Work Orders

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When you open a work order, you create a new work order to deal with corrective maintenance.

Work orders can be based on existing work requests. If so, MainBoss copies information from the work request into the new work order so that you don't have to type everything again.
Work orders can also be created on their own, without a previous work request. In this case, you start by typing in the sort of information that usually appears in a work request, then you add more information (such as the personnel who will be assigned to the work, the materials you expect to use, and so on).

While creating the original work order, you often estimate the labor and materials that will be required for the job. You also provide information for the people who will do the work: a description of the problem, how to obtain access to the work area, and so on. When all the relevant information has been entered, you typically print off the work order and hand it to the personnel who have been assigned to the job.

When you close a work order, you indicate that the work has been finished. Typically, you also fill in details of the job: how much time was actually taken (as opposed to the initial estimates), what materials were actually used, and so on.

Note: Earlier versions of MainBoss forced you to discard your original labor and materials estimates—you had to replace the estimates with actual values once the job was done. This version of MainBoss lets you record the actual values, while retaining your original estimates. This makes it easier to compare the estimates to actual values.

Typically, you close work orders using the work order browser. For more information, see Browsing Work Orders.

The work order browser also lets you void a work order. This means that you cancel the work order, whether it is open or closed. If the work order was open, any materials that were put on reserve for the work order are taken off reserve again. For more information on voiding work orders, see Browsing Work Orders.

Note: When you void a work order, MainBoss does not completely delete the work order and its information. Instead, MainBoss moves the work order to a list of voided work orders. You can examine this list using the work order browser.