This post in 30 seconds.
- The chain: an inventory, a check-in and a check-out are one record in three parts. If a line is missing or vague at the start, no check-out can repair it.
- The window: a tenant who wasn't at check-in gets a copy and a reasonable time to amend, sign and return it. mydeposits calls seven to 10 days the industry standard.
- The comparison: same line IDs, same grading words, same photo views. The check-out then becomes a short list of differences instead of a second inventory.
- Who this is for: letting agents, property managers, build-to-rent operators and landlords who instruct inventory clerks in the UK and Ireland.
Check-out day on a two-bed flat. The clerk photographs a scorch mark the size of a coin on the kitchen worktop, left of the hob. The tenant's reply arrives by email that evening: "That was there when I moved in."
You open the check-in report. The kitchen line reads "Worktops: good condition", and the only photo is a wide shot from the doorway where the hob corner is a grey blur. Nobody can say who is right, so the deduction is either dropped or argued for months.
That argument was lost at check-in, 18 months earlier. This guide treats the check-in and check-out inventory report as a single chain: what a good inventory contains, how the tenant's sign-off and comment window work in practice, how to run the check-out line by line so it's fast, how to handle "not noted at check-in", and when you need a clerk rather than an agent-completed or tenant-completed record.
Letting agents and build-to-rent teams tend to find out how weak a check-in was at exactly the wrong moment: when a deposit is already in dispute. We build Venta Capture, a product of VentaVid, so the same guided check-in and check-out record can be captured on a phone by a clerk, an agent or the tenant, and compared in one file. Start for free and build a check-in flow for one unit type before your next move-in.
In this post:
One inventory report, three documents
People use "inventory", "check-in" and "check-out" as if they were interchangeable. They aren't, and the difference matters when you have to prove something.
On many lets the first two are one visit and one report, often called an "inventory and check-in". That's fine, as long as both jobs get done. The inventory report is the list; the move-in inspection is the moment both parties agree it's accurate.
The chain is only as strong as its first link, because the check-out can only compare against what the check-in wrote down. A thorough move-out inspection against a thin inventory still produces a thin claim.
Why care this much? Look at what deductions are about.
In The DPS's figures for 2025, published in June 2026, cleaning accounted for 29.38% of deposit claims, damage for 18.42% and redecoration for 10.88%. By our arithmetic, that's 58.68% of claims turning on a before-and-after comparison of condition or cleanliness. Cleaning was 24.57% in 2021, so the share has only grown.
The same release says fewer than 5% of deposits The DPS protects end in a dispute. Most check-outs get settled by agreement. The quality of the chain decides how many of the rest you can settle quickly, and how many become a deposit dispute you then have to evidence.
What a good inventory contains
A good inventory is written for a stranger reading it two years from now: an adjudicator, a new property manager, or you after 400 other move-ins. Every line should make sense to that person without a site visit.
Line IDs and a fixed grading scale
- Give every line an ID. K-07 for "Kitchen, worktop left of hob", B2-03 for "Bedroom 2, carpet". The check-out reuses the same IDs, which is what makes the comparison fast later.
- Define the grading scale once, at the top. A short condition grading key, such as new, good, fair, poor, with one sentence on what each means. mydeposits' landlord checklist uses "Good, fair, poor" as its example.
- Grade condition and cleanliness separately. A sofa can be in good condition and dirty. If the two share one word, the cleaning claim (the most common one) has nothing to stand on.
- Describe, don't summarise. mydeposits' check-in and check-out advice gives examples like "Small scratches to surface" and "grease marks on oven and hob", and says to avoid generic terms such as "all good" or "in need of cleaning".
The lines people forget
- Meters. Reading, serial number and a photo close enough to read both. Electricity, gas and water, plus any heat meter in a build-to-rent block.
- Keys and fobs. Count by type (front door, flat door, window, bin store, fob, parking remote) with one photo of the set laid out. At check-out, missing keys are a line, not a conversation.
- Alarms and appliances. Note whether smoke and carbon monoxide alarms were tested and responded, and whether appliances were switched on. Record what you did, not what you assume.
- Outside and shared spaces. Garden, balcony, bin store, parking bay, storage cage.
- Timing. mydeposits' evidence checklist for landlords says to compile the inventory after the previous tenants have left and removed their own possessions. An inventory taken around someone else's boxes is a record of their boxes.
Photos per room and per item
Every room needs a wide shot from the doorway, for context. Every graded line needs its own photo, labelled with its ID. The wide shot shows the kitchen exists; the line photo shows whether the worktop left of the hob had a mark on it.
Photos embedded in the report next to their line beat a separate folder of 300 images named IMG_4471. The mydeposits checklist makes the same point from the other side: images that aren't included in the main inventory should be signed and dated by both parties.
If you want the room-by-room capture order for a tenant doing this on their own phone, we set that out in our guide to tenant self inspection, so we won't repeat it here. For a longer written format used on commercial and higher-value lets, see schedule of condition.
Sign-off and the seven to 10 day comment window
A check-in only binds the chain when you can show the tenant had the chance to see it and correct it, and that proof comes from the sign-off rather than from the inventory itself.
mydeposits' guidance covers both routes. Where possible, all tenants should be present to check the inventory before moving in any of their belongings. If a tenant isn't there, they get a copy and a reasonable time to amend, sign and return it, with "seven to 10 days" described as the industry standard.
At the very least, mydeposits says, you must be able to prove the tenant had the opportunity to see the inventory and a reasonable time to record and report amendments.
Who wrote the report changes the stakes. mydeposits' inventory guidance says reports can be compiled by anyone, "but where they are prepared by a landlord or letting agent the tenant's signature is a MUST."
In practice, the window runs like this:
- Send on the day. The report goes to every named tenant within hours of the keys, not at the end of the week. Log the time it was sent and the address it went to.
- Say what you're asking for. One line in the message: "Check each line, add comments on anything you disagree with, and sign within 7 days." Put the deadline date in the message itself, so nobody has to count.
- Take comments as additions, not edits. A tenant comment on K-07 sits beside the original line with its own date. Never overwrite the clerk's grading; the record of what each party said is the point.
- Act on comments that matter. "There's a crack in the bathroom tile" deserves a close-up photo added to that line now, while it's cheap. Ignoring it hands the tenant a strong argument at check-out.
- Chase once, then record the silence. A reminder at day 5. If nothing comes back, keep the proof that the report was sent and the window given. That's the "opportunity to see" mydeposits refers to.
- Initial or sign digitally. mydeposits notes that best practice is for all pages to be initialled, or an online copy digitally signed.
Deposit protection and prescribed-information rules sit alongside this and vary by nation. Check your own scheme's current guidance rather than relying on a blog post, including this one.
The check-out, line by line
Think of a good check-out as a comparison against the check-in. mydeposits' advice is to use the check-in inventory "for reference and comparison so the differences can be clearly highlighted using the same terminology", and to focus on "cleanliness, damage, missing items, gardens, items left, keys and meter readings".
If the check-out uses the same line IDs, the same grading words and the same photo views as the check-in, most lines take seconds and your time goes on the handful that changed. That's where the speed comes from.
Two consistency rules from mydeposits' evidence checklist are easy to overlook:
- Same descriptions. Grade with the check-in's own scale. "Fair" at check-in and "acceptable" at check-out is two vocabularies, and an adjudicator can't compare them.
- Same person, where you can. "If you use an Inventory Clerk for check in, use the same person for check out."
What a comparison worksheet looks like
Here is an illustrative extract. The line IDs and gradings are an example, not a real property.
The output your team needs is the last column filtered down to "changed": a short differences list, each item with both photos side by side. That list is what goes to the landlord, and later to the tenant with any proposed deduction.
Wear and tear sits in the reviewer note
The comparison shows change. It doesn't decide whether the change is fair wear and tear. mydeposits' checklist asks you to take into account the length of the tenancy and the number and age of occupiers.
A worn carpet track after four years with two children is a different line from the same wear after eight months with one professional.
Write the reason into the reviewer note at the time ("4 year tenancy, family of 4, wear consistent with use"). A decision with its reasoning attached is quicker to defend than a number on its own.
In Ireland the RTB describes the same end-of-tenancy steps in plainer terms on its security deposits page: photos taken at the start and end of the tenancy as proof of condition, and the inventory checked to confirm all listed items are present and undamaged. It also notes the deposit doesn't have to be returned on the day the tenant moves out, because the landlord may need time to inspect.
When the answer is "it wasn't noted at check-in"
This is the sentence that ends most arguments about check-outs, and it cuts both ways. Sometimes the tenant is right and the mark predates them. Sometimes the check-in simply never looked.
I went through mydeposits' landlord evidence checklist line by line while writing this section. The sentence that decides these cases isn't about check-out at all. It's near the top: "The adjudicators are only able to consider the evidence you submit."
Nothing you say about the state of the flat in 2024 counts unless it was written or photographed in 2024.
Before raising a deduction on anything the tenant says was already there, run four questions against the check-in, in this order. Each takes seconds if the chain was built properly.
- Is there a line for it? If the check-in has no line for the worktop, the inventory is silent. Silence doesn't prove the mark wasn't there.
- Does the check-in photo show the exact spot clearly? A wide kitchen shot where the hob corner is out of focus proves nothing about that corner. A line photo of K-07 with a clean surface is strong.
- Did the tenant comment during the window? A comment on that line in week one is close to decisive for the tenant. A signed check-in with no comment, and a clear photo, is close to decisive for the landlord.
- Is it change, or wear? Given the tenancy length and the occupants, would an adjudicator reasonably call it use rather than damage?
If questions 1 or 2 fail, the honest move is usually to drop the item or negotiate it, and fix the inventory template so the gap doesn't repeat. If all four hold, you have a claim that's simple to explain.
TDS makes the underlying point in an #AskTDS article on who carries out check-outs: "Regardless of who produces the report, in the event of a dispute, it is the quality of the report's content and the information it provides, that will count." The same piece says the best evidence usually contains dated photos and has been signed by the tenant.
Every "not noted" argument you lose points back at the inventory template. Collect them for a quarter and you'll have a list of lines your inventory never asked for.
If your team keeps losing on question 2 because check-in photos don't show the spot, book a demo and bring one disputed check-out. We'll build the check-in flow that would have caught it.
Clerk, agent or tenant: who records which document
TDS is clear that "there are no restrictions on who can carry out the check-out inspection". mydeposits says reports can be compiled by anyone, with the tenant's signature a must where a landlord or agent prepared them. So the choice is about risk, volume and independence, not permission.
An independent clerk earns the fee where the stakes are high or the parties already distrust each other; a guided record earns its place where the property is standard and the volume is high. Use the table as a starting point for your own portfolio.
An inventory clerk brings independence and a trained eye. That's the gold standard for furnished and high-value lets, and nothing in this post argues otherwise.
A tenant-completed record is the tenant's own evidence. It's valuable as a dated baseline when nobody else can attend, and as a second record alongside a clerk's report. As the only check-in on a furnished flat, it's weaker, for the same reason a clerk's report is strong.
Our post on tenant self inspection covers where that model stops.
What changes when the record is guided
Whoever holds the phone, the failure is usually the same: they photographed what they noticed, not what the inventory needed. A guided capture flow turns your inventory template into steps, one line per step, with an example photo and a one-line instruction ("K-07: worktop left of hob, close enough to see the surface").
This is how Venta Capture handles the chain:
- One flow, any participant. Your team can start a capture themselves at the property, or send the tenant a secure, personal capture link by SMS, WhatsApp or email. It runs in the phone's browser, with no app and no account, in 15 languages.
- The sign-off is a step. The last step is a declaration checkbox, and the form can be set to send the submitter their own copy the moment they submit. Tenant and agent hold the same record from day one, which is what the comment window is meant to achieve.
- Check-out linked to check-in. The check-out is captured with the same flow and linked to the check-in case, so a reviewer compares both in one file. A person makes the comparison; the software doesn't grade anything.
- Missed lines get a retake, not a revisit. If a step is blurred or skipped, a retake request goes back for that step only, and the reason given for re-recording is stored. The review and retake loop happens before the tenant has moved their sofa in.
- Dated on receipt, with the limit stated. Each item carries a server-verified receipt timestamp, and photos picked from the gallery are labelled as unverified provenance. The receipt time proves when the record arrived, not when a mark appeared. Two dated records of the same line, 18 months apart, are what answer that.
- Filed where the tenancy lives. Each case has a reference number in your own format plus a field for the tenancy ID your system already uses, and a view link lets a landlord or owner see the record without a login.
For build-to-rent operators, the useful part is repetition: one flow per unit type, run the same way by every member of the on-site team. Standard flows come ready-made and your team edits the steps. Routing, branching and integrations with your property management system are set up around your process by VentaVid, scoped on a call.
A phone record doesn't make anyone independent, and it doesn't replace a clerk where you need one. It makes the chain consistent, which is the part most "not noted at check-in" arguments turn on.
If you're comparing tools, our glossary entry on lettings inventory software sets out what to look for. The same before-and-after logic for vehicles and equipment is in our rental condition report guide, and mid-tenancy problems are covered in remote property inspection.
When the comparison ends in a disagreement, deposit dispute evidence covers what the adjudicator will accept. In social housing the equivalent handover point is the void, covered in void property inspection.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between an inventory and a check-in report?
The inventory lists every item and fixture in the property with its condition and cleanliness. The check-in confirms that list on the day the tenant takes possession, adds meter readings and keys, and records the tenant's sign-off. They're often produced as one "inventory and check-in" document, but both jobs still need doing.
Does the tenant have to sign the inventory?
mydeposits' guidance says reports can be compiled by anyone, but where a landlord or letting agent prepared them, the tenant's signature is a must. At minimum you need to show the tenant had the opportunity to see the inventory and a reasonable time to report amendments. Check your own scheme's current rules.
How long does a tenant have to comment on the check-in?
mydeposits describes seven to 10 days as the industry standard for a tenant to check the inventory and advise of any amendments. Put the deadline date in the message you send with the report, and keep proof of when it was sent.
What if the tenant doesn't attend the check-out?
TDS says tenants should ideally be present, so invite them in writing with the date and time. If they don't come, carry out the check-out anyway against the check-in lines, then send the report and differences list promptly so they can respond.
Can the letting agent do the check-out instead of a clerk?
Yes. TDS says there are no restrictions on who carries out the check-out, and that the quality of the report's content is what counts in a dispute. Where a clerk did the check-in, mydeposits recommends the same person does the check-out.
Does the same process apply in Ireland?
The chain works the same way. The RTB's guidance on security deposits describes photos at the start and end of the tenancy as proof of condition and checking that inventory items are present and undamaged, and notes the deposit doesn't have to be returned on the day the tenant moves out.
Start with the comparison
Pick the next ten move-outs in your diary and run them against the check-ins you already have, line by line, with the four questions. You'll find out quickly which lines your inventory template is missing, and that tells you what the next check-in has to capture.
What it takes to start.
- Free plan, no credit card. Turn your inventory template into a check-in flow and send yourself the link first.
- Live in 10 minutes for a first standard flow. Stuck? Book a free setup call and we build your first flow together.
- Nothing for tenants to install. It runs in the phone browser, in your own branding.
The VentaVid team builds Venta Capture and runs the free setup call on your own inventory template.
Start for free and build a check-in flow for one unit type, or book a demo and bring a check-out that went wrong. More property guides are on the VentaVid blog.