AHJ electronic reporting: what the third-party filing requirement means for your records
More US jurisdictions now require fire inspection reports to be filed electronically through third-party portals such as The Compliance Engine, with the first mandatory wave in June 2026. What that changes for contractors, what it does not change for building owners, and where the duty actually sits.
By Hovermarks team
Quick answer. A growing number of Authorities Having Jurisdiction now require fire inspection and test reports to be submitted electronically through a third-party portal rather than accepted directly, with The Compliance Engine the most widely used. The first mandatory wave took effect in June 2026 and jurisdictions continue migrating on a rolling basis, each notifying its registered service providers individually. This is a filing requirement placed on whoever submits the report. It does not replace the underlying NFPA record-keeping duty, and it does not change what the building owner has to be able to produce.
If you run inspections for customers in the US, the question of where the report goes has quietly become as important as what is in it. This is what changed, who it lands on, and what it means for the records either side of the filing.
What changed
Historically an inspection report went to the building owner, and the AHJ saw it if they asked. Increasingly the AHJ wants every report filed into a platform it can query, so that the jurisdiction can see which systems are inspected, which are overdue, and which carry open deficiencies, without requesting anything from anyone.
The Compliance Engine, operated by Brycer, is the platform most jurisdictions have adopted for this. Fire marshals notify their registered service providers individually, with letters specifying the transition date for that jurisdiction. The first wave took effect 1 June 2026, and further AHJs have been migrating since.
Two practical consequences for a contractor working in an affected jurisdiction:
- Registration matters financially. Contractors not registered with the platform pay a fee per submission. Registration itself is free, so the fee is avoidable, and for a high-volume shop the difference accumulates.
- Without an integration, filing is re-entry. Inspection data captured in one system has to be re-entered in the portal's format. Reported estimates put this at 30 to 90 minutes of office time per inspection depending on system complexity, which is the real cost rather than the fee.
What it does not change
Worth being precise here, because the filing requirement is often described as though it replaced something.
The NFPA record-keeping duty is unchanged. NFPA 25, NFPA 72, NFPA 10 and NFPA 110 each specify records of the inspection, testing and maintenance performed, with dates, results and the person who performed them, retained per the standard. Filing a report to a portal does not satisfy those obligations; it is a separate act on top of them.
The building owner still needs their own records. The portal is the jurisdiction's view, not the owner's. When an insurer, a purchaser's due diligence, or an incident investigation asks for the inspection history of a specific device, the answer comes from the owner's own records. An owner who assumes the contractor's filings are their record discovers the gap at the point they can least afford it.
Deficiency correction is still the owner's responsibility. A filed report showing an open deficiency is a documented notification, not a resolution. What visibility of that deficiency changes is how quickly someone else can see it has not been closed.
Where the duties actually sit
The distinction that matters, and the one that gets muddled:
| Contractor performing the inspection | Building owner | |
|---|---|---|
| Perform the ITM to the standard | Yes | Ensures it happens |
| Produce the report | Yes | Receives it |
| File to the AHJ portal where required | Usually, per the AHJ letter | Sometimes, where the AHJ places it on the owner |
| Retain records per NFPA | For their own work | For the property, across all contractors |
| Correct deficiencies | Where contracted to | Yes, the duty is theirs |
Whether the filing duty falls on the contractor or the owner is set by the AHJ, not by convention, so the letter from your jurisdiction is the thing to read rather than what a neighbouring county does.
What this means for how you keep records
Three things follow, whichever side of the relationship you are on:
- Records need to be portable. If a report has to be re-entered elsewhere, structured data beats a PDF. Anything that traps the inspection in a document makes every downstream filing a retyping exercise.
- The owner needs a record independent of the contractor. Contractors change. A property's inspection history should not leave with them, and an owner-held asset register is how that is avoided.
- Deficiencies need an owner and a date, not just a mention. Once a deficiency is visible to the jurisdiction, "we told them" is a weaker position than "we told them, here is who owned it and when it closed."
Where Hovermarks fits, and where it does not
Being direct about this, because it decides whether Hovermarks is the right tool for you.
Hovermarks does not file to The Compliance Engine or any other AHJ portal. There is no integration today. If you are a contractor working in a jurisdiction that mandates portal filing, you will be filing through the portal separately, and software that files natively will save you that step. That is a real consideration and worth weighing honestly.
What Hovermarks does is hold the record the standards actually require, per asset, on the owner's side: every device QR-tagged with its own ITM schedule, per-asset inspection history with results and attribution, defects with an owner and a remedy date, tamper-evident certificates anyone can verify at a public URL, and CSV or JSON export so the data moves when you need it to. For building owners, facility teams and in-house maintenance departments, that is the record the portal never held for you anyway.
Neither the software nor the portal makes anyone compliant. Both are places records live. The inspection being adequate, and the deficiency being fixed, stay where the standards put them.
See the fire inspection solution, or build a schedule first with the free NFPA ITM schedule builder.