Contractor Work Order Template
One order that fixes what the contractor is doing, what it costs and who accepted it. It carries the purchase order reference, the agreed scope and price, every variation with a reason, the insurance and RAMS checks made before mobilisation, and the acceptance signature that has to exist before the invoice is approved.
- Agreed price and variations on one order
- Insurance and RAMS checked before mobilisation
- Acceptance signature gates invoice approval
- Retention and VAT carried to a total payable
Contractor Work Order
Agreed scope, agreed price, acceptance before invoice
| # | Work performed | Done | Hrs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Confirm insurance, RAMS and permits before mobilisation | |||
| 2 | Agree the scope in writing, including what is excluded | |||
| 3 | Price the order line by line, qty x rate | |||
| 4 | Log each variation with a reason and an approver | |||
| 5 | Record actual start and completion dates | |||
| 6 | Inspect the work and record the acceptance decision |
A preview of the real document. The download is the complete file.
Download the contractor work order template
Free, editable and yours to rebrand. Pick a format — you'll get all three, so you have the printable version too.
- Word (.docx) for editing the scope and exclusion wording, and adding your own terms.
- Excel (.xlsx) where the priced lines, variations, retention and VAT total themselves.
- PDF print-ready, for the acceptance signature on site.
What is a contractor work order?
A contractor work order is the document that instructs an external contractor to carry out a defined piece of work at an agreed price. It carries the purchase order or contract reference, the scope and its exclusions, the priced lines, any variations, the compliance checks made before mobilisation, and the acceptance that closes it.
It is not a purchase order. A purchase order commits the money. The work order describes the work, records what happened on site, and produces the acceptance signature that the invoice is eventually paid against.
What should a contractor work order include?
Ten fields carry the commercial risk. Each one below exists because leaving it blank costs money at invoice stage.
| Field | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase order number | The PO raised against this order | The link between work and committed spend. Without it, finance has an invoice and nothing to match it to. |
| Framework or contract reference | The agreement the rates come from | Establishes which rate card applies. Disputes about price are usually disputes about which contract was in force. |
| Agreed scope of work | What the contractor will do, in specifics | The half of the order that gets read. Vague scope is what turns a fixed price into a conversation. |
| Specifically excluded | What this order does not cover | The half nobody writes and everybody needs. Making good, waste removal and out-of-hours access are the usual arguments. |
| Permits required | Hot work, confined space, isolation, height | Tells the contractor what to arrange before travelling, and tells you what to check on arrival. |
| Insurance and RAMS checks | Public liability, employer's liability, RAMS approved | A missing RAMS is the most common reason a contractor invoice is disputed after the fact. Check before mobilisation, not after. |
| Agreed price lines | Description, qty, unit, rate, amount | Line-level pricing is what makes a variation visible. A single lump sum hides everything that changed. |
| Variations | Reference, date, reason, approver, cost | The register that decides the invoice conversation. Every line needs a name against it. |
| Acceptance decision | Accepted, accepted with defects, or rejected | Three outcomes, not two. Accepted with defects is the one that keeps retention meaningful. |
| Retention | Percentage held and the date it is due | Money you keep until defects are cleared. Recorded on the order, or forgotten at release. |
If you cut the form down, keep the variations register. Scope and price can be agreed in an email; a variation almost never is. It gets agreed on site, verbally, while someone is holding a torch — and it arrives on the invoice three weeks later with no name attached to it.
How do you fill in a contractor work order?
Fill Part A before the contractor travels, Part B as the money changes, and Part C before anyone approves an invoice. Six steps, and the fifth is the one that gets skipped under time pressure.
Raise the order against a PO, not a conversation
Get the purchase order number onto the form at the point of raising. An order issued without one is work you have authorised and finance has not, and that gap is discovered at invoice stage rather than now.
Write the exclusions, not just the scope
Say what is not included: making good, waste disposal, out-of-hours access, materials you are supplying. Scope tells the contractor what to quote. Exclusions stop the quote being reopened.
Clear the compliance checklist before mobilisation
Public liability and employer's liability in date, RAMS received and approved, permits issued, site induction done. Release the work only when every line is signed. A contractor already on site is a bad time to discover the insurance lapsed.
Price it in lines, so a change is visible
Description, quantity, unit, rate, amount. A lump sum cannot be compared to an invoice. Lines can, and the comparison takes about a minute.
Write every variation down while it is being agreed
Reference, date, the reason it was needed, who approved it, the cost. This is the step that gets skipped, and it is the one that decides whether the invoice conversation takes five minutes or five emails.
Accept the work before you approve the invoice
Inspect, record the decision, note defects and the date they must be cleared by, and sign. Approving payment before acceptance removes the only leverage you have to get defects fixed.
How is this different from an in-house work order?
Both authorise work. Only one of them has a supplier on the other side who will send you a bill, and that difference shapes most of the form.
| In-house work order | Contractor work order | |
|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | An employee on your maintenance team | An external company under a contract or framework |
| What the cost is | Labour hours at an internal rate, plus parts | An agreed price, plus variations, minus retention |
| Before work starts | Assign it and go | Insurance, RAMS, permits and induction all verified first |
| When scope changes | The technician does what is needed and notes it | It becomes a variation, priced and approved, or it is not paid |
| What closes it | A completion note and a supervisor signature | An acceptance decision that releases the invoice for approval |
| What it feeds | Asset history and internal labour cost | Supplier performance, committed spend and the payment run |
The practical difference is the direction of the risk. An in-house job that runs long costs you time you had already paid for. A contractor job that runs long arrives as an invoice for money you had not agreed, and the only defence is a variation register somebody kept up to date.
Where a document stops working
A form manages one order well. It manages a contractor base badly, and the gap shows up in the same four places.
It cannot hold the compliance dates
Insurance expires. RAMS get superseded. A form records that you checked once, on one order — it cannot tell you that a contractor you are about to instruct went out of cover last Tuesday.
Variations live in the wrong place
The register only works if the person on site fills it in. In practice variations are agreed verbally and reconstructed later from memory, against an invoice that already has a number on it.
Invoice matching is manual
Somebody opens the order, opens the invoice and compares them line by line. It works until you have forty open orders, at which point invoices get approved on trust.
It says nothing about the supplier
One order tells you nothing about whether this contractor is habitually late, habitually over, or habitually disputing. That pattern only exists across orders, and a folder of documents will not show it to you.
Running contractor work in Facilio
The template is the paper version of a control. Facilio keeps the same control, and applies it across every order and every supplier rather than one sheet at a time.
Contractor Work Tracker
Track the order and the supplier, not just the job
The fields on this form become tracked state: the PO reference, the agreed price, the variations, the compliance dates and the acceptance decision. Because it holds every order rather than one, it can also answer the questions a document cannot — which contractor is running over on price, and which is late more often than the framework allows.
Audit Report Intelligence
Check the invoice against the order automatically
Line-by-line invoice matching is the manual step that stops happening under load. Audit Report Intelligence reads what was ordered, what was varied and what was invoiced, and surfaces the differences rather than waiting for someone to spot them.
Work Completion Validator
Make acceptance a gate rather than a formality
On this form, acceptance is a signature that can be added after the invoice has already been approved. Work Completion Validator checks the completion evidence against what was ordered, so acceptance means the work was verified, not that someone reached the bottom of the page.
- 619issues caught by the AI invoice validator at Charter Hall
Use the template while you are issuing a handful of contractor orders a month. At that volume a spreadsheet and a filing convention genuinely work, and a platform would be overhead. Look at a connected CMMS when compliance dates start expiring unnoticed, or when nobody can say which contractor is running over on price.
Live in production across portfolios including Dunnes, CBRE, Brookfield, Charter Hall and Berkeley.
Frequently asked questions
What is a contractor work order?
A contractor work order is the instruction you issue to an external contractor to carry out a defined piece of work at an agreed price. It records the purchase order or contract reference, the scope and exclusions, the priced lines, the compliance checks made before mobilisation, any variations, and the acceptance decision.
It differs from a purchase order. The purchase order commits the money; the work order describes the work and produces the evidence that the money is owed.
What is the difference between a contractor work order and a purchase order?
A purchase order is a finance instrument: it authorises spend against a budget and gives the invoice something to match to. A contractor work order is an operational instrument: it says what will be done, under what conditions, to what standard, and records what actually happened.
You generally need both, and they should reference each other. The purchase order number belongs on the work order so that acceptance, variations and the invoice can all be reconciled to one committed sum.
Should the price be agreed before the work starts?
Yes, and in lines rather than as a lump sum. A priced schedule makes a variation visible — you can see that six hours became nine, or that a part was substituted. A single agreed figure hides all of that, and the first time you learn the work changed is when the invoice does not match.
Where the work genuinely cannot be priced up front, agree a rate and a cap, and treat anything above the cap as a variation requiring approval.
How should variations be handled?
Write each one down as it is agreed, with a reference, the date, the reason it was needed, who approved it and the cost. The register is only useful if it is filled in on site, at the moment of agreement.
A variation agreed by phone and recorded nowhere is the variation that gets argued about. The contractor remembers the conversation; you remember it differently; neither of you has anything in writing.
Why check insurance and RAMS before the contractor mobilises?
Because after mobilisation you have no leverage and, if something goes wrong, no defence. Public liability and employer's liability in date, RAMS received and approved, permits issued and induction completed are the four that matter.
A missing RAMS is also the most common reason a contractor invoice is disputed after the fact, which makes the check commercially useful as well as legally sensible.
Can the invoice be approved before the work is accepted?
It can, and that is the failure this form is designed to prevent. Once payment is approved, the only remaining incentive to return and clear defects is goodwill.
Keep acceptance as the gate. Record one of three outcomes — accepted, accepted with defects, or rejected — and where there are defects, record the date they must be cleared by and hold retention until they are.
What is retention and should I use it?
Retention is a percentage of the order value held back until defects are cleared, typically for a defined period after completion. It exists so that the last few per cent of the money is still available when you need the contractor to come back.
Whether it is appropriate depends on the value and the contract. If you do hold it, record the rate and the release date on the order, because retention that nobody tracks is retention that gets released by default.
In one paragraph
A contractor work order instructs an external company to carry out defined work at an agreed price. Raise it against a purchase order, write the exclusions as carefully as the scope, and clear insurance, RAMS and permits before the contractor mobilises. Price it in lines so a change is visible, and record every variation with a reason and an approver at the moment it is agreed. Then accept the work — accepted, accepted with defects, or rejected — before the invoice is approved, because acceptance is the only leverage you have left once the money is out.
The template is the floor, not the ceiling
A document controls one order. A connected CMMS controls a contractor base: live compliance dates, variations captured against the order, and invoices checked against what you actually authorised.
