Help and questions

Open Settings › Backup and tap Export backup. Site Diary makes one ZIP file with every job, diary day, variation, photo and signature, then opens your phone’s share menu. Save it somewhere off the phone, such as Google Drive, or email it to yourself.

When it asks Did your backup save?, tap Yes, it’s saved once you have checked it arrived. That sets “Last backup”, and the weekly reminder on the Jobs screen starts again.

A backup with lots of photos can be big. Many email services won’t send files over about 25 MB, so Drive is usually the better place. Very large backups are split into parts: keep all of them. Exporting and importing backups are always free.

Partly. If your phone backs up its apps to your Google account (most do), Android includes your Site Diary records, but not your photos or signatures: they would soon be too big for Android’s app backup, and then nothing at all would be saved. That is why Site Diary has its own Export backup. Use both.

The surest way:

1. On the old phone, open Settings › Backup › Export backup and save the file to Drive (or somewhere the new phone can reach).
2. On the new phone, install Site Diary and open Settings › Backup › Import backup, then choose the file.
3. If you have Premium, restore it too (see Restoring Premium).

If you set up the new phone by copying from the old one, by cable or wirelessly (Android 9 and later), Android usually brings Site Diary across with your photos and signatures. If the new phone was set up from your Google cloud backup instead, your records come back without their photos and signatures. Site Diary tells you when images are missing: import your backup file and they come back.

No. A backup is added to what is already there. Nothing on the phone is deleted, a newer copy of a record is never replaced by an older one, and signed records are never changed. A job you deleted on the phone that the backup still has comes back.

Open Settings › Recently deleted and tap Restore next to the job. Its days, variations and photos come back with it.

Every feature is free for 2 months (60 days). The clock starts when you make your first diary day, not when you install the app, so you can set things up, or install it and come back to it later, without losing any of it. PDFs made during the free start carry a small “Made with Site Diary” footer, which Premium removes.

The Jobs screen shows how many free days are left, and Site Diary gives you a heads-up a week before the end. You don’t need a card, and there is nothing to cancel. Setting the phone’s date back doesn’t add days.

Nothing is taken away. You can still open, edit, sign and share everything you’ve made: read every record, finish drafts, add amendments, make PDFs of existing days and variations, and export and import backups.

Starting a new diary day, variation or job needs Premium. PDFs made without Premium carry a small “Made with Site Diary” footer, and date-range reports and the variation register are Premium features.

Yes, but there is no need to. A subscription starts, and is charged, on the day you subscribe: the free days you have left are not added on. Everything is already unlocked during the free start, so most people wait until it is nearly over (Site Diary gives you a heads-up a week before the end).

If you don’t subscribe, nothing is charged when the free start ends, and it never needs a card.

Premium is a monthly or a yearly subscription through Google Play. The price in your currency is shown in the app on the Premium screen (Settings › Plan › Upgrade to Premium) and on Google Play, before you pay. It adds unlimited new diary days, variations and jobs, your logo on every PDF with no footer, and date-range reports and the variation register.

Subscriptions are managed by Google Play. Open the Play Store, tap your profile picture, then Payments and subscriptions › Subscriptions, choose Site Diary and tap Cancel subscription. You can also go to play.google.com/store/account/subscriptions, or tap Settings › Plan › Manage subscription in Site Diary.

Premium carries on until the end of the month or year you have paid for. Your records stay exactly as they are. Uninstalling the app does not cancel a subscription.

This can happen on a new phone or after reinstalling. Make sure the Play Store is signed in with the Google account you bought Premium with. Then open Settings › Plan › Upgrade to Premium and tap Restore purchases. Site Diary asks Google Play again, and Premium comes back. You won’t be charged twice.

If it still doesn’t show, email us with the order number from your Google Play receipt (it starts with “GPA.”).

Payments go through Google Play, so refunds follow Google Play’s refund policy, and you can ask Google for one from your order history. If Google can’t help, write to us and we will look at it fairly.

Camera: to take site photos when you tap Take photo. They are kept in Site Diary, not added to your phone’s gallery.

Location: to stamp the GPS position on your photos, to note where a day or variation was signed, to pin a job’s site location, and to get the weather. Only while you are using the app, never in the background. Your exact position stays on your phone; only a rough point (about 5 km) is sent for the weather. See the privacy policy.

Open your phone’s Settings › Apps › Site Diary › Permissions. For Camera, choose Allow only while using the app. For Location, choose Allow only while using the app and turn on Use precise location for accurate photo stamps. Also check your phone’s location is switched on in the quick settings.

The words can differ a little between phone makers. After a photo is stamped “Location off”, Site Diary also shows a notice with a button to turn location back on.

Location off means Site Diary isn’t allowed to use location, or location is switched off on the phone (see the answer above).

Location unavailable means the phone couldn’t get a GPS fix in time. Site Diary never makes you wait more than 4 seconds for one. Indoors or under a roof, step outside or near a window, wait a moment, and take the next photo. With approximate location only, the stamp shows a much wider accuracy, often a kilometre or more.

Yes: tap Add from gallery. It uses Android’s photo picker, so Site Diary only sees the photos you choose. They are clearly marked Imported, with the date they were taken if the file has one (“Imported · date unknown” if not), so nobody can mistake them for photos taken on site that day.

When you open today’s diary and there is a signal, Site Diary fills in the morning and afternoon conditions, the low and high temperature, the strongest wind and the rain, from MET Norway’s forecast. The row then says Weather data: MET Norway.

It uses the job’s site location if you set one (tap I’m on site: use here when you add or edit the job), or the phone’s location if not, rounded to about 5 km before it leaves the phone.

A forecast only covers the hours still to come. If you open the day at 2 pm, the forecast can’t vouch for the morning, so Site Diary leaves it for you rather than guess. Open the day’s diary early, ideally when you arrive on site, and it can fill in the whole day.

To fill it in, tap the weather row and pick the conditions. Anything you set by hand is never overwritten by the forecast. In the same place, Fill in from forecast asks again.

Everything else in Site Diary works without a signal. The weather fills itself in when the signal comes back, or the next time you open the day, as long as it is still that day and you haven’t set the weather by hand. Or just tap the weather row and choose it yourself.

Yes, in Settings › Region and units: temperature, wind and rain each have their own setting. The region there sets the words (site diary or daily report, variation or change order), the date order and the paper size.

On any diary day or variation, tap Share PDF, then pick WhatsApp, email, Drive or any other app. For a week or a month of days, or the list of all variations on a job, open the Reports tab, choose the job and the report, and tap Create PDF.

PDFs are A4, or US Letter when your region is the US or Canada. Your business name, phone and email go at the top: set them in Settings. Your logo goes on PDFs with Premium.

A signed day is locked, so the record stays as it was signed. To add or correct something, tap Amend and write an amendment. It is dated, shows who added it, and is printed on the PDF. The original is never overwritten. The same goes for signed variations.

Yes. Open the job and, under Diary, tap Add a missed day, then pick the date. The diary shows it in date order. It gets the next number, so numbers you have already sent never change.

No and no. There is nothing to sign up for, and everything works offline apart from the automatic weather (and buying Premium through Google Play). Your records stay on your phone. See our privacy policy.