Custom app development for site inspections and resident changes
The administration is accurate until someone moves. A resident who leaves for another house on Wednesday may or may not be reported the following week. From that moment on, you no longer know who slept where, and that is exactly what an inspection asks about. The change happens on site, so that is where it should be recorded.
Why changes are the weak point
The SNF sets requirements for safety, hygiene, space, sanitation and facilities in accommodation for migrant workers, and requires all active locations to be inspected within a two-year cycle. Under the Act on the Provision of Temporary Labour (Wet toelating terbeschikkingstelling arbeidskrachten), in force since 1 January 2026 and enforced from 1 January 2027, that certification has become a condition for labour providers who offer or arrange accommodation.
The external inspection is not the difficult part; it is already in the diary. The difficult part is the period in between. Residents arrive, leave and move, defects arise and are reported verbally, and the internal checks you carry out along the way disappear into a notebook in the meter cupboard.
At an inspection, that in-between period is exactly what counts. The question is not how a location looks today, but who was sleeping there in April, whether a defect reported at that time has been fixed, and how long that took. If you cannot show this, you may have met the standard but cannot demonstrate it, and under this regime that amounts to the same problem.
How we build this
The change on site is the unit here. If it is recorded there and then, on the day itself, the administration stays correct without anyone having to update it afterwards.
We look at what a day looks like: keys, reports, people arriving. What is written down now and what is not determines the design.
Checking in, checking out and moving must fit within a few taps. Anything beyond that is postponed, and 'later' here never happens.
The app works offline and synchronises afterwards. Accommodation sites are often on grounds with poor reception and no guest network.
We pick a random week from the past and see whether the answer is on the table. Whatever is missing then will be missing at inspection too.
What the app does in practice
The app records what changes on site. Which components you need depends on whether you manage the accommodation yourself or a third party does.
Checking residents in and out on site
Arrival, departure and relocation recorded on the day itself, with room or bed attached. This builds the stay history that answers any later question about occupancy.
Internal checks against the standard's topics
A short walk through the points the standard checks, using fixed choices rather than free text. This builds a record you can show between two external inspections.
Reporting defects with follow-up
A broken boiler, a faulty lock, pests. Each defect is assigned on the spot an owner and a deadline, and remains visible until it has been resolved, with the turnaround time recorded.
Photos at handover and resolution
The condition on a resident's arrival and departure, and the state of a resolved defect. This prevents disputes and at the same time provides evidence that action was taken.
Fully offline operation
Changes, checks and photos carry on without a connection and sync later, with each action showing whether it succeeded.
Keys and inventory handed over
Who received which key and what was in the room on arrival. At departure, this is the only objective basis for a conversation about damage or missing items.
Who we build for
Who manages the location differs greatly. Four situations.
Staffing agencies with their own management
Your location manager is often also the planner or driver and handles this work alongside those duties. Speed of recording is therefore more important than completeness of the form. The personnel side runs in your staffing agency software.
Accommodation providers with many locations
With dozens of properties, your own inspections are the tool you use to prepare for external inspection. Without a record of them, every inspection starts from scratch.
Employers with accommodation on their own premises
In agriculture and food production, accommodation sits alongside production. The farm or site manager handles the management on top of their duties and benefits from an app that asks not for policy but for two taps.
External managers and intermediaries
If a third party manages your locations, you want the records in your own system and not only in theirs. After all, you need them for your own approval.
Test your idea first: a working prototype in 1 day
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →Technology and integrations
The app is the field side of your accommodation register, not a separate administration. What it records goes into the same register that tracks locations and occupancy periods.
Why Appfront
The change happens at the location
That is why we record it there rather than in a weekly report. A move reported three days later is three days you cannot account for.
A defect without a turnaround time tells you nothing
We measure the time between reporting and resolution, because that is what is asked for at a re-inspection and what a resident notices.
Limit what is stored on the device
Home addresses and resident details are sensitive. We keep offline storage small and set rights per location, including for external managers.
One register, not a second list
The app writes to the same register as the office side, via integrations. That side runs on SNF software.
Security and privacy
On a device used at an accommodation site, the home addresses and names of people whose housing depends on their employer are visible. That calls for more restraint than a standard management app. We limit offline storage to the locations the user is assigned to, show no more resident data than the task requires, and make sure a lost device can be unlinked remotely.
There is also a relationship at play that affects the design. The location manager is often also a supervisor or colleague, and the resident is dependent. Whatever the app records about a person should therefore be factual and limited to what is needed for housing: arrival, departure, room, keys. Notes about behaviour do not belong there, and we do not build a field for them. What the app does record, photo, time and staff member, must be tamper-proof. How we handle security ourselves is set out in our information security policy; reports from outside come in through our vulnerability disclosure policy.
Frequently asked questions about the housing app
Because the data originates at the location and only reaches the office later. A move on Wednesday that is reported on Monday leaves five days open in your records. When an audit looks at a past period, those are precisely the days in question.
No. The inspection is carried out by an accredited body, and that stays the same. What the app does is fill the period in between: your own checks, the defects and the changes. That shortens the external inspection, because the trail is already there.
Yes, that is the starting point. Checks, changes and photos are stored locally and synchronised as soon as there is a connection. Accommodation sites are often on industrial estates or on the edge of a village, and a guest network is rarely available.
They can, and it often saves a great deal of effort. It does, however, require a separate, simple entry point in several languages, and agreements about what happens to a report. A reporting channel without visible follow-up worsens the relationship rather than improving it, so we only build that together with the follow-up side.
As a single action: checking out at one site and checking in at the other, recorded at the same moment. This creates two contiguous residence periods with no gap between them. In practice, that gap is the most common error in housing administrations.
They can work with the same app under their own roles and with access to only their locations. What you want to avoid is the evidence of your accommodation sitting in your managing agent's system, because you need it for your own licensing under the Wtta.
The app is the field side, the register is the administrative side. Both draw on one data source. The location register, the inspection cycle and the justification for deductions are held in SNF software.
That depends on the number of locations, whether residents can report issues themselves, and which system it needs to integrate with. Check-in and check-out with your own inspections is usually quick to get working; a reporting channel for residents and multilingual support cost more. We give a reasoned estimate after the discovery phase.
Recording changes where they happen?
Ask your location manager who moved out last month and on which day. The difference between his answer and your records is what becomes visible during an audit. We build this as a standalone app and as part of a broader custom app development or custom software development project.