Capturing handovers without signal: what offline really means in a yard

Every hire yard has a spot where the phone drops out: behind the tin shed, in the wash bay, at the far end of the lot, or the whole depot if it sits on the edge of a tower's reach. That is also where the machines are, so any app that needs a connection to take a photograph fails exactly where it is needed. This guide explains how DepotProof handles it, in enough detail that you can trust it or decide not to.

What is written to the phone, and when

From the moment a handover is started, everything captured is written to the phone as it is captured: each photograph as it is taken, each signature as it is drawn, the damage note as it is typed. Nothing waits for a server. The screen shows a photograph only once it has actually been saved on the device, so what you see is what is stored.

The upload happens later, the next time the app is open on that phone with a connection. Photographs go straight from the phone to storage; the record of the handover goes to the server. Until that upload finishes, the handover exists on that phone and nowhere else.

The two limits

Be clear about what offline does not cover.

The first load needs a connection. The app has to have been opened on that phone at least once, with signal, before it can run in a dead spot. A phone that has never opened DepotProof will not open it for the first time in the wash bay. Open it at the counter first.

A handover has to be finished to upload. A run left half-done, three photographs in, sits on the phone until somebody finishes it. It does not upload on its own, and it does not appear on the reports list until it has. This is by design: an unfinished record is not a record. But it means the habit is to finish the run, then put the phone down.

Running a handover in the dead spot

1. Open the app at the counter, where there is signal, and start the handover there: pick the machine, type the renter's name. This is also where the position is recorded, if the phone can supply one.
2. Walk to the machine. The checklist continues without signal. Take every angle; the screen will not let you skip one.
3. Sign on the phone, renter and staff, still without signal.
4. Save the handover. It is now on the phone, complete.
5. Walk back into range and leave the app open. The pill at the bottom of the screen shows the upload and reads "Synced" when it is done.

Until step 5 finishes, that phone is the only copy. Do not clear the browser's data, do not hand the phone to someone who might, and do not lose it. Once it reads "Synced", the phone is no longer holding anything you need.

What "will retry" means

If an upload fails, the screen says the handover could not sync and will retry. It does retry, every time the app is open, and it never gives up on a completed handover. Most of the time the cause is signal and the next open in range fixes it.

Some causes are not signal: a machine that was already out on hire when this pickup was recorded, a plan that lapsed, an asset that was deleted. Those are refused rather than retried forever, and the screen says which, because a retry cannot make a second pickup on a machine already out become valid.

Choosing software for a yard like yours

Ask any vendor two questions, and try the answers in your own worst corner before you pay: does the checklist keep going with no signal at all, and what happens to a run that was started but not finished? The first is about the yard; the second is about the day the casual gets called away halfway. DepotProof's answers are above. The comparison with paper covers the one method that never needed signal, and the trial lets you test it where your phone drops out.