A work order is the record that authorizes and describes a specific piece of field work: who the customer is, where the job is, what needs doing, who is assigned, when, and what was done. It is the unit your office, your technicians and your accounting all share.
A request becomes a work order once someone decides it will be done. Before that it is a lead, a call or a service ticket.
How to measure work orders
The core fields are customer, site address, problem description, equipment, priority, assigned technician, scheduled window, time on site, parts used and outcome. The two measures most shops track are volume and cycle time.
Work order cycle time = Completed timestamp − Created timestamp
Average it across all work orders closed in a period. Say you closed 300 work orders last month with a combined 1,500 days between creation and completion. Average cycle time is 5 days.
Split that number into two parts to see where the delay sits:
Cycle time = Wait to schedule + Wait for visit + Time to close out
A long wait to schedule is an office problem. A long wait for visit is a capacity problem. A long close-out is a paperwork problem.
Why it matters
The work order is where a return trip is prevented or created. A vague description ("unit not working") sends a technician without the right part or enough time. A clear one (make, model, symptom, photos, access notes) lets the dispatcher match skill, stock and duration before the truck leaves. That shows up later in your first-time fix rate and in the number of truck rolls per job.
Where travel is concerned, the work order's address is the input that decides whether a slot is reachable. A scheduler that reads it at booking time, such as CrewLink checking the drive from the previous job before offering a slot, can only work with an accurate address. The work order management guide covers the full lifecycle.
A common mistake
Closing the work order at "job done" and leaving the outcome blank. Without the parts used, the time on site and what was actually wrong, you lose the data you need for job duration estimates and for the next visit to that site.
Related terms
- Service ticket is the customer request that often precedes a work order.
- Service call is the visit a work order schedules.
- Job costing uses work order data to calculate profit per job.
- Service history is the collection of past work orders at one site.
Common questions
What is the difference between a work order and an invoice?
A work order describes and authorizes the work. An invoice bills for it. Many companies generate the invoice from the completed work order, but they are separate records with separate purposes.
Who creates a work order?
Usually the office: a dispatcher, customer service rep or service manager. Some companies let technicians create follow-up work orders in the field when they find additional work.
Should one work order cover several visits?
It can. Multi-visit jobs often keep one work order with several scheduled visits so that cost and history stay in one place. Track each visit separately so you can count truck rolls accurately.