# Scan a data plate instead of typing it

Source: https://help.mucka.ai/gas-certs/scan-a-data-plate
Category: Certificates
Last updated: 2026-09-03

> Photograph the badge on a boiler, an air con unit, a burner, a cylinder or an oil tank and Mucka fills in the make, model and serial for you. The same photo goes onto the job, so you are not taking it twice. It only fills what it can actually read.

Serial numbers are the worst part of a certificate. They are long, they are printed small, they are usually behind the unit, and getting one digit wrong makes the paperwork wrong. So anywhere a certificate asks for a make, model and serial, there is a **Scan** button above the fields.

Tap it, photograph the plate, and Mucka fills in what it can read.

## What it reads

| Plate | What comes back |
|---|---|
| **Gas appliance** badge | Make, model, serial, GC number, appliance type |
| **Air con unit** rating plate | Make, model, serial, unit type, nominal cooling and heating in kW |
| **Air con outdoor unit** plate (on the refrigerant circuit) | The refrigerant and the factory charge in kg |
| **Oil boiler** plate | Make, model, serial, appliance type |
| **Oil burner** plate | Burner make, model and type |
| **Unvented cylinder** badge | Make, model, serial, capacity |
| **Oil tank** label | Make, tank type, serial, capacity, OFCERT licence number |

On an oil appliance there are **two** scan buttons on the card: one above the boiler details and one above the burner details. That is because the burner bolted into the boiler carries its own plate, usually on the other side of it, and you are stood in front of one or the other.

Either button reads either plate. Mucka works out whether it is looking at the boiler or the burner and fills in that half of the card, so a Riello burner never ends up recorded as the make of the boiler — and if you tap the nearer button and photograph the other plate, the details still go in the right fields.

## The photo goes onto the job too

You do not have to take it twice.

When a scan reads cleanly, the same photograph is filed to the job the certificate came from, so it turns up in that job's photos alongside anything else your engineer added. The plate, the burner badge, the analyser screen — they end up on the record without a second trip round the back of the boiler. The form tells you when it has landed: **Photo saved to the job**.

Two things worth knowing.

If the plate could not be read, the photo is **not** filed. That one is about to be retaken, and three blurry attempts on the job helps nobody. Retake it and the good one goes on.

And if the certificate was not started from a job — you opened a blank one from the Certificates page — there is no job to file it to, so nothing happens. Start the certificate from the job and you get it.

## What it will not do

**It never guesses.** If a line is scuffed, faded or out of focus, that field comes back empty rather than filled with something that looks about right. A serial number that is nearly correct is worse than a blank one, because nobody goes back to check it.

**It never fills in a reading you are supposed to take.** An air con plate prints the supply voltage and the fuse rating; a cylinder badge prints its design pressures. Mucka deliberately ignores all of them. Those fields are what you measured on site, and a certificate that quietly reports the manufacturer's figure as your measurement is not a record of anything.

**It never overwrites the whole card.** Anything you have already typed stays put unless the plate genuinely carries that field.

Everything it fills in is editable. Check it against the plate before you approve — the certificate is your signature, not Mucka's.

## It needs signal

This is the one part of a certificate that does not work offline. Reading a photograph happens at Mucka's end, so in a cellar or a plant room the button says **Needs signal — type it in by hand**, which is exactly what to do. Everything else on the certificate carries on working with no bars at all.

It is not queued for later on purpose: a scan that landed twenty minutes after you signed the certificate would rewrite fields on a record you had already approved.