Creating Planned Maintenance Work Orders for Service Agreements
The Planned Maintenance form is used to create all of the planned work orders for a service agreement. It proposes work orders based on information brought forward from the “Add/Edit Service Agreement” form. This utility makes it easy to generate the planned maintenance visits before closing the “Add Service Agreement” window.
Accessing the Planned Maintenance Form
This form is only opened from the Add/Edit Service Agreement form. To create the planned work orders use the menu button on the Service Agreement form. Click Menu | Create | Planned Maintenance. The “Planned Maintenance” window will appear.
Step-by-Step Planned Maintenance Work Order Creation
- Set a priority for these work orders. Medium is typical for many companies.
- From the Work Order Type selection list, select the appropriate work order type. You should have at least one dedicated work order type for maintenance work that is planned (scheduled).
- In the Description field, enter a description of the work to be performed.
- Using the Assigned To selection list, pick the technician most likely to do this work. You can leave this blank and select someone at a later time.
- Using the Department selection list, select the appropriate department that this service agreement revenue belongs to.
- Check the “Add Service Agreement Notes to Work Order Notes” box if you want the service agreement notes copied to the work orders.
- Tip: The service agreement form includes a Notes form where you can enter detailed notes regarding the service agreement or the work to be performed.
- Click the Auto button to build a list of work orders to create. You will see them listed in the grid at the bottom of the form.
- If any of the created work orders have already been completed, check the “Completed” box so that the software knows they have been completed. They will be marked “Completed” when they are created.
- Change the date of the work orders in the MM/DD/YYYY column. You likely do not know the exact date. Don’t worry, the dates can always be changed later.
- Select the work orders that you wish to create. There are some buttons on the right of the grid to speed this process up.
- Click the OK button to create the work orders. A list form will open that displays the work orders just created. This gives you another opportunity to edit them. These work orders will be listed in the Work Order List, just like any other work orders.
After setting up the Planned Maintenance form and clicking OK, a confirmation window will appear, reporting the successful creation of new work orders. You will then be returned to the “Add Service Agreement” window, where the “Completed” and “Not Completed” fields will display updated information based on the work orders just created. When finished reviewing and editing information, save & close the window.
Field and Button Definitions in the Planned Maintenance Window
The following is an explanation of every label, button, and control found on the Planned Maintenance form.
- Customer: Displays the customer for whom the planned maintenance work orders will be created.
- Service Agreement #: Displays the “serial number” of the customer’s service agreement.
- Planned Visits: Displays the number of planned maintenance visits which come with the service agreement.
- Term (Months): Displays the length of the service agreement in months.
- Term Begins: Displays the starting date of the service agreement.
- Term Ends: Displays the ending date of the service agreement.
- Completed (display): Displays the number of Planned Visits (see above) which may already be complete.
- Not Completed: Displays the number of Planned Visits (see above) which are not yet complete.
- Other: Displays the number of any additional work orders which are covered under the service agreement plan, but not part of the original planned maintenance visits. For example, say that a service agreement customer has two planned work orders; one for May 1st and one for October 1st. If for some reason a work order is created for a covered equipment problem on June 25th, this would be an “Other” work order and be reported here. When creating a work order manually, it can be associated to an existing service agreement by selecting the service agreement from the “Serv Agmt” drop-down list.
- Priority: Used to set a priority of Low, Medium, or High on the planned work orders.
- Work Order Type: Used to select a work order type for the planned visits. It is strongly recommended that this be left at “Planned Maintenance” unless a compelling reason to do otherwise exists.
- Assigned To: Used to select the technician to whom the work orders will be assigned, if known. This field is not mandatory. Leave it blank if it is not known which technician will be assigned the work orders.
- Add Service Agreement Notes to Work Order Notes: Tick this checkbox to have any service agreement notes added to pending work order notes.
- Proposed Work Orders Grid: This area of the Planned Maintenance window displays the work orders proposed by the form. Proposals may be edited as necessary.
- Create Work Order: The Create Work Order column in not titled but lies just left of the “MM/DD/YYYY” column in the proposed work orders grid. When the OK button is clicked, a work order will be created for each ticked checkbox. Any un-ticked proposals will be ignored when the planned maintenance visits are created.
- MM/DD/YYYY (in the grid): Displays the proposed date of each work order to be created. The proposed dates may be edited as necessary. The date of the first work order is always the current date, because the best chance of selling a service agreement to a customer is on-site through a well-trained technician using the service agreement discount as an enticement. See the bullet point “Complete (grid)” below for more details.
- Completed (in the grid): When this checkbox is ticked, the proposed work order will not only be created, but also marked as completed in one step. Well-trained technicians are adept at selling service agreements in the field because they can entice customers with, “a discount on today’s work if you’d like to invest in our ‘XYZ’ service agreement right now). Thus, the customer gets to take immediate advantage of the service agreement discount, and you get a new participant in your service agreement program. Of course the immediate work performed will count as the first planned maintenance visit. This is why the first planned work order in the grid is always proposed with the current date. The Completed checkbox is then used as a time saver. Simply tick the checkbox instead of manually locating the work order in the work order list and taking the steps to mark its status as completed in a separate action.
- OK: Creates the planned maintenance work orders based on the form’s settings, then exits.
- Auto: Builds or resets the proposed work order grid area of the Planned Maintenance window to its originally proposed dates and conditions.
- Exit: Closes the form without creating any planned maintenance work orders.
Help Topics Related to Planned Maintenance and Service Agreements
