How do you know your supers are actually at the building?

Why a fixed check-in time tells you less than you think

Most portfolios start with a routine. The super sends a photo of the lobby at 8 a.m., or calls in once the boiler room is done. A routine beats nothing, but look at what it measures: that someone could send a photo at that minute. That leaves no record of the other fourteen hours, when doors get propped open and bags sit by the curb.

Group chats add a second gap. A picture posted to a WhatsApp group can come from the camera roll. It might be from last week or from a different address, and the time on the message only says when it was sent. So when a tenant or an owner asks about a Tuesday night, the manager scrolls back, rings the super, and ends up weighing two memories.

How a random-time photo request works

You set the hours each building should be covered, say 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., and choose a random schedule. Each day LockProof picks a random send time inside those hours, so there is no fixed minute to it. The super gets one link by text, WhatsApp or email. The link opens the phone’s camera, live photo only, so an old picture can’t be attached. On submission the photo gets a server-set time and a SHA-256 fingerprint, which makes a later change to the record detectable.

You also decide how long a super has. A photo inside the grace period counts as on time, and one after it, still inside the window, is marked late. If the window closes with no photo, the check is marked missed and the manager on record gets an email, unless you switch those alerts off. Fixed times stay available for the checks that belong at a set hour, like a 10 p.m. lock-up.

What site proximity shows, and what it doesn’t

A photo shows what was in front of the camera. Location adds where the phone was. The phone asks for it when the super submits, and the reading is recorded with the submission when the super shares it. When site proximity is switched on for your account and the building has its coordinates on file, LockProof records the distance between that reading and the building, and your dashboard flags any reading farther out than the distance you choose, 500 feet unless you change it.

It is a flag for you to look at, not a gate. A submission from two blocks away still goes through; it just stands out. Together, a live photo, a server-set time and a distance flag give you a record you can stand behind. They don’t prove a person stood in the lobby, and the product doesn’t claim to.

Why supers go along with it

A check the supers resent tends to get worked around. From the super’s side, it looks like this:

• It arrives on WhatsApp, text or email, apps they already have open all day.
• There is nothing to install and no account to create. They tap a link.
• A super whose language is set to Spanish gets the text and the email in Spanish, and the photo page reads in Spanish.
• It doesn’t track them. Location is read on submission, and only if they share it.

One portfolio’s numbers

Truman Management in New York runs this across 50 buildings and 43 supers, sending between 800 and 1,000 random photo checks every month. Before, every question from a tenant, an owner or the building department meant another round of calls. Hershy, the company’s president, puts it plainly: “We never had a way to just prove our point.” One night a tenant reported a door left unlocked overnight. Truman had that night’s photo from the super, with the door locked in it, and she dropped the complaint. Read the Truman Management story.

To see how it runs across a whole portfolio, read LockProof for property management. The price follows the number of workers, not the number of buildings: see pricing.