Work order management: what a full work order holds and when a simple ticket is enough

What a work order is

A work order, or WO, is the formal instruction for a job. It is not the notice that something is failing: it is the decision, already taken, to go and repair or inspect it. It comes from three sources:

• From a fault. Someone says the loading-bay door will not come down, the person in charge validates it and turns it into a corrective order.
• From the plan. The calendar says the boiler is due this month, and the software raises the preventive order without anyone asking.
• From an improvement. Replacing the warehouse light fittings or putting up an awning: jobs that fix nothing broken, yet also use hours and materials.

Between the need arising and the job being signed off, the order changes status: requested, approved, scheduled, in progress, completed and reviewed. Managing work orders is, at heart, watching that none gets stuck on one of those steps.

What a full work order system holds

A full order is a record with a good many more boxes than a report. The norm in a product of this kind:

• The asset. Which machine or installation is being worked on, linked to its record in the inventory.
• The task. Description, priority and, for an inspection, the checklist to go through.
• The schedule. Which technician goes, on what day and how many hours are estimated.
• The materials. Spare parts and consumables used, which the software deducts from stock.
• The hours. Actual labour time, per technician.
• The costs. The sum of labour, materials and outside services for that job.
• The signatures. That of the technician who finishes and that of whoever signs it off, sometimes the client.
• The history. Each closed order is added to the life of the asset, and that is where indicators such as MTBF come from.

All of that together is the core of a CMMS. The acronym, and what is sold under it, has its page in CMMS software.

Full work order or fault ticket

The fault ticket is the order's plain relative. It records what is happening, where, who said so, whose job it is and what stage it is at. No spare parts, no hours. Side by side:

When a business with premises needs full work orders

It does not depend on the size of the premises but on how work is done inside. Full orders pay off when:

• You have full-time technicians of your own and their week has to be shared out.
• There is a spare-parts store and you want to know what gets used and where.
• Maintenance is charged on to a third party: a tenant, a residents' association, the client of a service contract.
• You want to decide whether to repair or replace by looking at what each asset has accumulated.
• A contract or an audit calls for the signed approval of every job.

On that ground you need to look at maintenance products in the full sense: the most often cited, in best CMMS; those for people who maintain other owners' buildings, in facility management software; and the overall picture, in maintenance software.

When a ticket is enough

On a good share of premises the full order is too big, and a system that asks for more data than anyone will write ends up empty. A ticket is enough when:

• Repairs are done by outside companies that already hand over their own job sheet with parts and time. That document is your record of the job, and copying it into software adds nothing.
• The pain is that reports evaporate: they are mentioned at the bar or in a group and nobody knows whether they are under way.
• Whoever coordinates maintenance has other duties too and is not going to plan technicians' diaries.
• You care about how long it takes to respond and to resolve, more than breaking down each repair.

For that case there are two sister pages: fault management software, on the report and how it is shared out by trade, and maintenance request software, on the way in. Anyone who would rather start on paper has a model in the fault report template.

Six questions for a work order software demo

• Who can create a request? And what they need for it: a login, an app, training.
• How many fields are compulsory to close? The more there are, the better the data on paper and the fewer orders closed in practice.
• How does the technician work in the basement? Ask what happens when there is no signal.
• How does an outside company get in? If it has to register in your software, work out how many will.
• Which reports come out on day one? And which need something configured first.
• What happens to the order nobody touches? Ask to see the alert, not to have it described.

Where Bedel fits, and what it does not do

It is worth saying plainly: Bedel makes no work orders and is not a CMMS. What it produces is a fault ticket, the right-hand column of the table. It does not note materials, count labour hours, work out costs or collect signatures.

An example of what it does do. The shop assistant opens up and the shutter stops halfway. She sends a photo to the business's WhatsApp. Bedel creates the ticket, gives it a number and a time, and forwards it to the locksmith the shop has listed for that kind of fault, who reads it on his own WhatsApp without downloading anything. When he replies that he will call round that morning, the assistant is told. Had it been something urgent at night, the on-call mobile would have rung. And if the set deadline goes by with no reply, the person above finds out. In the end three times are kept, reported, accepted and closed, and they export to Excel along with every other ticket.

Nor does it keep an equipment inventory or file inspection certificates. It does not connect to other software: if you already work with a work order system, Bedel can gather the reports that never reach it today, but the handover is manual, through the Excel file. Each site is one account with its own number, with no shared screen. And the public does not open tickets: reports come from whoever is on the team list. Data is stored in the European Union. The whole workflow is in incident management on WhatsApp.