Contractor Work Completion Form: What It Must Include (With Examples)

A contractor work completion form is how a crew tells you "this task is done, please inspect it" and backs that up with proof. It sounds trivial, yet most arguments about whether work was really finished start with a vague form: "plastering done," no room named, no photos, no idea who should check it.

This article covers what the form should contain, gives examples you can copy, and is honest about where paper works and where an app helps.

What is a work completion form, and when do you use it?

Use one every time a worker or subcontractor finishes a small task and wants someone else to accept it as done: plastering a bedroom wall, tiling a bathroom floor, running conduit on the second floor.

The rule of thumb is one form per task that can be inspected in one visit. Do not batch a whole week into one submission. The inspector will not know which photo belongs to which task, and if one spot needs fixing, nobody knows whether the whole batch goes back.

The six fields every form needs

A working form is short. Six fields are enough:

1. Task and location, such as "Plaster, bedroom 2, north and east walls."
2. Scope as assigned. Reuse the wording from the original work order so the two can be compared.
3. Submission date, plus the original due date.
4. Submitted by, the worker or crew responsible.
5. Photo evidence taken on site at the time of submission, clear enough to show location and result.
6. Inspector, named from the start rather than "whoever is free."

If you can add one more, add a notes field for anything the worker wants on record, for example "existing crack at the east wall, not caused by plastering."

Examples for three common trades

Plastering

• Task: plaster bedroom 2, north and east walls
• Scope: smooth finish, painting excluded
• Photos: wide shot of each wall, close-up of a corner, a raking-light shot of the surface
• Notes: pre-existing crack at the door corner, already photographed

Tiling

• Task: floor tiling, ground-floor bathroom
• Scope: full floor, grouting finished
• Photos: whole floor, grout lines, the fall toward the drain
• Notes: waiting for a water-ponding test

Electrical rough-in

• Task: conduit, second-floor bedrooms and stair hall
• Scope: conduit and junction boxes per drawing, switches not yet fitted
• Photos: conduit runs before closing the wall, each junction box
• Notes: must be photographed before plaster goes over it

The last example shows why evidence has to travel with the form. Work hidden behind a wall cannot be checked afterwards without photos.

Why forms get sent back

The usual reasons are few:

• No photos, or bad ones. Too dark, too far away, no way to tell which room.
• Scope too broad. "Second floor done" tells the inspector nothing about where to look.
• Sent to the wrong person. The owner is not on site; the foreman is.
• Submitted but nobody told. The form sits in a pile for two days.
• Resubmitted as a new form after a fix. The first round's history disappears.

The last one has a simple rule: if work is sent back for fixes, resubmit it against the same task rather than opening a new form.

Paper form or app: what actually differs?

Paper or Excel is fine if you run one site and supervise it yourself. It is quick and needs no training. As the team grows, familiar problems appear:

• Photos live somewhere else, in a worker's phone gallery or a LINE group
• You chase people to ask whether a task was inspected
• Paper gets lost and handwriting is hard to read
• Finding who submitted what, and when, for a payment milestone means digging through a stack

Submitting inside an app fixes these because photos, notes, submitter, inspector and timestamp are attached to the same task from the start.

In Pidjob, workers submit with photos and the foreman inspects

Pidjob (ปิดจ๊อบ) is a mobile web tool for tracking crew work, and it covers the flow described above:

• The owner or foreman assigns a task with a responsible person and a due date
• The worker accepts it, then submits with site photos, up to 4 per report, taken straight from the phone camera
• The inspector chooses Pass or Send back for fixes and says what needs fixing
• After fixing, the worker resubmits on the same task
• LINE notifications go out when work is submitted or reviewed, and people cannot approve their own work

Workers sign in with LINE, with no app to install and no password to remember, though an internet connection is needed.

Limits to know: Pidjob does not export forms as PDF or Excel and has no digital signatures. If a client contract requires signed paper, you will still handle that separately.

Tying completion forms to payment milestones

The form matters most when you invoice, because it is your proof of how far the work has got. A simple way to use it:

1. Tie each payment milestone to a group of small tasks, for example "second-floor plastering."
2. Bill that milestone only once every task in the group has passed inspection.
3. Keep the photos and inspection results in one place so you can open them when asked.

Pidjob tracks payment milestones, amounts received and amounts outstanding per project, visible by role, so workers do not see money figures. The full cycle is in How to Close Out a Construction Job.

Try photo submissions instead of paper

Pick one real task that is about to finish, have the crew submit it with photos in the app, and see whether inspection gets faster. See how Pidjob works, check pricing and the 7-day free trial, or get in touch if you want to talk first.

Related: Construction Inspection Form Template (Excel)