The surveyor managing forty active files simultaneously doesn't have a filing cabinet problem — they have a status tracking problem. Which surveys have been dispatched, which are awaiting the police report, which have authorized repairs but haven't yet received the satisfaction note from the insured, which commercial vehicle claims are stalled on the fitness certificate. These states exist across forty files at any given point in the month, and the one that falls through the gap is the one that generates an insurer complaint.
Claim Status as a Living Record
Status of survey with Completed and Inspection done create the three-stage workflow visibility. A survey that's been physically conducted but whose report hasn't been dispatched is at a different stage from one where the inspection is pending. The status field is what allows the surveyor to sort their active work by stage without opening each record.
Works authorised or not? introduces the workshop dependency: once the survey is done and the estimate is assessed, the repair authorization is the trigger that allows the garage to commence work. An authorized repair on which the satisfaction note hasn't been received is still an open claim. An authorized repair that's been completed with bills submitted but the NEFT payment hasn't processed is in a different queue. These states need to be visible without a phone call to the insurer.
The dispatch chain — Sent mode, Date of despatch, Docket number, Report no., and Date of Report — creates the submission paper trail. An insurer who queries a survey report can be given the docket number, the despatch date, and the despatch method in under thirty seconds. A surveyor who can't produce this information quickly is a surveyor whose professional competency is being evaluated alongside the claim.
The Commercial Vehicle Compliance Check
Fitness Certificate, Permit, Trip Sheet / GVR, Tax card / Challan, and Towing / Recovery bill are the documents that exclusively apply to commercial vehicle claims. Missing any of these in an active claim doesn't mean the survey can't proceed — it means the survey report must note the absence and its potential policy implications.
A commercial vehicle operating without a valid permit at the time of the accident may have breached the insurance policy's conditions of use. The surveyor who notes the permit status in the record and reflects it in the report has discharged their professional responsibility. The one who doesn't has potentially created a settlement that the insurer later disputes.
Wreck value assessed applies to total loss determinations — the market value of the salvage that offsets the settlement amount. The calculation between the insured declared value, the depreciation, and the wreck value is the financial core of a total loss settlement. Having the wreck value as a structured field in the survey record means it's part of the documented assessment, not a verbal figure that resurfaces differently in the insurer's system and the insured's recollection.