A detailed property inspection means hundreds of descriptions. Typing them on a touchscreen is slow; jotting them down on paper means retyping everything afterwards. Voice is by far the fastest way to describe a property — but the resulting text still has to be usable.

Dictating item by item

In Spectalya, dictation is done from the record of the item being described: you record your findings exactly where they need to appear in the report. No long voice memo to split up afterwards: each recording is already in its place.

The audio recording is kept with the inspection. It remains available for review and is included in the export.

AI transcription

Recordings are transcribed automatically by a state-of-the-art speech recognition model. Transcription can be run in one go for the whole inspection, at the end of the visit or back at the office.

Quality depends heavily on two settings that Spectalya handles for you.

The dictation language is known

Rather than letting the model guess the spoken language, Spectalya tells it the dictation language. This detail noticeably improves the result: punctuation, capitalisation and proper nouns are rendered more accurately.

An industry glossary

Property inspection has its own vocabulary: window frames, skirting boards, window breasts, wall tiles, tenant damage, appliance brand names… Spectalya relies on glossaries:

  • a shared Spectalya glossary, continuously expanded;
  • a glossary specific to your organisation (Enterprise plan), for your own terms, abbreviations and recurring corrections.

Glossaries sync automatically with the app.

Dictate in one language, produce the report in another

In Belgium, it is common to dictate in your own language while the report has to be written in the language of the property or the parties. Spectalya distinguishes between:

  • the report language (French, Dutch or English);
  • the dictation language.

When they differ, the transcription is automatically translated into the report language. A French-speaking surveyor can therefore produce a report in Dutch without changing the way they work.

Review, replay, correct

AI can make mistakes: a misheard word, an ambiguous figure. Spectalya therefore includes a dedicated transcription editing step:

  • each transcribed text is reviewed in context;
  • the original recording can be replayed with a single tap, with a 10-second rewind;
  • the text can be corrected and formatted (heading, subheading, bold, italics, centring);
  • if needed, a recording can be re-transcribed.

Both the original and the corrected text are kept and exported: you retain a record of what was said and what was approved.

What this changes in the field

  • Faster: you describe by speaking, with your hands free to take photos or test an appliance.
  • More precise: you can afford more detailed descriptions when they don’t cost any typing.
  • Less office work: no more retyping, just a review.

It is often the feature that wins surveyors over from their very first inspection. To see the whole workflow, read a Spectalya inspection step by step, or try it for yourself.