Check-out evidence pack
Cleaning is the most common cause of deposit deductions in England and Wales, and the schemes decide those cases on evidence rather than on opinion. This is the shot list: what to photograph, room by room, on the day you hand the keys back, plus a condition log to fill in while you are still standing there. Nothing you type leaves your device.
Free
No signup
Prints as a walk-round sheet
Stays on your device
Everything runs on your device. Ticks and anything you type save in your own browser, and none of it is uploaded, to us or to anyone else.
Before you photograph anything 4
Five minutes here decides whether the rest of the pack is worth anything.
Kitchen 12
The kitchen is where most cleaning deductions start, and the oven is where most kitchen deductions start.
Bathroom 9
Limescale and sealant are judged close up, so get close.
Bedrooms 7
Run this in every bedroom. What gets missed is always behind or underneath something.
Floors 6
Nearly half the end of tenancy cleans we take on also need the carpets doing, which tells you how often floors are the argument.
Windows, doors and walls 6
These are the shots people forget, and clerks do not.
Outside space 5
Balconies and patios come up in check-outs more than tenants expect.
Paperwork to photograph as well 5
The pack is stronger when the photographs are not the only thing in it.
Condition log
Fill this in on the day, while you are still standing in the place. It prints with the pack.
Name the room and the item. If your check-in inventory records it, say so here.
Saying it up front reads better than being asked about it later.
Why photographs settle these arguments
A deposit dispute is decided by an adjudicator who has never seen the property. They read the check-in inventory, they read the check-out report, and they look at whatever photographs the two sides send in. If the only pictures come from the landlord or the agent, the only version of the property on record is theirs.
That is the whole reason this list exists. It is not about proving the place was spotless. It is about there being a dated record of what you actually left behind, taken from the same angles the inventory used, so a claim can be checked rather than assumed.
What adjudicators do with weak evidence
Undated photographs carry very little weight, because nobody can tell whether they were taken before or after the tenancy. Dark photographs get discounted. A wide shot of a whole room proves almost nothing about a specific mark, and a close-up of a mark with nothing beside it for scale proves almost nothing about how big it is. Both shots together are worth more than either on its own, which is why the list asks for the wide one first.
Receipts matter too. If your tenancy agreement asks for the carpets or the oven to be professionally cleaned, the receipt closes that question faster than any photograph. Keep it even if nobody asks for it.
Where this fits with the other tools
The check-out preparation checklist covers what to do in the weeks and days before the appointment. The deduction checker covers what a landlord can and cannot charge you for. This pack is the bit in between: the record you make on the day. If a deduction is then proposed that you disagree with, the dispute letter generator turns your notes into a letter.
If you want to know what a clerk is actually looking at while you follow them round, one of our cleaners wrote it up in what London inventory clerks actually check at check-out.