Two years after the inspection, a letter arrives. The buyers had their furnace fail in January, their attorney has read your report closely, and one line has his attention. The furnace is marked not inspected.

You remember the day perfectly. The gas was off at the meter, you told the client so while standing in the utility room, and you recommended they have it evaluated before closing. None of that is in the report. What is in the report is two words that could mean almost anything.

One phrase, three situations

"Not inspected" gets used for at least three things that have very little to do with each other.

Sometimes it means the item sat outside the scope you agreed to. Sometimes it means you fully intended to look and could not, because the utilities were off, the panel was painted shut, or somebody had stacked their storage against the attic hatch. And sometimes it means the thing is not there at all. No pool. No well. No gas line to inspect in the first place.

Standing in the house, the difference is obvious to you. On the page, all three collapse into the same two words, and the person reading it two years later has no way to tell them apart. Neither does an attorney, an underwriter, or the inspector who comes after you.

Why the distinction carries weight

Out of scope protects you, provided the scope is written down somewhere the reader can find. That is a contractual position and it holds up when it is stated plainly.

Blocked access protects you only if you say what blocked it. "Not inspected" invites the question of why not. "Could not inspect: gas supply shut off at the meter, recommend evaluation once service is restored" answers it before anyone asks, and it quietly moves the next step onto the client, where it belongs.

Not present is a different kind of statement altogether. It is a fact about the property rather than a limitation on your work, and filing it under the same heading as the other two makes your report look like it has more gaps in it than it does.

The forms already know this

Texas is the clearest example. The TREC inspection report form does not hand you a single not-inspected box. It gives you Inspected, Not Inspected, Not Present, and Deficient, and it expects an explanation whenever you check Not Inspected. Whatever you think of standardized forms, that structure exists because the distinction turned out to matter often enough to legislate.

You do not need to work in Texas to take the lesson. If a state form separates these states, the reasoning behind the separation applies to your report too.

What to write instead

Give the reason and the recommendation in the same breath. Three examples worth stealing:

Instead of "attic: not inspected", write "attic: could not inspect. Access hatch blocked by stored items. Recommend inspection once access is available."

Instead of "pool equipment: not inspected", write "pool equipment: not present."

Instead of "furnace: not inspected", write "furnace: could not inspect. Gas supply shut off at the meter at time of inspection. Recommend evaluation by a licensed HVAC contractor once service is restored."

Every one of those takes a few extra seconds in the field and answers a question that would otherwise arrive by certified mail.

Say it once, in the right place

The habit worth building is deciding the state while you are standing there, not while assembling the report at the kitchen table. In the moment you know exactly why you did not look. Four days later you are reconstructing it from a photograph.

We built these states into AEYES for the same reason the forms have them. An item can be inspected, partially inspected, deliberately not inspected, blocked from inspection, or simply not there, and the report should say which one. Findings decide on their own whether something is deficient, because that is what the evidence is for.

Your report gets read by someone who was not in the house. Everything they will ever know about that furnace is what you wrote down.