A work order is a documented instruction to carry out a specific maintenance job. It records what needs doing, on which asset, by whom, and by when, and once complete it captures what was actually done, the parts and time used, and the cost. It is the record of a single piece of work.
Work orders come from two directions. Some are planned, generated from a preventive maintenance schedule when a service falls due. Others are reactive, raised when someone reports a fault. Either way, the work order is what turns a need into tracked, accountable action, and its completed record is what builds an asset’s maintenance history.
Work order management is the process of raising, prioritising, assigning, tracking, and closing maintenance work orders. Good work order management ensures every job is captured, the right jobs are done first, the risk of work being forgotten is reduced, and every completed job leaves a record.
Without a managed process, jobs live in people’s heads, on scraps of paper, and in email, so work is duplicated, forgotten, or done in the wrong order. A managed process gives everyone one list, one priority order, and one place to record what happened. That is where maintenance either holds together or unravels.
A work order moves through five stages: raised, prioritised and assigned, carried out, recorded, and closed. The recorded stage is the one most often skipped and the most valuable, because it turns completed work into a usable maintenance history.
Skip the recording step and you keep the equipment running but lose the data that would have explained why it keeps failing.
The core of good work order tracking: one shared, current list that everyone works from, clear priorities, and a discipline of recording completion. Every job is visible, its status is obvious, and nothing depends on a single person’s memory.
Prioritise work orders by the consequence of not doing them, not by who asked first. A safety-critical repair outranks a cosmetic one. A job on a production-critical asset outranks one on a spare. A clear, shared priority scheme stops the loudest request winning by default.
Most teams use a simple scale: safety, critical, routine, and low. The value is not the labels but the shared understanding. Everyone knows a safety job jumps the queue and a cosmetic one waits. Without that, prioritisation happens informally and inconsistently, which is how critical work ends up behind trivial jobs simply because the trivial job was reported more insistently.
Every work order should be tied to the asset it relates to, so the completed job becomes part of that asset’s permanent maintenance history. Over time that record shows which assets cost the most to keep running and which are candidates for replacement. Keeping that record reliable is covered in our guide to linking maintenance to asset records.
A CMMS raises, assigns, and tracks work orders in one place, generates them automatically from preventive schedules, and records each completed job against its asset. FMIS equipment maintenance software handles scheduled and reactive work orders in the same system, keeps them tied to the asset record, and reports on status and cost, so the process stays reliable as volume grows.
What is the difference between a work order and a work request?
A work request is a report that something needs attention. A work order is the approved, actionable job that results from it. Not every request becomes a work order, and a single work order can address several related requests.
What should a work order include?
At minimum: the asset, a description of the task or fault, the priority, the assigned person, and the due date. On completion it should also capture the work done, the parts and time used, and any findings, recorded against the asset.
Can you manage work orders on a spreadsheet?
For a small, low-volume operation, yes. The difficulty is keeping it current across a team, linking each job to asset history, and never missing scheduled work. Those are the points at which most teams move to a system.
How should work orders be prioritised?
Prioritise by the consequence of not completing the work. Safety-critical and production-critical assets come first. A simple four-level scheme (safety, critical, routine, low) agreed in advance removes the ambiguity that allows urgent but unimportant jobs to jump the queue.
How does a CMMS improve work order management?
A CMMS gives everyone one shared list, raises planned work orders automatically from the preventive schedule, and records completion against the asset. This reduces the risk of missed jobs and lost history, while giving management visibility of what is open, overdue, and closed without chasing email.
John de Robeck leads new business and partnerships at FMIS, working with organisations to understand asset and equipment maintenance requirements, software fit and related compliance considerations.
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