Progress Documentation: Overview

About Progress Documentation

Progress documentation records the state of the works at regular intervals over the course of a build: what is finished, what is under way and what has not started, area by area and trade by trade, with photos that show it. Kept every week or every month, it becomes the visual history of the project.

It answers two questions. Where does the project stand today compared with the schedule? And what did the site look like on a given date? The first question comes from the client, the lender and your own management every month. The second comes later, in a payment dispute, a delay claim or a warranty case, when nobody remembers whether the ceiling on level 4 was closed in March or in April.

Progress documentation is related to the daily site report, but it is not the same record. A site report says what happened on one day. Progress documentation says how far each part of the building has got. Read more in Site Reports: Overview.

Where Progress Documentation Is Required

By the client or developer, as a monthly progress report with photos and a comparison against the schedule.
By the lender, whose monitoring surveyor confirms the progress before each loan drawdown.
By the contract, where interim payments are tied to stages or to a percentage of completion.
By your own management, to see across all projects which ones are behind.
By the contractor for their own protection, as proof of what was finished when, before follow-on trades cover it.

Terminology

Term	What it means
Progress report	A periodic summary, usually weekly or monthly, of progress against the schedule, with photos, for the client or management
Baufortschrittsbericht, Baufortschrittsdokumentation	Germany, Austria, Switzerland. The progress report and the photographic record of the state of the works over time
Interim valuation, interim payment application	UK. The periodic assessment of work done, on which the interim payment is based
Abschlagsrechnung, Teilrechnung	Germany and Austria. The interim invoice for work completed so far, which the client checks against the progress on site
Monitoring surveyor	UK. The lender's representative who checks progress and cost before each drawdown
Percent complete	The share of an activity, an area or the whole project that is finished, usually estimated per trade and area
Milestone	A fixed point in the schedule, for example structure complete, building watertight or handover

Whatever the report is called, the record has to show the same things: which part of the work, how far it has got, on which date, and a photo that proves it.

What PlanRadar Covers

PlanRadar records progress in three ways, and most companies combine them.

Progress tickets. One ticket per area and trade, for example "Level 3, drywall", with a progress percentage, a status and photos. The ticket sits on the plan, so the progress is tied to a location. Tickets can be added to the project schedule, where their progress rolls up into the phases.
SiteView runs. A 360° camera on a helmet records the site while someone walks it. Each run is dated and positioned on the plan, so any point of the site can be compared between two dates side by side.
Fixed viewpoint photos. One ticket per viewpoint, with a new photo added each week, gives a time series of the same view.

Reports are produced from the same data: a ticket report as PDF with photos for any period, a schedule export as PDF, and a public link to a SiteView run for people outside PlanRadar.

What PlanRadar does not do is judge how far the work has got. SiteView does not calculate progress from the images, and the progress field is set by a person. Someone on site decides that the drywall on level 3 is 60% done. PlanRadar records that figure, ties it to a date, a location and a photo, and keeps it.

Roles and Workflow

Roles

Role in the process	Typical job title	Where they work	What they do in PlanRadar
Set up the record	Project manager, office	Webapp, office	Creates the form and lists, uploads plans, sets up the schedule, creates the progress tickets
Capture progress	Site manager, foreman	Mobile app, on site	Records the weekly SiteView run, takes the fixed viewpoint photos, updates progress on the tickets
Report trade progress	Subcontractor, trade foreman	Mobile app, on site	Updates progress and status on the tickets assigned to their company and adds photos
Report	Project manager	Webapp, office	Checks the figures, closes completed work, produces the monthly report
Receive	Client, developer, lender's surveyor	PDF, shared link, or Webapp as watcher	Reads the report, opens the SiteView link, compares dates

Subcontractors are free of charge. They can change status and progress on tickets assigned to them or to their group, add photos and write comments, which is exactly what reporting trade progress needs. They cannot set a ticket to Closed and they do not see the schedule, SiteView or statistics. Watchers see all tickets and the schedule and can create ticket reports, but cannot change anything. Read more in User Types.

Workflow

The process runs in four stages: set up, capture, report, retrieve.

Set up. The project manager creates the Progress form and the Stage and Trade lists, uploads one plan per floor, creates one progress ticket per area and trade, and adds the tickets to the schedule phases.
Capture. Every week the site manager records a SiteView run along the same route, adds the weekly photo to each fixed viewpoint ticket and updates the progress on the tickets. Subcontractors update the tickets assigned to them.
Report. Once a month the project manager checks the figures, closes finished work, and sends the client the progress report as PDF with the schedule and a link to the latest SiteView run.
Retrieve. When someone asks what the site looked like on a given date, the SiteView run of that week, the dated photos and the earlier monthly reports answer it.

Each stage is explained in Progress Documentation: Workflows in PlanRadar.

The Example in These Articles

A general contractor builds a residential block with six storeys and 40 apartments over 14 months. Six trades work as subcontractors: drywall, electrical, plumbing, screed, windows and painting. The developer receives a progress report every month, and the lender's monitoring surveyor checks progress before each drawdown. The site manager records a SiteView run of every floor once a week, and the developer's representative has a watcher user to look at the schedule and the tickets between reports.

Where a decision could reasonably be made another way, a short note points out the alternative.

Planning Your Progress Documentation Setup

What Is One Progress Ticket?

This decides how fine the report is and how much work it is to keep up to date.

Approach	Use when	Keep in mind
One ticket per floor and trade	Most building projects. "Level 3, drywall"	Six floors and six trades are 36 tickets. Easy to keep current every week. This is the example setup
One ticket per unit and trade	Apartments, hotel rooms or units that are sold or handed over one by one	40 apartments and six trades are 240 tickets. Create them in bulk from a spreadsheet. Precise, but more to update
One ticket per schedule activity	The client reports strictly against the schedule	Matches the schedule one to one. Location is coarser, because one activity often covers several floors

Whichever you choose, keep it for the whole project. A report that changes its units halfway through cannot be compared with the earlier ones. Read more in Import & Update Tickets for creating the tickets in bulk.

Progress, Status, or Both?

The ticket has two fields that show how far something has got, and they are not linked. Each is updated by hand.

Progress is a percentage from 0% to 100%. Use it for work that takes weeks, where the client wants to see 30%, 60%, 90%.
Status has six fixed values: Open, In Progress, Resolved, Feedback, Rejected and Closed. Use it to show where the work stands: Open for not started, In Progress for started, Resolved when the trade says it is finished, Closed when the site manager has checked it.

The example uses both. In the schedule, a ticket set to Closed counts as 100% whatever its progress value, and otherwise the progress value is used. Read more in Set Status & Progress of a Ticket and Schedules.

Agree a rule for what a percentage means, for example "drywall: 30% = studs up, 60% = boarded one side, 90% = boarded and filled". Without it, two foremen report the same wall as 40% and 70%.

Should the Tickets Be in the Schedule?

If the project has a schedule in PlanRadar, add the progress tickets to its phases. The schedule then calculates the progress of each phase from its tickets, highlights overdue tickets and phases, and gives you planned against actual in one view. Import the schedule from Microsoft Project, Asta Powerproject or Primavera P6 rather than rebuilding it.

Schedules are available on Pro and Enterprise plans. Each project has one schedule, with up to 2,000 phases and tickets. Read more in Schedules and Import & Export a Schedule from/to Microsoft Project and Other Software.

Without a schedule, use the ticket's due date as the planned completion date and filter for tickets that are overdue.

Photos: SiteView, Fixed Viewpoints, or Ticket Photos?

Approach	Use when	Keep in mind
SiteView run every week	Indoor work on several floors, where the client wants to see every room	Covers every surface without anyone choosing what to photograph. Requires SiteView and an Insta360 X4 or X5 camera on a helmet. Walk the same route each time
Fixed viewpoint tickets	Façades, the building from outside, the site from the crane or a neighbouring roof	One ticket per viewpoint, one new photo per week. Cheap, simple, needs no add-on and works on every subscription plan
Photos on the progress tickets	Every project	The trade or site manager adds a photo when they update the progress. Shows the area the figure refers to

The example uses all three: a SiteView run of every floor each week, four fixed viewpoints around the building, and a photo on each progress ticket at every update.

SiteView is available on Starter, Pro and Enterprise plans and has to be activated for your account. People in the images are blurred automatically. Read more in SiteView and SiteView Hardware Requirements.

How Do You Freeze the Monthly Report?

Progress figures change every week, so the figure the client was given in March has to stay findable. Generate the monthly report as PDF on the report date and store it in Documents, in a folder per month. The generated report does not change when the tickets change later. Documents is available on Pro and Enterprise accounts created after February 2022. Read more in Ticket Reports and Document Management.

Statistics are calculated from the current ticket data, not from past values. A chart can show how many progress tickets are closed today, but it cannot show what the progress figures were last month. The stored monthly reports are your time series. Read more in Statistics.

Who Updates Which Ticket?

Assign each progress ticket to the subcontractor's group, so that the trade updates their own progress. Subcontractors can set progress and status on assigned tickets, but cannot close them.
The site manager checks the figure on the weekly walk and corrects it where needed. Only in-house users can change the other fields and set Closed.
Give the trades a weekly deadline, for example Thursday evening, so that the Friday SiteView run and the ticket figures refer to the same week.

What to Avoid

Changing the ticket structure halfway through the project. The reports can no longer be compared.
Percentages without a definition. Agree what 30%, 60% and 90% mean per trade.
Walking a different route every week. Walk the same route and start at the same point, so that each week's run covers the same rooms.
Progress in a text field. "About half done" cannot be rolled up into a schedule or filtered.
Overwriting last month's report. Generate a new PDF each month and keep the old ones.
Closing a ticket because the trade said so. Resolved means the trade says it is finished. Closed means you checked.

AI Support for Progress Documentation

Step	How AI helps	Feature
Build the progress form	Turn your existing progress report spreadsheet into a form	Create and Edit Forms with AI
Update progress on site	Dictate the progress note while walking the floor	Fill Ticket Fields with Voice
A trade sets a ticket to Resolved	An agent creates a check sub-ticket for the site manager, so no finished area goes unchecked	Resolution Verification Agent (template)
Prepare the monthly report	Generate a summary of the last 30 days of ticket activity as a starting point for the report text	Generate an AI Project Summary
Find what is behind	Search in plain language, for example "drywall tickets on level 4 below 50% progress", and save the result as a filter	Search for Tickets with AI Assistant, Create Ticket Filters with AI Assistant
Produce the report PDF	Build and edit the ticket report template for the progress report with AI	Create & Edit Ticket Report Templates with AI

The Resolution Verification Agent creates the check sub-ticket with the same form as the resolved ticket, so that form needs the Parent ticket field. Read more in Use Sub-Tickets.

An AI agent only ever creates a ticket, a comment or an email. It cannot change progress, close a ticket or delete anything. Read more in Create & Manage Your AI Agents.

Steps to Document Progress in PlanRadar

Progress Documentation: Workflows in PlanRadar explains each stage: set up the form, lists, plans and schedule, capture progress every week, produce the monthly report, and retrieve the state of the site on a given date.

Additional Possibilities

Share a SiteView run with the client or the lender's surveyor through a public link, with an expiry date and a password. They need no PlanRadar account. Read more in Share SiteView Runs Externally in the Webapp.
Compare two 360° images of the same spot from different dates side by side. Read more in View & Navigate 360° Images.
Take high-resolution 360° still images at fixed points instead of a full run. Read more in SiteView 360° Still Images.
Export the schedule as PDF for the monthly report. Read more in Export Schedule as PDF.
Count progress tickets per status, per trade or per floor in Statistics. Read more in Statistics.
Keep the daily site diary in the same project, so the diary explains why a floor fell behind. Read more in Site Reports: Overview.
Find every photo added to the project's tickets in a given week, in the ticket attachments view of Documents. Read more in View & Filter Attachments of All Tickets in the Webapp.

Updated October 29, 2026