What to Include in an
Arborist Report

A 10-tree residential assessment and a 500-tree municipal inventory follow the same structure. Clients expect a complete package — not just raw data, but organized, referenced information they can act on.

Here's what a complete arborist report contains:

Project name, property address, client name, date of inspection, and your credentials (ISA certification number, company info). Include the scope of the assessment — what was inspected, what was excluded, and any limitations.

This seems obvious, but skipping it makes your report look amateur. A one-paragraph scope statement prevents disputes about what you did and didn't assess.

The site plan is the anchor of the report. Every tree gets a numbered marker on the drawing at its approximate location. This is how the client (or the city reviewer) matches tree data to physical trees on the property.

Best practice: Use the actual survey drawing or landscape plan as the base. Don't create a separate sketch — use the same drawing the client is already working from. Number your tree markers to match the spreadsheet rows.

Traditionally, this means printing the plan, hand-marking it with tree numbers, then scanning or photographing the result. The quality varies — hand-drawn circles with tiny numbers on a crumpled field copy don't inspire confidence.

The core data table. One row per tree, with columns for:

Photos organized by tree number. At minimum, one full-tree photo per tree. For trees with notable conditions — cavities, co-dominant stems, decay, root damage, lean — include close-up shots.

The key is organization. A folder of 300 unnamed JPEGs is useless. Photos should be labeled by tree number and type (e.g., "Tree-047-full.jpg", "Tree-047-cavity.jpg") or organized into numbered folders.

This is the most time-consuming part of report assembly if you're doing it manually. Most arborists take photos on their phone, then spend significant time back at the office sorting them into folders.

A written narrative summarizing key findings. How many trees total, general health trends, any high-risk trees requiring immediate attention, and your professional recommendations.

For development projects: which trees can be preserved, which need protection during construction, and which must be removed. For municipal inventories: overall canopy health, maintenance priorities, and replacement planting recommendations.

Keep it actionable. The client doesn't need a botany lecture — they need to know what to do.

State how the assessment was conducted: visual ground-level inspection (Level 1), detailed inspection (Level 2), or advanced assessment with instruments (Level 3). Note any limitations — areas that couldn't be accessed, trees that couldn't be fully inspected, seasonal considerations.

This protects you professionally. If a tree you rated "Fair" fails six months later, your limitations statement documents what you could and couldn't assess at the time.

LogLog's export produces three of the six report components automatically: the annotated site plan (with numbered tree pins), the tree inventory spreadsheet (Excel format), and organized photos (linked to each tree record). All in one ZIP file, ready to attach to your written narrative.

You still write the cover page, summary, and methodology yourself — those require professional judgment. But the data collection, photo organization, and plan annotation are handled in the field, in real time, with zero re-entry.