How sellers prepare listing documents

A listing without documents is a slow listing. Buyers in industrial equipment expect inspection reports, ownership papers and service history before they get serious. This article is the seller's playbook for attaching, organising and protecting that paperwork on Haubot.

Step 1 — Plan the document set before you upload

Skim what you have. Group it by what a buyer actually needs:

• Showroom-grade: spec sheets, brochures, generic manuals — fine for everyone.
• Verified: inspection reports, service history, photos of serial numbers — fine for signed-in users, but you may want to know who's reading them.
• Sensitive: ownership/title, financial documents, export paperwork, anything proprietary — only for serious buyers who request access.
• Internal: drafts, your team's notes, anything you don't want any buyer to see.

Each bucket maps to an access level: Public, Sign-in required, Approval required, Internal only. If you don't know which bucket a document belongs to, default to a stricter level. You can always lower it later; raising it after a buyer has the file is harder.

Step 2 — Attach files at listing creation OR after

Two pathways:

• At create. When you submit a new listing, the form has a vault uploader. Upload, set category and access for each file, submit. The vault is created with the listing.
• After. On the dashboard listings page, click the vault icon next to your listing (it shows a badge if there are pending access requests). The Files section has an "Add files" button.

Either way, the vault accepts a strict whitelist of types: PDF, DOCX, XLSX, CSV, TXT, JPG, PNG, WEBP, HEIC, MP4, MOV, WEBM, ZIP. Macro-enabled Office files (.doc, .xls, .docm, .xlsm) are deliberately rejected — they're a frequent attack vector and the modern equivalents (.docx, .xlsx) cover the same use case.

Step 3 — Set categories and titles

Each file gets a category from a fixed list (Inspection reports, Ownership documents, Service history, Invoices, Export documents, Technical documents, Manuals, Serial-number photos, Videos, Other, Internal notes). Categories drive how files are grouped on the buyer-facing page — buyers scan by category, not by random filename.

Titles are optional but help. If you set a title (e.g., "2024 inspection — Hong Kong"), buyers see that as the file's main label and the original filename appears as a small subtitle. If you don't, Haubot prettifies the original filename automatically (report-fax-to-49895143777.pdf becomes Report Fax To 49895143777, which is better than nothing but worse than a real title).

Step 4 — Choose access levels deliberately

Quick reference:

When buyers request access to an Approval-required file, you'll see the request in the dashboard's Access control panel. Approve with optional expiry (7 days, 30 days, or no expiry) or deny with optional reason. Both decisions are logged.

Step 5 — Lock a snapshot when the documents are right

Once you've got the document set in shape — usually right before publishing the listing, or when a serious buyer is asking detailed questions — lock it.

A snapshot is a hash-verified record of exactly which documents were attached and what they said, on which date. Even if you later edit or remove files, the snapshot stays. This is the artefact you'd reach for in a dispute six months later.

You don't strictly have to do this manually for first publish — Haubot creates an AUTO_ON_FIRST_PUBLISH snapshot automatically (Seller-only visibility by default). But subsequent meaningful changes deserve their own manual snapshot with a clear title and reason.

You choose snapshot visibility:

• Seller only — you and Haubot staff. Use for internal records or pre-publish drafts.
• Buyer summary — buyers see "Documents locked on Apr 25, 2026" with a hash but no file list. Use when you want to advertise a sealed record without disclosing what's in it.
• Buyer full — buyers see the file list (still filtered to their access level) and can download a buyer-filtered package ZIP. Use when transparency is the differentiator.

You can change visibility later without affecting the snapshot's hash.

Step 6 — Maintain the vault during the listing's life

While the listing is live, expect:

• Buyers requesting access. Reply within 48 hours; the dashboard shows pending counts on the listing row.
• Document corrections. Replace a file (delete + add, or use the Replace flow) when you have a new version. The replaced row is soft-deleted but stays in any snapshot it was part of.
• Adding new documents. Especially after inspections or as paperwork ships through customs. New files are added to the live vault — they appear as ADDED in any future Compare-with-current diff against an old snapshot.

If you delete by mistake, soft-deleted files are listed under the "Show deleted" toggle and can be restored.

Step 7 — Use the audit log when you need it

The audit log records every meaningful operation on the vault: uploads, edits, deletes, downloads, access requests, approvals, denials, snapshot creations, integrity verifications, package exports, visibility changes. It includes IP addresses and user agents. Use it when you need to show "who did what when" — to a partner, to a regulator, or to yourself when you're trying to remember.

Bad habits to avoid

• Don't dump every PDF as Public. That's the same as putting them on a public website.
• Don't put a sensitive document at Sign-in required and hope nobody downloads it. Approval required is exactly for that case.
• Don't repeatedly recreate snapshots after every minor edit. Each snapshot is a moment in time; one per meaningful checkpoint is plenty.
• Don't manually edit the database to "fix" snapshot rows. That breaks integrity verification permanently. Use Compare to surface the truth and create a new snapshot.

If in doubt, How buyers verify documents is a useful read from the other side — knowing what the buyer sees helps you decide what to disclose.