Hold the report until they sign and pay

Chasing a signature and a fee after the inspection report is already in the agent’s inbox is a bad trade. You did the walk. You wrote the findings. You generated the PDF. Then you wait on a check, a portal login, or a “we will sign tonight” text that never comes. Hold the report until they pay — and until they sign — so delivery is the last step, not the first leak. Inspecta Home 360 keeps agreements and invoices in the client portal. You can gate the PDF until both are done. Inspecta Home does not inspect houses and takes no cut of the inspection fee.

This is not a collection agency feature pasted onto a report tool. It is part of home inspection software that treats the whole job as one record: book, inspect, document, generate, deliver, get paid. If scheduling, the writer, the contract, and the invoice live in four apps, you will send the report from whichever app is fastest — usually the report tool — and then chase money in the other three. The hold only works when the same workspace knows whether the agreement is signed and whether the invoice is paid.

Why reports go out too early

Agents want the PDF the afternoon of the walk. Buyers want to know if the roof is a problem before they go to dinner. You want to be a good partner. None of that requires giving away the work product before the contract is executed and the fee is collected. What it requires is a portal that explains the gate in plain language: sign here, pay here, then open the report. Silence is what creates angry emails. A visible hold with a pay link and an agreement is a process.

Early delivery also creates legal and operational mess. If the unsigned agreement is still sitting in someone’s inbox, you have delivered opinions without the limitations you meant to attach. If the invoice is unpaid, you have donated a professional work product. Re-sending a “please pay” after the agent already forwarded the PDF to the other side of the transaction is a weak position. You cannot unsend a report.

Some firms try to solve this with a policy instead of a system: “We don’t release until paid.” Policies fail at 6 p.m. when the office is closed and the inspector is in the truck. A job-level gate does not depend on someone remembering. The portal either opens the report or it does not.

What the gate should check

A serious hold-until-paid workflow checks two things, not one. Payment without a signature still leaves the agreement unfinished. A signature without payment still leaves the fee at risk. The Help article on hold the report until they sign and pay is the short version: turn the gate on for the job, let the client finish in the portal, then send the PDF when both are done.

• The agreement for that job — default or service-specific — is signed by the people you required.
• The invoice for that job shows paid from an authoritative payment event, not from a frontend checkbox.
• The portal copy tells the buyer why the report is still closed.
• Agents can wait with the buyer rather than receiving a private copy that bypasses the gate.
• When both conditions clear, the hold lifts without a second office task.

Payment state should come from Stripe or PayPal, not from a hopeful click. Never mark an invoice paid because someone typed “paid” in a note. Webhooks should be authenticated, idempotent, and retry-safe. If a payment does not show, use the Help article on invoices still unpaid rather than releasing the report by habit.

Agreements stay with the job

Inspection agreements are legally significant. Once signed, the content should not silently change because you edited a template later. Write the default agreement under Settings → Contracts, then add service-specific language for 4-point, radon, or other packs that need different limits. Click field chips for client, property, fee, company, and date. Preview with sample data. Turn on co-client or agent if those people must sign. Typed e-sign in the portal is on every plan. Team and Scale can use DocuSign or Dropbox Sign.

Send the agreement from the project. Signed vs waiting shows on the card. Pair it with the hold so the PDF does not go out early. The full walkthrough is write contracts and send for signature. Changes apply to new jobs. Agreements already sent stay as they were. That is how you keep a historically reproducible record.

Invoices are your fees, not the software bill

Client invoices are inspection fees. Connect Stripe or PayPal under Firm Billing so money lands with you. Account → Billing is what you pay Inspecta Home for Solo, Team, or Scale seats. Mixing those two screens is the most common billing confusion in a growing firm. The how-to on invoices, Stripe, and PayPal keeps them separate on purpose.

The job carries the fee from the estimate or the live booking. An invoice with a pay link goes to the client portal and a /pay token. Hold-until-paid uses that invoice. Extra seats, if you add them later, are software. Radon or chimney add-ons on the job are inspection pricing. Inspecta Home does not take a cut of either client charge.

What buyers and agents see

Clients and agents sign in at the portal with the email on the inspection — not the inspector workspace. The job list shows inspections tied to their email. Open a job to sign, pay, chat, and view the report. If you held the report, it stays closed until signed and paid. After release, agents can toggle repair-request items the inspector flagged in the writer. That is a negotiation tool, not a second inspection.

You can still be a good partner without leaking the PDF. Tell the agent at booking that the report releases when the agreement is signed and the fee is paid. Put the same sentence in your confirmation message. When someone asks for a preview, point them at the portal, not at a side-channel attachment. Side channels are how gates die.

How to run the hold without looking difficult

Turn the gate on as a default for new jobs if that is how you operate, then turn it off when you have a prepaid builder or a commercial client who wires in advance. The setting is per job so you are not trapped in an all-or-nothing policy. Generate the report on site so the hold is holding finished work, not a promise. When both conditions clear, share the portal link or the PDF. You stayed covered; they got the document.

If the office needs to override, do it on the record. Do not email a personal copy “just this once” and leave the job marked held. The next person who looks at the board will think the report is still gated. The source of truth is the job: signed, paid, delivered.

Hold the report until they sign and pay. Put the contract, the invoice, and the PDF in one portal. Let the software enforce the order you already wanted. Then spend the evening on the next walk — not on a collection thread.