Digital work order: what changes, what the app must do and how to make the switch
Every evening, the office manager types up the day’s work orders: hours, parts, the name of the person who signed. For two of them she calls the technician, because she cannot read the handwriting. The managing director wants to move to a digital work order, but fears the technicians will not go along with it.
Published by Abdelhay Rahou (opens in a new window)5 November 202610 min read
What is a digital work order?
A digital work order is a work order that the technician fills in on their smartphone or tablet instead of on paper. The app records the hours per step, the parts used, the photos, the report and the customer’s signature. The office sees it as soon as it has been sent and turns it into a report and an invoice without retyping anything.
What belongs on a work order does not change when it goes digital: that checklist is in what goes on a work order. This article is about the switch: what changes for whom, what a work order app must do, and how to make the change without the team reaching for paper again.
Where the paper work order costs time
With paper, the same work is done twice, on site and at the office:
- the technician fills in during the evening what they did not note during the day;
- the office types hours and parts into a spreadsheet or the accounting package;
- for an illegible word, someone calls the technician, who is already at another customer;
- the invoice waits until the folder reaches the office.
What changes with digital work orders, and for whom?
| Who | With paper | With a digital work order |
|---|---|---|
| Technician | Fills it in afterwards, keeps photos on their mobile phone, calls for an address | Marks each step as it happens, takes the photos in the app, has the customer sign on the screen |
| Planner | Only finds out from a phone call whether the work is finished | Sees the status as soon as the app has sent it |
| Office | Retypes and deciphers handwriting | Checks the work order and sends the report |
| Accounts | Chases the hours and parts | Starts from what is already on the intervention |
| Customer | A carbon copy, or nothing | A report as a PDF, without internal notes |
The technician has to let go of one habit: filling everything in at the end of the day. A digital work order only gives correct hours if the steps are marked as they happen. Say so from day one.
Work order app or work order software: what must it do?
The work order app is the part on the technician’s mobile phone. Work order software also covers what the office does with it: checking, sending the report, invoicing, keeping the history. Hold each candidate up against these eight points and ask for a demonstration with one of your own interventions.
| Must be able to | Why | How to test it |
|---|---|---|
| Work without a connection | Basements and boiler rooms often have no signal | Put the phone in flight mode and complete an intervention |
| Take a signature on the screen | The customer confirms the work on site | Have someone sign with a name, and see what happens if the customer is not there |
| Attach photos to the intervention | Before and after show the state of the installation | Take photos and then find them again at the office |
| Record parts | What was used belongs on the invoice and out of stock | Add a part and see where it appears at the office |
| Record hours per step | Travel time and working time are often charged separately | Mark departure, arrival, start and finish, and check the times |
| Produce a PDF report | The customer gets a readable report | Look at the report as the customer receives it |
| Keep the history | Next year you will want to know what was done to the appliance | Find a previous intervention on the same installation |
| Manage permissions | Not everyone needs to see or change everything | Ask who can still change a closed work order, and whether that is tracked |
What working offline actually requires is explained in technician without signal. What belongs in the report for the customer and what stays internal is covered in the intervention report to the customer.
Switching to digital work orders in five steps
- Put your paper work order next to the app. For each box, find where it ends up in the app. A box that fits nowhere has often not been filled in by anyone for years.
- Create templates for your regular jobs. Annual maintenance, breakdown, installation: for each type, the instructions, the expected duration and the photos the office wants to see. Start with the jobs that come up most often.
- Start with a trial with one or two technicians. One technician who is open to something new and one who is critical, until every kind of work has come up at least once.
- Work in parallel for one week, with a fixed end date. The whole team works digitally, and a few paper work orders stay in the van as a backup. The office checks every digital work order the same day and compares the first invoices with what it used to charge. After that, the paper goes.
- Agree on the new rules. Steps marked as they happen, photos before and after, a signature or a written reason. And at the office: who checks the work orders, and when do the report and the invoice go out?
The full plan, with the data, the roles and the training per role, is in rolling out new software.
Pitfalls when switching
- Rebuilding the paper form one to one. Nobody enjoys filling in twenty boxes on a phone screen.
- Marking steps afterwards. If someone taps start and finish in the evening, their digital hours are just as unreliable as handwritten ones.
- No arrangement for the customer who does not sign. Agree that the technician then chooses a reason and writes briefly what happened.
- Photos in the gallery or a chat group. Have them taken in the app, so they stay with the intervention.
- The office retypes anyway. If the digital work order is copied into a spreadsheet for the invoice, half the work is still done twice. See from work order to invoice.
- Devices that are not ready. A full phone or a forgotten password: test every phone at the office before the first day.
Digital work orders at an installer: an example
A heating and plumbing installer works with five technicians and paper work orders in triplicate. The managing director chooses a work order app and asks two technicians to run the trial: the youngest, who already does everything on his phone, and the technician with the most years of experience, who has the most doubts.
First they put the paper work order next to the app. The “materials” box becomes the list of parts used from the van, and they split the “remarks” box into internal notes and remarks for the customer. They create a template for boiler maintenance, a breakdown and installing a water heater.
During the trial, the experienced technician forgets the signature twice. The app then does not let him close the intervention as fully completed, and after a few days the habit is there. Then comes the week in parallel for the whole team. On the agreed Monday, the paper pads leave the vans.
Short video · 0:30
Werk gedaan, maar waar is de getekende werkbon?
De technieker maakt het rapport ter plaatse, met foto's vooraf en achteraf. De klant tekent op het scherm en het rapport vertrekt naar de klant.
Video in Dutch, with Dutch captions
All short videos (in Dutch)How it works in Digitalnatie Service Suite
The technician app opens in the browser of the smartphone or tablet, with no app store. The technician only sees their own interventions.
- Steps and hours: departure, arrival, start of work, break and end of work. After closing, the app shows the travel time, the break and the working time.
- Report: in the work tab, the technician fills in the work done, the problem found and the solution. Internal notes never appear on the customer’s report; remarks for the customer do.
- Photos and signature: photos before, photos after and the customer’s signature, with the signatory’s name if you want it. If the customer does not sign, the technician records that the customer was not present or refused to sign, and writes an explanation.
- Parts: from the stock of their own van. A line is only marked as recorded once the server has accepted it.
- Closing: fully completed is only possible with the signatures (or a reason) and the mandatory photos. Another outcome, such as waiting for parts, sends the intervention back to the schedule. Without a connection, everything is saved on the device and sent in order later.
- At the office: the intervention form shows hours, parts, photos, signatures and report. From the report menu, you see the preview without prices or internal notes and send the PDF by email. You correct a mistake with a mandatory reason; this creates a new version.
- Invoice: the to-be-invoiced view shows the completed interventions without an invoice. From the intervention form, you create a draft invoice with the billable hours and the parts used.
- Templates: when you create an intervention, an optional template fills in the type, the team, the duration and the instructions. The administrator or the manager maintains them in the configuration tab of the settings.
Good to know:
- After closing, the report, photos, signatures and parts are locked in the app. Only the office corrects them, and the correction is tracked. Who signed, and when, never changes.
- The office cannot add used parts: the technician records them in their app.
- The report goes out by email as soon as your organisation’s email account is connected. Until then, you download it and mark it as delivered.
- Logging in, opening a PDF and invoicing on site need a connection. Invoicing on site also requires an explicit permission.
- The application is available in Dutch, French and English: everyone sees it in the language of their account.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a work order app and work order software?
The work order app is what the technician uses on their smartphone or tablet: steps, report, photos, parts and signature. Work order software also covers the office side: checking the work order, sending the report to the customer, invoicing and keeping the history per installation. An app without that office side only moves the retyping to later.
How do you switch from paper to digital work orders?
First put your paper work order next to the app and create templates for your regular jobs. Start with a trial with one or two technicians, until every kind of work has come up. Then work in parallel for one week with a few paper work orders as a backup, and stop using paper on a fixed date.
What if a technician does not want to work with an app?
Ask why. Often it is about one screen nobody explained, or a fear of extra work. Have a colleague from the trial show it on a real intervention, and point out what they will no longer have to do: fill in work orders in the evening and answer questions from the office.
Does a technician have to install an app from the app store?
That depends on the software. The Service Suite technician app opens in the browser of the smartphone or tablet, with no app store. Logging in needs an internet connection; after that, the technician can keep working without a connection.
Do the hours and parts from the digital work order go straight onto the invoice?
In Service Suite, they go onto a draft invoice. On a completed intervention, accounts create a draft with the billable hours and the parts used. They check the lines, add travel if needed, and then post and send the invoice themselves.