Offline Mode
Cell signal is unreliable on many job sites — inside metal buildings, in rural areas, or in basements and crawl spaces. ContractorScope AI keeps some data on your device so you can keep looking things up when the signal drops, but most work still needs a connection. This page lists what works offline today and what does not.
Some changes you make while offline are saved on your device and sent for you when the connection returns: an activity you log on a contact, a new change order, and a few quick edits to a contact or project. Everything else cannot be saved offline, including notes, voice memos, new contacts and new projects, and the app tells you so instead of pretending it was saved. A saved change that cannot safely be sent on its own is kept and listed under Review at the bottom left, for you to send or discard. Photos, files, audio, AI features, sending and payments always need a connection.
What Works Offline
Viewing What You Have Already Loaded
- Pages and lists you have already opened can still be viewed from the copy kept on your device.
- Contacts, estimates and projects. Shortly after you sign in, the app saves your recent contacts, estimates and projects in the background so they are there when the signal drops. It skips this on a very slow connection or when your device's data-saver mode is on.
- Your catalog. While you are online the app keeps a copy of your material and labor catalog on your device. You do not need to download it yourself. The Generate rough estimate now option below uses it.
Starting an Estimate
When you submit a new estimate from the New Estimate wizard and there is no connection, a You're offline window opens with these choices:
- Generate rough estimate now — Uses your catalog pricing only, with no AI analysis and no photo processing, and you can refine the estimate later when you are online. This choice appears only when your catalog is already saved on the device. Without it the window says rough estimates are unavailable until you connect and your catalog is saved.
- Save and estimate later — Keeps your inputs on this device. The full AI-powered estimate is not generated automatically: submit the estimate again once you are back online. The saved copy also appears under Review (see below), where you can discard it after you have submitted the estimate again.
- Cancel — Closes the window without doing either.
Changes Saved on Your Device and Sent Later
While you are offline, these changes are saved on your device. They are sent for you in about 30 seconds at most after the connection returning (or when you next open the app online), and each one is sent only once, even if the connection drops in the middle:
- An activity you log on a contact with + Activity, and a new change order. A note added with + Note is not saved offline, and neither is a voice memo (its audio has to upload first).
- A few quick edits to a contact or project: the needs-attention flag, a social or website link on a contact, and removing a contact from a project. An edit is sent only if the record has not changed since you opened it. If a teammate changed it in the meantime, the edit is not sent over theirs: you see Resolve at the bottom left and choose which version to keep. Several edits you make to the same record while offline are sent one after another and do not conflict with each other.
A saved change is sent only for the person and the company that made it. If you sign out or switch to another company, it waits until you are back.
Everything else cannot be saved offline: deleting or archiving a record, sending an email, text message or proposal, taking a payment, anything that uses AI, a new contact, a new project, a note on a project, and editing an existing note. The app shows an error, so you know to do it again once you are connected. Photos, documents and audio are not saved either (see below).
Changes That Need Your Attention
A small notice appears at the bottom left of the screen when a change you made offline was not sent:
- “N changes failed to send” — the server refused the change, for example because the contact it belongs to no longer exists, or your plan needs attention. The change stays in the list with the reason. Fix the cause, then click Retry failed to send it again. A change that was held up by your plan or by access is sent again exactly as before, so it cannot be created twice.
- “N changes not sent” — the change is not safe to send on its own. Click Review to see each one, with a short piece of its text and why it was not sent. Click Discard to remove a change you no longer want. Two kinds can also be sent from here: an edit saved without the record's version (Send anyway, which may overwrite newer changes), and a new record whose first try was more than 20 hours ago (Send anyway after checking — check that it is not already there first, because if that first try did reach the server it could be created twice).
- “N conflicts to resolve” — the record changed on the server meanwhile. Click Resolve and choose which version to keep.
A change leaves this list only when it has been sent or when you discard it. Changes saved on this device by an earlier version of the app were never sent and are never sent automatically: they appear under Review without their text, and can only be discarded. Make the change again.
What Requires an Internet Connection
Some features rely on real-time server processing and cannot function offline:
| Feature | Why it needs internet |
|---|---|
| AI estimate generation | The AI processes your input on Google Cloud servers (Vertex AI) — not on your device. |
| Sending proposals | Email delivery requires server access. |
| Accepting payments | Payment processing goes through Stripe in real time. |
| Uploading photos, files and audio | Files are uploaded straight to the server, not queued. Offline, the upload fails and nothing is saved — take or choose the file again once you are back online. For a voice memo, the app says nothing was saved and the recording you just made stays on screen so you can save it when you reconnect. |
| Seeing your team's latest changes | Anything a teammate adds or changes while you are offline shows up only after you reconnect. |
| Photo analysis | AI document processing requires server connectivity. |
| QuickBooks sync | Requires a live connection to the QuickBooks API. |
Features that use AI processing — including photo-based estimates, AI visualization, and voice assistant — require an active internet connection. These features cannot be used offline. Plan your AI-powered work for when you have reliable connectivity.
Connection Messages
ContractorScope AI does not show a banner when you go offline. It shows short messages that fade away on their own:
- When your connection drops: You're offline. An activity logged with + Activity on a contact, a new change order and a few quick edits (flags, links, linked contacts) are saved on this device and sent when you reconnect. Everything else can't be saved offline, including notes and voice memos.
- When it returns while changes are waiting: Back online! Syncing 2 changes… (the number is however many changes are waiting)
- When every waiting change has been sent: All changes synced. You only see this when nothing was left over.
- When some were not sent, a message says how many were sent, how many were not, and where to look (Review or Resolve, bottom left). Changes that are still waiting for the connection are tried again automatically.
These messages reflect your device's network connectivity, not server availability. If you have a signal but the server is temporarily unreachable, they will not tell you. This is rare but can happen during brief server maintenance windows.
A very poor or degraded connection (for example, a 2G or slow-2G signal) is also treated as offline, both by the messages above and by the New Estimate wizard's save-for-later flow, even if your device still shows a signal. A weak connection can leave you "connected" but effectively unable to reach the server, so the estimate wizard offers to save your work for later instead of risking a hung or failed submission on a technically-connected-but-unusable link. Data-saver / low-data mode does not trigger this — that setting only affects background prefetching, so you can keep it on without being routed offline. This degraded-connection check depends on your browser reporting connection quality, which most Android/Chrome browsers do; Safari (iPhone/iPad/Mac) and Firefox do not expose this today, so on those browsers this particular signal-quality check does not apply.
A deeper check — one that actually tries to reach ContractorScope AI's servers, instead of only reading your browser's self-reported connection quality — is wired into the New Estimate wizard's save-for-later gate on every browser, including Safari and Firefox. Before offering to save your work for later, the wizard makes a bounded (a few seconds) real network attempt to reach the server. Only a genuine transport failure — the request never got a response at all — counts as offline; a response from the server, even an error response (for example, a brief rate-limit or a mid-deploy hiccup), still counts as reachable and does not trigger save-for-later, since it proves the server actually answered. This closes the Safari/Firefox gap noted above for a true connectivity loss, because it does not depend on the browser exposing connection-quality reporting.
Troubleshooting
A Change You Made Offline Is Missing
If you reconnected and a change you made offline is not on the record:
- Look at the bottom left of the screen. If a notice is there, click Review or Resolve: the change was kept and tells you why it was not sent.
- Check that your internet connection is stable — try loading a webpage. Waiting changes are tried again about every 30 seconds.
- Reload the page and open the record again.
- If the change is still missing and nothing is listed, make it again while you are online, and contact support if it keeps happening (see Getting Help).
Data Is Stale or Missing Offline
If a contact, estimate or project you expected to see offline is not there, it was not saved on your device before you lost the connection. To avoid this, open the records you will need while you still have a strong signal, before you leave for the job site.
Next Steps
- My Jobs — The early technician job list.
- Dispatch Board — The early, read-only view of jobs and technicians.
- Notes & Files — Creating notes and attaching files.