Short answer

Use Inspection when the work is "look at it, check condition, pass or fail" — a playground swing check, a defibrillator inspection, a tree pruning review. Use Job when the work is "do something to it, capture data, mark complete" — emptying a bin, cleaning equipment, cutting grass, recording bin fullness. At routine creation there is no default — you have to pick one explicitly on every row before the routine will save.

One consequence worth knowing up front: the purpose-built compliance checklists (Legionella / water-outlet, CO alarm, fire alarm, fire extinguisher, playground condition, etc.) live on Inspections, not Jobs. So if a check is really an inspection — a weekly fire-alarm test, a monthly Legionella check — set it up as an Inspection or you won't be able to attach the right checklist.

Detail

The two task types share the same skeleton (asset, due date, assignees, completion record) but differ in intent and downstream behaviour:

Inspection

  • Purpose: assess condition; record a pass/fail/condition reading.
  • Standard outcomes: Passed, Failed, Done.
  • A Failed inspection is the natural origin of a defect — see How does the defect workflow work — from a failed inspection to resolution?.
  • Form templates: condition checklists (Swing Check, Spring Rider Check, Visual Inspection for Outdoor Asset, Simple Checklist).
  • Examples: weekly playground checks, monthly tree inspections, AGAR-required visual inspections, RoSPA cycles.

Job

  • Purpose: do work; record what was done.
  • Standard outcomes: Done, Cancelled.
  • Form templates often capture quantitative data (bin fullness, cuttings collected, materials used).
  • Examples: daily bin empty, fortnightly grass cut, quarterly clean, weekly litter pick.

When you create a routine, the type starts empty and is mandatory, so the choice is always deliberate. For bin rounds, cleaning routines, grass cuts, litter picks — anything operational — choose Job. For playground checks, tree inspections, fire-extinguisher checks, defibrillator pad expiries — choose Inspection. Set it on the first row and copy it down to the rest rather than working through every row by hand.

Watch-outs

  • Inspections that always pass are noise. If a council has weekly "inspections" that are really "did the operative visit the asset" without any condition assessment, they're really jobs. Switch the type.
  • Jobs don't fail in the same way inspections do. If the work is "clean the equipment" and the operative finds the equipment broken, that's a defect raised separately — the job itself either gets done or doesn't. Don't try to track defects through the Job/Done outcome.
  • Some routines naturally split. A daily bin round (Job) might co-exist with a weekly bin condition inspection (Inspection) on the same bins. Two routines, two types.
  • Once a routine is created, the type is fixed for that routine. If you set up a Job routine but realise it should be Inspections, the cleanest fix is to create the right one and stop the wrong one. This bites hardest on compliance rounds: build a weekly Legionella, CO alarm, fire alarm and extinguisher round as Jobs and none of the compliance checklists are available to it, so the whole routine has to be rebuilt as Inspections.
  • A checklist only appears if the asset's type is right. Checklists are mapped to asset types, so even on an Inspection you'll only see a relevant checklist if the asset is filed under the matching type. If nothing shows, check the asset type first. A common version of this: an asset called "Smoke alarms x 3" filed under the Roof asset type will never offer an alarm checklist, because the type is what the checklist maps to, not the name. (Related: one asset covering several physical items — "Smoke alarms x 3" — is usually better split into one asset per item so each gets its own check and record.)