Every inspection,
filed with photos

The unit is the thing you look up, so start there. Make one folder per unit, and inside it one folder per inspection, named with the date and the type of visit.

The report goes in the same folder as the photos from that visit. The moment they live in different places, one of them goes missing when you need both.

Start every name with the inspection date, then the unit, then what the file shows. A report becomes 2026-09-14-4B-Move-Out-Report.pdf and a photo becomes 2026-09-14-4B-Carpet.jpg.

Name photos by the room or item, not by a number. When a move-in photo and a move-out photo share a room name, you can set them next to each other without opening anything.

A fair comparison needs the same rooms shot from the same side both times. If the move-in set has the carpet by the window, the move-out set should too. Ask inspectors to follow the same room order on every visit.

Keep both visits under the same unit folder. Then a deposit question is a matter of opening two folders and reading the report notes next to the matching photos, rather than rebuilding the story from emails.

Many property managers lean on their inspection app or property management software, which stores photos inside each report. That works until a report arrives as an emailed PDF from a contractor, or a scanned paper checklist from an older building.

Others rely on a building-by-building shared drive and a habit of renaming after each walkthrough, or a phone album per property. Filex takes a different route: you state the rule once and it reads each report and files it by unit and date.

It files and names documents. It does not judge whether damage is normal wear, decide a deposit deduction, or give legal advice about your lease or local rules. It also does not take the photos or fetch them from an inspector’s phone or an app for you.

A photo can only be matched to a unit when it carries a readable date or unit, or is uploaded with its report. A photo with neither may need you to place it, and a blurry or handwritten page may not be read reliably.