Customizing your Report Template — overview

The Report Template is the core piece of your Lumos. It defines the structure of all your inspections (building sections and sub-sections), the severity levels you use, the inspection elements per sub-section, and the narratives automatically suggested at each point in the report. This entire section is dedicated to understanding it and customizing it.

Who this section is for

When starting out, you don’t need to modify the template. The system template Residential Inspection - BNQ 3009-500 provided by Lumos covers the great majority of residential inspections in Quebec and complies with the BNQ 3009-500 standard. You can start your activity using it as is.

This section concerns you when:

You want to adapt the structure or phrasings to your style.
You do specific inspections (commercial, pre-handover, multi-unit) that need a dedicated template.
You manage a team and want to align everyone on consistent predefined narratives.
You want to simplify a template by deactivating sections that are never relevant for your clientele.

Where the template is configured

Settings > Report Template — bar with the four tabs

Settings > Report Template. Four tabs:

Default settings — global narrative display options and BNQ compliance.
Inspection templates — the list of your templates (system and personal) and the + New template button.
PDF Design — accent color, density, photos per row, font style of the PDF.
Client Report Design — accent color and options for the interactive web report.

The template editor opens when you click Edit or Duplicate on a template. That is where most of the customization work happens, and what this section describes in detail.

What a template contains

A template describes, in order:

Metadata — FR/EN name, description, applied standard, version.
Report configuration — table of contents, summary page, section numbering.
Severity levels — the colors/icons/emoji that inspectors assign to narratives (default: 7 BNQ levels).
Sections — the major report parts (Structural Components, Exterior, Plumbing, etc.).
Sub-sections — building components within each section (Foundations, Load-bearing walls, etc.).
For each sub-section:
- An inspection status (Inspected / Not Inspected / Inaccessible / Not Present).
- Inspection elements (text fields, dropdowns, checkboxes).
- A list of predefined narratives linked to the Narrative Bank.

All this content is bilingual (FR + EN, the inspector chooses report language at send time).

The snapshot: why a modified template doesn’t affect in-progress inspections

Lumos applies an important principle: the template is locked at inspection creation time.

Concretely:

Inspector starts an inspection on May 15 using your personal template v1.
Lumos takes a frozen copy of the template (snapshot) and attaches it to the inspection.
You modify the template on May 20 (add a section, remove a narrative).
The inspection started on May 15 continues using the May 15 snapshot, intact.
Any new inspection after May 20 will use the current version of the template.

This locking protects your in-progress reports from unintended changes and ensures the consistency of a single report from start to finish.

Manual versioning

Lumos does not automatically increment the template’s version number. If you want to track your evolutions, update the version yourself in the Template Overview (e.g. v1.1, v1.2, v2.0) before saving. Useful for communicating a change to your team or for internal history.

How this section is organized

Eleven pages, in increasing difficulty:

GR.1 — Choose, duplicate, create a template
GR.2 — Editor anatomy (header, sidebar, main view)
GR.3 — Sections and sub-sections (create, reorder, delete)
GR.4 — Narrative sections (Notice to Reader, Conclusion, etc.)
GR.5 — The sub-section editor (canonical category, behavior options)
GR.6 — Inspection status and automatic narratives
GR.7 — Inspection elements (the 6 types)
GR.8 — Narrative configuration (predefined narratives and links to the Bank)
GR.9 — Severity levels (Icons / Emojis / Color dots)
GR.10 — Report configuration (table of contents, summary page)

You can browse in order on the first pass, then come back to specific pages as needed.