How to complete an EICR on your phone

An EICR is hours of careful inspection and testing — and then, too often, another hour at the kitchen table transferring scribbled results onto the report. Doing the report in the app as you work means the paperwork grows alongside the inspection, and the finished PDF is ready to send when you put the covers back on.

This tutorial walks through building the report in TradePlanr: the installation details, the circuit schedule, logging observations with their classification codes, reaching the overall assessment and signing it off — with the report laid out the way clients and landlords expect from a BS 7671 condition report.

1. 1. Start the report and set the installation details

   From the job, or from the Certificates tab, choose New Certificate and pick the EICR. Enter the details of the installation — the client, the purpose of the report, the extent of the installation covered and any agreed limitations. Getting the extent and limitations down first matters: they frame everything the report does and doesn't say, and they're easiest to word while you're agreeing them with the client, not afterwards.

   The EICR installation details screen with extent and limitations fields being completed

2. 2. Build the circuit schedule

   Add each board and its circuits — designation, cable size, protective device, RCD details — and enter your test results against each circuit as you take them. Typing a Zs reading at the board takes the same seconds as scribbling it, except it's already in the right box on the schedule.

   On a return visit to an installation you've reported on before, the previous schedule carries over, so you're confirming and updating rather than rebuilding the whole board from nothing.

   The circuit schedule on an EICR with test results entered against each circuit

3. 3. Log observations with C1, C2, C3 or FI codes

   As you find things worth recording, add each one as an observation with its classification: C1 where danger is present, C2 for potentially dangerous, C3 where improvement is recommended, and FI where further investigation is required. Write each observation so the person reading it — usually not an electrician — understands what you found and where.

   Attach a photo to an observation where it helps. A picture of the scorched connection does more for your remedial quote than a paragraph ever will.

   Tip

   Log observations the moment you find them, with the location in the first few words. Fifteen observations recalled at the end of the day lose their locations fast.

4. 4. Record the overall assessment

   With the inspection complete, give the installation its overall assessment: satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Any C1, C2 or FI observation means unsatisfactory — the app keeps your observation codes and your assessment in view together so the conclusion matches the findings.

   Add your recommended date for the next inspection, with the reasoning you'd normally apply to the installation's type, age and condition.

5. 5. Sign off the report

   Review the assembled report — details, schedule, observations, assessment — then sign on screen as the inspector. Your qualifications and business details come through from your profile, so the declaration section is already in order.

   The EICR summary screen showing the overall assessment and the inspector's signature field

6. 6. Send the report and follow up the remedials

   Send the finished PDF to the client by email, with the report stored against the customer and the property in TradePlanr. If the report is unsatisfactory, the observations are your remedial quote waiting to happen — raise the quote from the same job while the findings are fresh, and the C1s and C2s become booked work rather than a report in a drawer.

   Tip

   Landlords ordering an EICR usually need the remedials done too. Sending the report and the remedial quote together, same day, wins that work before they ring around.

The inspection takes the time it takes — that's the job. What changes is the hour afterwards: the report builds itself as you go, and sign-off becomes the last ten minutes on site instead of an evening at the table.