Photos won’t upload

By the end of this article you’ll know what happened to a photo that isn’t at the office, which cases fix themselves, and the one case where the answer is to take it again.

Symptoms

• Couldn’t upload the photo. Please try again. right after you take it.
• Camera access is off. Turn it on for Wax Stak in your device settings, then try again.
• This job has reached its photo limit. Upgrade your plan to add more.
• Saved. It’ll upload when you reconnect. — and later the office says the photo never arrived.
• The pending count on the bar won’t go to zero.

Likely causes

• No signal when you took it. The photo is saved on the phone and counts toward the bar’s pending number. It goes up on the next sync with a connection — nothing to do.
• The camera is blocked. You said no to the camera permission once, and the phone remembers. The app only ever opens the camera; it never reads your photo library.
• The job is full. Each job holds a number of photos set by your business’s plan — five on the free plan, twenty on the next, no limit above that — before-and-after combined, across everyone on the job. The office can add more by changing plan; the phone can’t.
• A one-off failure. The upload was interrupted mid-way with a signal that came and went. The photo is not queued in that case.
• Refused when it finally went. A photo taken offline is checked by the office when it arrives. If the job filled up in the meantime, or was removed or given to someone else, the office turns it away. The phone tries a few more times and then lets it go — quietly. There’s no message for this yet.
• The phone was signed out or reinstalled first. Signing out and reinstalling both clear the phone, waiting photos included. Sign Out stops to ask when there’s unsent work.

What to do

1. Couldn’t upload the photo. Please try again.? Take it again. If it fails twice on a good signal, note the time for support.
2. The camera message? Open the phone’s settings — Settings → the app → Camera on an iPhone; Settings → Apps → the app → Permissions on Android — turn it on, come back and tap Add photo again.
3. The photo-limit message? Nothing on the phone changes this. Tell the office; they see the same limit on the job and decide whether to change plan.
4. Photo saved offline? Watch the bar. Syncing… then Up to date with the pending count at zero means it went. Leave the app installed and signed in until then.
5. Pending count stuck while online? That’s a sync problem, not a photo problem — see Sync problems: what to check before calling support.
6. Synced clean, count at zero, and the office still doesn’t have it? It was refused on arrival. Open the job, check it isn’t full, and take the photo again.

Good to know

• Photos are shrunk on the phone before they go and stripped of the location and camera details a phone embeds. What the office sees is the picture, nothing else.
• The phone keeps the photos you took this session on the job’s Photos card as a preview. It doesn’t download photos — yours from earlier, or a teammate’s — so an empty card doesn’t mean the office has none.
• There’s no per-photo “waiting” mark. The only sign a photo is still on the phone is the bar’s pending count.
• A completed or canceled job still accepts a photo, so finishing the job first won’t lose one.

Related

• Take and attach photos
• Permissions the app asks for
• Changes made offline: when they reach the office