Work Order Management in EZRentOut lets you take control of all the tasks and maintenance work at your rental store. This keeps your business organized and ensures that no customers are left hanging because of faulty rentals.
You can use this feature to create Work Orders, add Checklists and Work Logs, and then assign the Work Orders to employees to track and optimize performance.
To start off, you need to enable Work Orders from under Settings → Add Ons.
If you’d like your Staff Users to be able to create Work Orders, check the checkbox shown above. Click ‘Update’ to save settings.
You can then access the module from the homepage navigation bar on the left. This takes you to the Work Orders listing page, which lays out important information:
1. Work Orders at a Glance
The Work Orders listing page is categorized into the four possible Work Order states (more on that below). You can add filters to each of the pages, sorting them based on who is set as the Assignee or Reviewer, the creation or starting date, the percentage of work completed, and other criteria. You can customize columns to include any details you’d like, such as priority, reviewer, or time spent on a task. Work Orders can also be easily exported as a CSV for further analysis:
2. Work Order States
A Work Order passes through various states throughout its lifetime:
- Open: The Work Order is still a draft. You can add to it and edit all aspects of it. This corresponds to the ‘Pending’ tab on the Work Order listing page.
- In Progress: This is when the Work Order has been formally started by a user, corresponding to the ‘Started’ tab on the Work Order listing page.
- Review Pending: This state only occurs if you check the following checkbox when creating a Work Order:
If approval is required, a user will click the ‘End Work Order’ button when they are through with their tasks. The Work Order will not be moved to the ‘Complete’ state as with regular Work Orders, though. The Reviewer will have to click the ‘Review and Mark Complete’ button on their end to formally close the Work Order. Until the Reviewer does that, the Work Order will be in the ‘Review Pending’ state, corresponding to the same tab on the Work Order listing page.
Note: In our older versions of the Work Order module, Assignees and Reviewers could ‘check off’ Work Order sub-tasks. We have replaced this with a more robust Work Order level approval system.
- Completed: This state occurs when a Work Order has been formally ended by the relevant user. It corresponds to the ‘Completed’ tab on the Work Order listing page. While you can still add Work Logs to completed Work Orders, you cannot edit other details.
The various stages that a Work Order will pass through are explained below:
3. Work Orders Types
You can choose from two main types of Work Orders when you first go to create a Work Order:
- Maintenance Work Orders: These Work Orders can only be generated for assets. What sets them apart from General Work Orders is that they can trigger a maintenance event for assets. We’ll explain more below. You can also read our blog to learn more about maintenance events in EZRentOut.
- General Work Orders: These Work Orders can be created against multiple components, including Assets, Asset Stock, Location, Vendor, Group, and more. These do not trigger maintenance events.
We’ll learn more about these in the next section.
4. Work Order Elements
Click ‘Add Work Order’ to get things started. You can then fill in the basic details for your Work Order.
4.1. Basic Fields
The two Work Order types – Maintenance and General – include the following common fields:
Summary (formerly called ‘Title’): You can give titles to your Work Orders here. These can be used to bring up Work Orders via the search bar at the top of the page.
Description: Details can be added here. Images attached to a Work Order can be embedded into this description and printed out directly as part of the Work Order Printout. To do this, just add {{image_name.png}} to a description.
Priority: Choose whether this task is high or normal priority.
Assigned to: You can assign a work order to any member within your User Listing.
Reviewer: The person set to review this Work Order. This can be a Staff User or an Admin.
Cost: Like all other fields, this can be updated as the task progresses.
4.2. Time Management
The next section allows you to add the Expected Start Date and Due Dates of the Work Order.
If a work order repeats at regular intervals (for maintenance tasks that need to take place every month, for example), you can specify that by checking the ‘This is a recurring work Order’ option:
By filling out the duration between repetitions and the starting dates for this cycle, a new Work Order will automatically pop up at the intervals you defined. It will be an exact copy of the older Work Order and will be in the ‘Not Started’ state until someone formally starts it. To stop recurrence for a Work Order, uncheck this option from the last active Work Order. This will prevent the system from firing recurring Work Orders for this in the future.
4.3. Associated Items
The third section of the Work Order page will change depending on whether you picked a Maintenance or General Work Order. Let’s go through both of these in turn.
4.3.1. Maintenance Work Orders
This is the default Work Order type. Since it is used for maintenance, you can add Assets that need maintenance to it:
Simply type in the name or Asset# (following the # symbol, as shown in the picture above) of the asset you want to associate with the Work Order.
The ‘Make Assets Unavailable During Maintenance’ checkbox will trigger a maintenance event for all these assets when the Work Order is Started by a user. When it is Completed by a user, the maintenance will similarly be marked Complete. This means you can manage both Work Orders and Asset Maintenance simultaneously!
You can also pick the Service Type, choosing between Standard, Repair, Warranty, or Other.
Please note that while you can create a Maintenance Work Order without selecting an Assignee, you will not be able to start it unless you choose one.
4.3.2. General Work Orders
The General Work Order allows you to add all sorts of components to your Work Order. Please note that this does not trigger maintenance events.
You can add ‘components’ to General Work Orders. These can include all sorts of elements that will be a part of that Work Order, including Assets, Groups, Locations, Users, Asset Stock, etc.
To add an item, simply select the appropriate component type (such as an Asset). You can then type the name or ID of the relevant item and click the ‘Add’ button when it shows up. In the example below, we wanted to carry out a general inspection on all items from the Group ‘Snow Rentals’, in the Location ‘Annapolis’, and associated to the Vendor ‘Weirhause’:
This gives you so much flexibility in the kinds of Work Orders you can create and escalate. If you’re using a fixed bundle of tools on a maintenance task, for example, you can add it to a cart and associate it to a Work Order component for quick reference. As another example, you could list all the warehouse locations where equipment needs to be audited, and check them off as audits get completed.
Note: All Work Orders created prior to the introduction of the new ‘Maintenance’ and General’ Work Order Types have been classified as General Work Orders. In addition, any ‘description’ level components in the older version of our Work Order module have been removed from the system. We recommend the new Checklist feature as a more effective place to add these descriptions.
4.4. Checklists
You can also add Checklists to your Work Orders. These allow you to create lists that can be attached to Work Orders. Assignees can then respond to these lists as they continue working on specific tasks.
Multiple Checklists can be associated with a single Work Order. You can find them by clicking the Checklists tab on the Work Order listing page highlighted below:
Click ‘Add Checklist’ on the right to get started. Here, you can add basic details to your Checklist. You can then click the ‘Add New Line’ button to create your Checklist:
Each line item will have a Title and a Type. The Type can be of four kinds, depending on the line item itself. If you want users to detail how many items they inspected, for example, a Number Field would be useful. If you want them to answer whether or not they completed a specific task, a Boolean would be more helpful:
Next, you just click ‘Done’. Each Checklist will show a list of all associated Work Orders below it.
Checklists may be edited and deleted. However, if a Checklist has been associated with a Work Order, you will only be able to edit its name and description, and not any of its line items.
Below, you can see how we’re associating the Checklist we just created to the Maintenance Work Order we drew up earlier. Like all similar fields, you can pull these Checklists up by their name or number, click ‘Add’, and you’re done.
Once added, you can view the Checklists right from the associated Work Order. As the buttons below show, you can update Checklist responses on a Work Order that’s in an ‘In Progress’ state, delete the Checklist, or expand and collapse the Checklist according to your preference:
New Checklists can also be added directly from a Work Order detail page.
5. Work Logs
Users can also add and update Work Logs to Work Orders. To do this, click the ‘Add Work Log’ button on the right of a Work Order Details page. You can then add relevant details here, including the hours worked, the details of the tasks performed, the dates during which the work was done, and more:
You can view the Work Log history at the bottom of a Work Order detail page. These can also be edited:
6. Updating Work Orders
Admins can change the Assignee, Reviewer and other details by editing a Work Order at any time. However, there are some details that can only be updated by the Assignee. While a Work Order is still in Progress, Assignees can edit them to include details such as the percentage of the task completed or the cost.
7. Alerts and Reminders
You can keep tabs on what everyone is doing by ‘Watching’ a Work Order. This sends automated alert emails when the status or Assignee changes, or when a Work Order is due. This can be toggled on and off by clicking ‘Watch’ or ‘Un-watch’ on the right side of the Work Order detail page as you see fit.
Admins can also send email reminders to Assignees manually by clicking the ‘Send Reminder’ button. This can help keep them accountable or furnish them with details as the task is in progress.
8. History Log
The ‘History’ button on the right allows you to see the Work Order’s history trail and any changes that have been made to a Work Order since it was created. This includes changes in Reviewers, for example, or simply a change of state such as a Work Order going from ‘In Progress’ to ‘Completed’.
You can also run the Work Orders report to glean insights into worker productivity and answer critical questions relating to performance and process optimization.
And that’s all you need to know about work order management software in EZRentOut! The ability to link Work Orders, Users, Locations and Assets all under one system makes this a great tool for rental businesses hoping to bolster accountability and lower maintenance overheads.
Have feedback for us?
For feedback, questions, and queries, drop us an email at support@ezo.io.
