Snagging
Snagging is the process of inspecting completed work, listing the defects and unfinished items found, and putting them right before the job is signed off. The list itself is the snag list, and each item on it is a snag.
In practice for trades
Snags are the small things that stop a finished job feeling finished. A chipped architrave, a socket sitting proud, a door catching, paint missed behind a radiator. None of them is a big job. Together they are the reason a customer holds back the final payment.
The commercial point is that snagging sits directly between you and the last of the money. On contract work it usually runs alongside practical completion and the release of retention, so an open snag list is money held back. On domestic work the mechanism is less formal but the effect is identical: the customer pays when they stop finding things.
Two habits shorten it. Snag the job yourself before the customer does, because a list you produced reads as thoroughness and a list they produced reads as a complaint. And track each item's state rather than just writing it down, so the conversation becomes "eleven of fourteen fixed" instead of a page of open bullet points.
Agree what counts as a snag early. Defective work is a snag. A change of mind is a variation, and it gets priced.
Related terms
- Site diary: the daily record that shows when work was completed
- Job sheet: the signed record of the work being snagged
Do it in FieldHive
Build a snag list with per-item status and a live outstanding-versus-fixed count using the Snag List Generator.
Snag List Generator→
