How it works
From shutter to record, automatically.
Five things happen to every Wenvar photo without a manual step: it is stamped, uploaded, captioned, filed and mapped. Everything after that, searching, reporting, handing over, takes seconds.
Capture
A camera that fills in the register.
The top of the viewfinder is a live preview of the stamp: the map on the left, time and place on the right. What you see before the shutter is what the record says after it. Time and a fresh GPS fix are measured at the moment you shoot, written into the record and printed onto the photo; a stale fix is never used, and a poor one is flagged before you take the photo.
The volume buttons work as a shutter, and so does the Camera Control button on newer iPhones, because gloves and rain make a touchscreen unreliable. Zoom presets switch between the phone’s real lenses rather than cropping, which matters when the evidence is a hairline crack.
Capture is an iPhone app. The register runs in any browser, on any phone or laptop, so the whole team reads the record whatever they carry.
Right after each photo, a small sheet takes working tags, typed where the knowledge exists: “defect 12” files defect and 12, recent tags are one tap, Skip files it untagged. The photo’s upload never waits on the sheet.
-28.08570, 153.44890
Upload
Works without coverage.
Photos are saved on the phone the instant they are taken, then upload themselves whenever coverage allows, on a background session that keeps working with the app closed and the phone in your pocket. Basement pours, remote work fronts and dead spots do not interrupt the record.
The queue is visible at all times: pending counts down, synced means every record is filed. A failed item says why and offers one Retry all; a record captured offline at 9:41 and uploaded at 12:06 is recorded as taken at 9:41.
Captured offline at 9:41 am, filed at 12:06 pm, recorded as taken at 9:41 am. The record keeps the capture time, not the upload time.
File & find
Records that read like a register, not a camera roll.
Each photo gets a suggested caption in plain site language, ready to edit or leave; once a person has edited a caption, it is never overwritten. Tags are working notes any member can edit inline: a defect number, a work front, an inspection round.
Search matches from the first keystroke: a space means all terms, a comma means either, a leading minus excludes. Filter by tag, person, site role, provenance or date. Records from departed crew stay findable and attributed.
The register behaves like a tool, not a feed. Columns show, hide and resize per person and are remembered. Select records the way you select files, then download, report or remove them together; a duplicates view catches identical files by content and offers select all but one of each.
Varsity Lakes Stage 1 ▾
Evidence register · 1–5 of 5 · filtered
| Photo | Taken ↓ | Caption | Tags | Provenance | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Aug 202609:30 am AEST | Barrier panels delivered and stacked at the north gate | Wenvar captureDK · ENG | |||
| 25 Aug 202607:52 am AEST | Kerb and channel poured to lot 12, forms to strip tomorrow | Wenvar captureMP · SUP | |||
| 24 Aug 202603:30 pm AEST | Kerb poured to lot 14 boundary, formwork stripped clean | Wenvar captureMP · SUP | |||
| 23 Aug 202603:44 pm AEST | Footpath slab reinforcement tied ahead of tomorrow’s pour | Wenvar captureJL · QA | |||
| 22 Aug 202610:18 am AEST | Water-filled barriers set along the Bermuda Street frontage | Wenvar captureDK · ENG |
Locate
The project, seen from above.
Every record is plotted where it was taken. Pins cluster by what is actually near each other on screen, re-formed at every zoom, so a busy pour reads as one numbered group; open it and each record is there with its thumbnail, time and filer.
It is also how a project keeps its history. Filter to a fortnight two years back, zoom to the pit, and every photo taken standing there is still on the record, attributed to whoever took it, whether or not they are still on the project.
Pin colour carries provenance: green holds an in-app Wenvar capture, grey is imported-only. And where the map has limits, it says so in the bar instead of quietly dropping records.
Share
The evidence, ready to hand over.
Pull a PDF photo report for a day or for exactly the records you selected: each stamped photo with its time, address and provenance, one to eight per page; at one per page it also prints the GPS coordinates. Give it your reference, NCR1235, ITP lot 14, and that reference leads the cover, repeats in every footer and names the file.
A caption prints only when a project member wrote or approved it. AI captions are search instruments; a generated sentence has no place on a formal record, so it never prints.
When someone needs the files themselves, batch download originals as a zip with a CSV manifest, up to 100 photos at a time.
SE corner formwork stripped, minor honeycombing to L2 soffit
caption written by a project member
Import
Bring the photos you already have.
Drag in files or whole folders. Before anything uploads, every photo is sorted by what is stored inside it: capture time and position, capture time only, or no capture data, with live counts. Re-importing last month’s folder imports nothing; copies are caught by their content, even renamed ones.
For photos stripped by chat re-encoding, three explicit choices: have AI read the stamp printed on the image (behind an itemised consent), state one capture date for the batch, or import as-is with nothing claimed.
Provenance is earned, not assumed. The register, the map and every report always distinguish an in-app capture from an import.
Built for the site, not the office
The details that matter on site.
One account per person
Everyone captures under their own name. Removing someone ends their access immediately, and their records stay attributed to them.
Site-local time, always
Every time shown is the local time at the place of capture, whoever is viewing and wherever they are.
Projects, not folders
Photos are filed to a project at capture. Switching projects is deliberate, so records never land in the wrong register.
The register goes on site too
It runs in any browser and installs to any phone’s home screen as an app, with targets sized for thumbs, so a lookup does not wait for a laptop.
Never a broken image
Photos load through Wenvar itself, not links that quietly expire, so a register left open all day keeps showing every record.
Built-in cleanup
One filter gathers stuck or empty records, another gathers exact duplicates by file content, ready to clear in one selection.
Limits are stated, never silent
Where a view or report has a limit, the limit is written on it. Nothing is quietly dropped.
Plain about data
Where records live, what leaves Australia and what we choose not to claim: it is all written down. Read the security page.
See it on your project.
Wenvar is invite-only. Tell us about your team and we will set your project up.