Work Orders Lifecycle

Work Orders are a key element in any company’s efforts towards  organized labor, operations control, and good service levels for its  clients. From its creation to its closure or archiving, every Work Order  follows a predefined cycle where specific events take place and important information is added and updated.

Though we know that every company has their own workflow (more or
less complex), we want to go overthe very basic steps any Work Order would go through in most businesses.

The basic workflow we’ll go over in this article consists of 5 stages:

Stage 1:

Work Order Creation

Work Orders may be created in three different places in Sweven.

Clicking on Show To will make your note visible to Client, Vendor, or Technician users associated to the Work Order;

Click to see the different options

When creating a Work Order, mandatory fields (which are marked with an
astherisk *) are:

Other important fields for a WO to be complete are

Site

where the job will take placev

Job Description

stating the work to be performed.

Client users you have set up may also create a WO from their session with the New WO menu. They’ll be able to set the Project, Sub Project, Priority, Trade Category, Site, and a description of the problem
all this information will be saved in a new WO that will be listed in your Pipeline as soon as created. WOs created by Client users will be labeled accordingly in the Pipeline.

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Step 2:

Header lines

Recently created Work Orders usually require additional specifics and/or documentation before being serviced. During this stage, you’ll be able to edit and expand on the WO Job Details, add notes with comments and pictures to the WO Notes, attach  documentation (also in the Notes section), and specify the job Deadline, ETA, and contractor to service it.

In order to set a vendor for the Work Order, you can use the Find Vendor feature, which will list available contractors based on the WO Problem Category and proximity to the Site to be serviced. Assign Vendor Self will automatically set your company as the responsible for the WO job.

Once assigned, you’ll need to coordinate the Vendor ETA date with the contractor or the technician assigned. To do that, your WO Deadline and Vendor Deadline dates should  serve as a reference to find the best ETA to perform the service. You can either set the Vendor ETA manually or dispatch the WO to the Vendor, which will notify them via  email and prompt them to set an ETA.

● Set the Vendor ETA By picking a date and saving the Work Order

To Dispatch the WO, you need to have a Vendor assigned and click the Dispatch WO button to save and send. Once dispatched, the WO is ready and scheduled for servicing when the ETA date comes.

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Step 3:

Execution of the task(s)

Work ETA arrives and the technician drives to the site to service your client. All the
necessary information is compiled in the Work Order, which technicians can easily access through Sweven Mobile App.

● Work ETA & Technician An employee or a 3rd party contractor

By logging in to the Mobile App, the technician user will see a list of all WOs assigned to him and will visualize specific WO information, Site details, the Job Description, and any notes you’ve marked as “Show this note to Tech”.

With all this information available, the technician will also be able to add new notes with pictures or videos to detail and expand on the work performed. The technician is also able to change the WO status to reflect pauses and lunch breaks, and to move the WO forward in the workflow when the job is complete.

● These actions are editable in the Owner Settings – Forms Administration – Sub Status
menu

When the WO is completed, the technician will be prompted to add a signature and a brief reference to any materials and extras incurred, information that will be automatically saved as a note in the WO. The WO is then officially complete and ready for the Billing and Invoicing stage.

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Step 4:

Invoicing and Billing

You can keep track and associate your invoices with specific Work Orders through the Billing sections for both your Vendors and Clients. Each one will have it’s own
workflow, which you can edit from Owner Settings – Pipeline Settings.

When creating a new Invoice, you can input the invoice number, a name, issue and expiration dates, as well as attaching documents to it.

● Be it a received invoice you need to cancel or a sent invoice to one of your clients

The Work Order list will help you find and associate the work orders that the invoice pertains.

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Step 5:

Closure / Archive

Header lines help contextualize the form and make it useful for documentation.

Once work is done and all invoices are paid, the cycle is over.

In general, work orders are archived or simply kept in Closed status in case there’s the need to consult them in the future.

It is useful for many companies to perform some assessment and Quality Control activities before a WOs closure to improve processes and make sure the WO is archived with all the right information in it.

Ready to get started?

If you have specific questions about this topic, don’t hesitate to contact us at contact@ecobpm.com

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