Capturing data with a photo

What the Photo channel is

The Photo channel is the on-site path into Verinode: point your phone's camera at something with text on it, an equipment label, a vendor invoice, a certification card, and Verinode reads it. There is no scanner, no separate app, and nothing to type. You take the picture, and OCR (optical character recognition) plus Verinode's extraction pipeline pulls the text off the page and files it against the right vendor, job, piece of equipment, or team member.

It is one of five ways data reaches Verinode, alongside Email forwarding, Upload, Voice, and Integrations. Photo is the one built for the moment you are standing in front of a piece of equipment or holding a paper invoice with no scanner nearby: snap it, and move on. Verinode does not create or manage anything here; it reads what you hand it and does the filing.

Where to find it

There are two ways to use the Photo channel, one for capturing something right now, one for understanding the channel itself.

To capture something right now: the + Add Data button is on the header of every section page, Vendors, Jobs, Margin, Clients, Equipment, Safety, and more, plus the keyboard shortcut Cmd+U on a Mac or Ctrl+U on Windows. Open it and pick the Snap a photo tab. On a phone this opens your camera directly; on desktop it opens your file picker filtered to images. The tab reads:

Receipts, invoices, certs, equipment tags

That subtext is the full list of what this tab is built for. For the complete mechanics of that modal (all five capture tabs, what happens after you send a file, error messages, manual entry), see Adding an invoice: the Add Data button.

To read about the channel itself: open Connect from the sidebar at iq.verinode.ai/connect. The overview shows your inbound email address and your tool stack front and center. The Photo channel's own explainer card sits behind that same overlay: once it opens, whether from the "Set up email forwarding" button, a tool row, or a Connect link that deep-links here, a row of tabs runs across the top of the card: Email, Upload, Photo, Voice, Integrations, then Shared folder, then one tab per tool in your stack. Click Photo (it carries a deep purple accent, distinct from Email's copper, Upload's teal, and Voice's yellow) to open the Photo card described below.

What the Photo card shows

The status pill. In the top-left corner of the card:

• "[count] captured · Active" in green, once at least one photo has come in through this channel. The count is how many photos you have sent through Add Data's Snap a photo tab (or dropped in as image files) since you started using Verinode.
• "Ready to set up" in copper, before your first photo comes in. There is no setup step behind this label, no toggle to flip, no address to configure: it just means nothing has arrived yet.

The headline. "Snap a photo of a job site, an invoice, a damaged piece of equipment."

The explanation. "Use the Add Data button anywhere and pick the camera option. Photos run through OCR + extraction, captures equipment serial numbers, invoice line items, certification cards, anything that's text-on-paper."

"When to use it." A copper-tinted callout on the card reads: "Best on-site for things you'd otherwise lose track of (a vendor's business card, the make and model on a piece of equipment)." This is the practical distinction from the other channels: Email and Upload are for documents already sitting on a screen somewhere; Photo is for the paper and printed labels that only exist in the physical world until you point a camera at them.

The footer note. Every channel card carries the same reminder: "The + Add Data button on every section page (Vendors, Jobs, Margin, Clients, Equipment, Safety, etc.) launches the capture flow. No setup required, it just works." Nothing about the Photo channel needs an account to connect or a permission to grant beyond your camera or photo library access when your browser asks for it.

What a photo can capture

Read literally off the component: Photos run through OCR and extraction to pull out equipment serial numbers, invoice line items, and certification cards, plus, more broadly, anything that is text-on-paper. In practice that covers the on-site situations that would otherwise mean a note to yourself or a business card stuffed in a truck:

• Equipment labels and nameplates. The make, model, and serial number stamped on a dehumidifier, air mover, or piece of rental equipment, so it gets logged against the right equipment record instead of relying on memory.
• Invoices and receipts. A vendor invoice or receipt handed to you on-site, read the same way a dropped PDF would be, line items and all.
• Certification cards. A technician's wallet card (IICRC or similar), so the certification is on file without anyone typing in a cert number by hand.
• Vendor business cards. A subcontractor's card you would otherwise lose in a truck console.

These are also two of the specific data gaps Verinode flags when a category has no source feeding it yet: for equipment records, the hint is to snap the equipment labels, or let rental invoices come in from your inbox; for certifications, the hint is that cert emails come in from your inbox, or you snap the wallet cards. Photo is the direct way to close both gaps without waiting on an email to show up.

How to capture something

1. 1Open any section page and click + Add Data in the header, or press Cmd+U (Mac) / Ctrl+U (Windows).
2. 2Click the Snap a photo tab.
3. 3On a phone, your camera opens directly; on desktop, your file picker opens filtered to images. Take or choose the photo.
4. 4The modal closes right away, you are not held waiting on the read. A toast confirms the upload is being analyzed, and the notification bell lights up within about a second.
5. 5A processing card updates in place once the read finishes, showing what Verinode matched it to (a vendor, job, or equipment record) and flagging anything that needs a look.

Empty states

If you have never sent a photo through, the Photo card's status pill reads "Ready to set up" and the card otherwise looks identical to an active one, the headline, body copy, and "When to use it" tip are all there regardless of whether anything has come in yet. There is no separate blank-slate message on this card: the invitation to use the channel is the card itself.

Once at least one photo has been captured, the pill switches to "[count] captured · Active" and stays that way; the count only grows.

Best-practice example

Say a rental dehumidifier shows up on a job with no record of when it arrived or what it costs to run. Instead of writing the model number on a sticky note, open the job or the Equipment section, tap + Add Data, and use Snap a photo on the nameplate. Verinode reads the make, model, and serial number off the label and files it. Do the same with the tech's IICRC wallet card the next time you are on-site together, and the certification is on record without either of you typing a number into a form. Both are small captures, but they are the difference between equipment and certification data that lives on your phone's camera roll and data that shows up in Verinode where the rest of the platform can use it.

Data sources

Related reading: Adding an invoice: the Add Data button, Forwarding documents, Connecting your data.