gaelic, Polish — common UK trades languages)

The Quickler Format for Field Compliance Reports.