Job Order Template
One form that answers two questions before any work is committed: who approved this, and whose budget does it come out of. It carries the requesting department and cost centre, the priced items, a budget check, an approval chain with authority limits, and a closure that compares actual cost against the value approved.
- Cost centre and budget code on the request
- Budget check before the approval chain starts
- Authority limits recorded against each approver
- Closure compares actual cost to approved value
Job Order
Authorisation, approval chain and cost closure
| # | Work performed | Done | Hrs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | State what is being requested and why it is needed | |||
| 2 | Record what happens if it is not done | |||
| 3 | Price the requested items, qty x rate | |||
| 4 | Run the budget check against the cost centre | |||
| 5 | Route through the approval chain in order | |||
| 6 | Close against actual cost and record the variance |
A preview of the real document. The download is the complete file.
Download the job 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 approval stages to match your delegation of authority.
- Excel (.xlsx) where the item lines, budget check and variance calculate themselves.
- PDF print-ready, for wet signatures down the approval chain.
What is a job order?
A job order is the internal authorisation for a piece of work, raised against a cost centre and approved before the work is committed. It records who asked, which department and budget it belongs to, what is being requested and why, the priced items, the approval chain, and the actual cost once it closes.
It is not a work order in the maintenance sense. A maintenance work order tells a technician what to do to an asset. A job order tells the organisation that this spend has been authorised, by whom, and against whose budget — the work itself may then be issued internally or to a supplier.
What should a job order include?
Nine fields do the authorising. Each one below exists because a job order that lacks it cannot be approved, or cannot be defended afterwards.
| Field | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Job order number | A unique reference, e.g. JO-2026-0517 | The handle finance and the requester share. Number sequentially so a gap is visible. |
| Requesting department | The team asking for the work | Separates who wants it from who pays for it. They are often not the same, and that is usually the argument. |
| Cost centre | The centre the spend lands against | The single most important field on the form. Spend without a cost centre becomes somebody's problem at year end. |
| Budget code or GL account | Where it posts in the ledger | Lets finance reconcile without asking. A job order that cannot be posted is a job order that sits in a queue. |
| Capex or Opex | Which kind of spend this is | Decides the approval route and the accounting treatment. Getting it wrong late is expensive to unwind. |
| Why it is needed | The justification, in plain terms | This is what an approver actually reads. 'What happens if it is not done' is the version that gets things approved. |
| Item lines | Description, qty, unit, rate, amount | Priced lines let an approver challenge one item rather than reject the whole request. |
| Budget check | Annual budget, committed to date, available, this order | Turns approval from an opinion into an arithmetic. A negative remainder is not a formatting problem. |
| Approval chain | Stage, name, role, authority limit, decision, date | The audit trail. The authority limit column is what stops a stage signing for more than it can. |
If you cut the form down, keep the budget check. Everything else records intent; this is the only part that tells an approver whether the money exists. A job order approved without it is a commitment made in hope, and the shortfall surfaces in a month-end conversation nobody enjoys.
How do you fill in a job order?
Fill Part A before you ask anyone to approve it, and Part C after the invoice arrives. Six steps, and the third is the one that decides whether approval takes an hour or a week.
Name the cost centre before you describe the work
The first question any approver asks is whose budget this is. Having the cost centre and budget code already on the form removes a round trip and makes the request routable.
Write the consequence, not just the request
'Replace the pump' is a request. 'Replace the pump or the building loses hot water at the next failure' is a justification. The second one gets approved; the first one gets a question.
Run the budget check before routing it
Annual budget, committed to date, available before this order, this order, remaining after. If the last figure is negative, the request needs a budget movement, not a signature — and finding that out now is far cheaper than finding out at stage three.
Price the items in lines
Description, quantity, unit, rate, amount. Lines let an approver trim one item and approve the rest, which is a far more common outcome than a clean yes or no.
Route it through the chain in order, with limits visible
Each stage records name, role, authority limit, decision and date. A stage that is above its limit escalates rather than signs — that is precisely what the limit column is for.
Close it against actual cost
Date completed, approved value, actual cost, variance and the reason. This is the step that gets skipped once the work is done, and it is the only one that tells you whether your estimates are any good.
Job order or work order — which do you need?
The terms get used interchangeably, and the distinction is genuinely useful: one authorises the money, the other instructs the work.
| Job order | Maintenance work order | |
|---|---|---|
| What it authorises | Spend against a cost centre | Work against a specific asset |
| Who reads it first | A budget holder deciding whether to approve | A technician deciding what to do |
| The controlling field | Cost centre and budget code | Asset ID |
| What has to happen before work starts | An approval chain completes | The job is assigned |
| How it closes | Actual cost compared to approved value | Work performed, hours, parts and sign-off |
| What it feeds | Committed spend and budget reporting | Asset history and maintenance backlog |
In practice many organisations need both, in sequence. The job order authorises the spend; the work order that follows records what was physically done. Where they get collapsed into one form, it is usually the cost centre that goes missing — and the spend becomes untraceable at exactly the point someone asks about it.
Where a document stops working
A form authorises one job well. It runs an approval process badly, and the failure modes are consistent.
Approvals sit in inboxes
A form routed by email has no queue and no ageing. Nobody can see that stage two has had it for nine days, and the requester finds out by asking.
The budget figure is a snapshot
'Available before this order' was true when it was typed. Two other job orders approved the same afternoon make it fiction, and nothing on the sheet updates.
Authority limits are honour-system
The column records the limit; it does not enforce it. A stage can sign above its limit and the form will look perfectly complete.
Nothing closes the loop
Actual cost against approved value is the number that improves future estimates. Because it is filled in weeks later, on a document already filed, in practice it is filled in rarely.
Running job orders in Facilio
The template puts the authorisation on paper. Facilio keeps the same fields and adds the two things paper cannot: a live budget position and an approval route that actually moves.
Ops Performance Intelligence
See committed spend as it happens, not at month end
The budget check on this form is a figure typed once. In Facilio the same numbers are live: budget, committed, available, by cost centre. Ops Performance Intelligence surfaces where spend is running ahead of plan while there is still a quarter left to do something about it.
Atom Copilot
Ask what is waiting on you instead of chasing it
What is pending my approval, what has stage two been sitting on, what has this cost centre committed this quarter. On a document each of those is a search through email. Atom Copilot answers them from live data in a sentence, and can trigger the follow-up action too.
Audit Report Intelligence
Reconcile the invoice to the approved value automatically
Closure on this form asks whether the invoice matches the actual cost, and relies on someone checking. Audit Report Intelligence compares what was approved, what was delivered and what was billed, and raises the differences rather than waiting to be asked.
- 619issues caught by the AI invoice validator at Charter Hall
Use the template while the approval chain is two people who sit near each other. A form and an email are faster than any system at that size. Look at a connected CMMS when requests start queueing invisibly, or when the available-budget figure on the sheet is out of date by the time it reaches the third approver.
Live in production across portfolios including Dunnes, CBRE, Brookfield, Charter Hall and Berkeley.
Frequently asked questions
What is a job order?
A job order is an internal authorisation for a piece of work, raised against a cost centre and approved before the work is committed. It records who requested it, which department and budget it belongs to, what is being asked for and why, the priced items, the approval chain, and the actual cost at closure.
Its purpose is accountability for spend, rather than instruction of the work itself.
What is the difference between a job order and a work order?
A job order authorises money. A work order instructs work. The job order names a cost centre, runs a budget check and collects approvals; the work order names an asset and tells a technician what to do.
Many organisations use both in sequence — the job order approves the spend, and the work order that follows records what was physically carried out. Where the two are collapsed into a single form, the cost centre is usually what gets lost.
Who should approve a job order?
Whoever holds the budget it is being raised against, plus any stage above them required by your delegation of authority. The useful discipline is recording an authority limit next to each name, so it is visible when a request exceeds what that stage can sign for.
A stage above its limit should escalate rather than approve. That is the entire purpose of the limit column.
What is a cost centre and why does it matter here?
A cost centre is the part of the organisation the spend is charged to. It matters because it turns a request into something attributable: at the end of the quarter, somebody owns this number and can be asked about it.
A job order without a cost centre still authorises work, but the cost lands somewhere generic and the connection between the decision and the money is lost.
Should the budget check happen before or after approval?
Before. The point of the check is to tell approvers whether the money exists, and an approval given without that information is a commitment made in hope.
If the remaining figure after this order is negative, the request needs a budget movement rather than a signature. Discovering that at stage one costs a conversation; discovering it after approval costs a reversal.
What is the difference between capex and opex on a job order?
Capital expenditure is spend on an asset that will deliver value over years — a replacement chiller, a new roof. Operating expenditure is the cost of running the business this period — a repair, a service visit, consumables.
The distinction usually changes both the approval route and the accounting treatment, which is why it belongs on the form rather than being decided afterwards by finance.
Do I need to record the actual cost after the work is done?
Yes, and it is the field most often left blank. Approved value against actual cost, with a reason for the variance, is the only feedback loop the process has.
Without it, next year's estimates are made with exactly the same information as this year's, and the same requests are under-costed in the same way.
In one paragraph
A job order authorises a piece of work against a budget before it is committed. Put the cost centre and budget code on it first, write the consequence of not doing the work rather than only the request, and run the budget check before routing it for approval. Price the items in lines so an approver can trim rather than reject, and record an authority limit beside every name in the chain. Then close it against actual cost with a reason for the variance, because that comparison is the only thing that makes next year's estimates better than this year's.
The template is the floor, not the ceiling
A document records one authorisation. A connected CMMS runs the process: live budget positions by cost centre, approvals that queue and age visibly, and closure that reconciles itself against the invoice.
