Maintenance Work Order Template
One sheet that carries a maintenance job from the moment it's raised to the moment it's signed off. It records the asset it was raised against, what the technician actually did, the hours booked, the parts consumed and who accepted the work.
- Corrective and preventive on one form
- Labour hours and parts cost together
- Asset ID keeps history on the equipment
- Print-ready one-page PDF for the van
Maintenance Work Order
Job record and completion sign-off
| # | Work performed | Done | Hrs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Attend site and confirm the reported fault | |||
| 2 | Isolate the asset and apply lockout/tagout | |||
| 3 | Record asset condition and meter reading | |||
| 4 | Carry out the repair or scheduled task | |||
| 5 | Replace consumables and log parts used | |||
| 6 | Function-test and confirm the fault cleared | |||
| 7 | Remove isolation and return to service | |||
| 8 | Clear the work area and remove waste |
A preview of the real document. The download is the complete file.
Download the maintenance 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 wording, adding your logo and changing the task rows.
- Excel (.xlsx) with parts and labour columns that total themselves.
- PDF one page, print-ready, sized for a clipboard.
What is a maintenance work order?
A maintenance work order is the document that authorises a maintenance job and records what happened to a specific asset. It carries the request, the asset ID, the assignee, the work performed, the labour hours, the parts consumed and the sign-off that closes the job.
It is not the same as a work request. A request is what someone asks for. A work order is what the maintenance team commits to, and the record that survives afterwards.
This template is the paper version of that record. It fits on one page, works for in-house teams running jobs through email or a shared spreadsheet, and covers both reactive and scheduled work.
What should a maintenance work order include?
Ten fields do almost all the work. Each one below exists because leaving it out costs somebody an hour later, and the order follows the job: raise, assign, do the work, book the cost, sign off.
| Field | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Work order no. | A unique reference, e.g. WO-0412 | The only way to discuss one job without describing it. Number sequentially, never reuse. |
| Asset ID | The tag or code on the equipment itself | Turns a pile of forms into asset history. Free-text asset names drift; IDs don't. |
| Work type | Corrective, preventive or inspection | Lets you measure how much of the team's time is reactive, which is the most useful number a maintenance log produces. |
| Priority | Low, medium, high or urgent | Recorded at the point of raising, before anyone forms an opinion about it later. |
| Reported fault | What the requester actually said | Kept apart from the diagnosis, so you can see how often symptom and cause differ. |
| Work performed | Line by line, what was done | The part an auditor, a warranty claim or the next technician reads. |
| Hours | Labour time per line or per job | No hours means no cost, and no cost means no budget argument. |
| Parts used | Part number, quantity, unit cost | Doubles as a spares-consumption record, which is what tells you what to stock. |
| Downtime | Asset out of service, from and to | The number operations cares about, and the one most maintenance logs omit. |
| Sign-off | Technician and acceptor, with dates | An unsigned job is an open job, whatever the technician remembers. |
If you cut the form down, keep the asset ID. It is the difference between a stack of paperwork and a maintenance history you can query. Everything else on the sheet describes one job; the asset ID is what connects that job to every other job on the same equipment.
How do you fill in a maintenance work order?
Fill it in the order the job happens, and complete it on the visit rather than afterwards. Six steps, and the last two are the ones teams skip.
Number the job before anything else
Assign the work order number at the moment the job is raised. Everything downstream hangs off that reference: the parts requisition, the invoice, the conversation in the corridor.
Copy the asset ID off the asset
Walk to the equipment and read the tag. The point of keeping work orders is being able to ask what a specific chiller has cost this year, and that only works if the ID is right every time.
Separate what was reported from what you found
Put the requester's words in reported fault and your diagnosis in the work performed lines. The gap between the two is where the useful maintenance insight sits.
Book hours and parts on the visit
Not on Friday. Costs written down later are estimates, and estimates don't survive a budget conversation with finance.
Collect both signatures
The technician's sign-off says the work is done. The acceptor's says someone else agrees. Only the second one closes the job.
File it against the asset, not the month
A folder per asset beats a folder per month. When the same pump fails a third time, you want the previous two forms in one place.
Corrective vs preventive: does one template cover both?
Yes. One form, with the work type field doing the separating. Teams often build two templates and then maintain two templates, when it is the same document with a different centre of gravity.
| Corrective | Preventive | |
|---|---|---|
| What triggers it | A failure or a fault report | A date, a meter reading or a runtime threshold |
| Field that carries the weight | Reported fault and diagnosis | The task checklist |
| Priority set by | Whoever is affected | The schedule, fixed in advance |
| Downtime | Usually unplanned, and worth recording | Planned, booked with operations |
| What you learn from it | Why things break | Whether the plan is being followed |
| Recorded in this template as | Work type = Corrective | Work type = Preventive |
A habit worth forming: once you've logged work type for a quarter, count the split. A heavily corrective mix means the preventive schedule isn't doing its job, and you now have evidence rather than a hunch to take into the budget conversation.
When does a work order template stop being enough?
When you can no longer answer "what's open right now?" without opening several files. The template is a good document and it will improve a team working from memory and messages. It also has a ceiling, and it's worth knowing where before you hit it.
It can't be assigned
A file doesn't appear in anyone's queue. Someone still has to tell the technician, and that someone becomes the bottleneck.
It holds no history
Asset history is a folder you have to open. Nothing tells you this is the pump's fourth failure this year.
Nothing chases an overdue job
The target completion date is a note to yourself, not a reminder to anyone.
Two people can't edit it at once
And the version everyone quotes is rarely the newest one.
Reporting is manual
Any question about response time, backlog or spend means re-reading the forms and adding them up.
A second site doubles it
Two logs, no combined view. That gap doesn't close by trying harder.
What running maintenance work orders in Facilio looks like
Every ceiling in the section above is a place where the document has to know about other documents, and it cannot. Facilio is a connected CMMS that holds work orders, assets, vendors and compliance in one system of record, with AI agents embedded directly on top of it rather than bolted on as a separate layer. Because the agents read and act on the same live operational data, there's no second system to sync.
Three of them map straight onto fields on this template:
Atom Copilot
Ask for the answer instead of building the report
This template cannot answer the reporting questions. What is open, what is overdue, what a given asset has cost: in Facilio each of those is a sentence you type. Atom Copilot queries live data and triggers actions in natural language, which replaces both menu navigation and the manual report-running that follows it.
Work Completion Validator
The second signature, done properly
The step this template relies on a person remembering. The Work Completion Validator checks sign-off against before and after photos, time on site and checklist evidence, and flags suspect closures, so a job marked complete has evidence behind it.
Ops Performance Intelligence
The pattern across jobs, not one job at a time
A folder of forms can't tell you an asset is deteriorating or an SLA is about to breach. Ops Performance Intelligence surfaces asset health, SLA breach risk and vendor performance across the portfolio.
That last point is the real difference. A template records a job. A single system of record accumulates operational data, and the agents acting on it get more accurate as it does. That is the opposite of a folder of forms, where the hundredth work order is worth no more than the first.
- ~80%end-to-end resolution on service intake at Berkeley
- 619issues caught by the AI invoice validator at Charter Hall
Use the template while you're at one site with a handful of jobs a week. It's genuinely the right tool there, and a CMMS would be overhead. Look at a connected CMMS when a second site appears, or when more than one person needs to see the same queue.
Live in production across portfolios including Dunnes, CBRE, Brookfield, Charter Hall and Berkeley.
Frequently asked questions
What is a maintenance work order?
A maintenance work order is the record that authorises a maintenance job and documents what happened. It names the asset, describes the fault or scheduled task, says who is doing it and by when, and captures labour, parts and sign-off once the work is finished.
It differs from a work request. A request is what someone asks for; a work order is what the maintenance team commits to and records against a specific asset.
What should a maintenance work order include?
At minimum: a unique work order number, the date raised and who raised it, the asset ID and location, the reported fault or scheduled task, priority, the assignee, a target completion date, the work actually performed, labour hours, parts used, and sign-off from both the technician and whoever accepts the job.
What is the difference between a corrective and a preventive work order?
A corrective work order responds to something that has already failed. A preventive one is generated by a schedule before anything breaks. The document is the same, which is why this template has a work type field rather than two separate forms.
What differs is which fields carry the weight. Corrective jobs lean on the fault description and the cause; preventive jobs lean on the checklist and the meter reading.
Should I use the Word or the Excel version?
Use Word if you print the form and want to change wording or add a logo. Use Excel if you want the parts and labour columns to total themselves, or if you're keeping a running log of jobs in one file rather than a document per job.
Is a work order the same as a work request?
No. A work request is the intake, meaning someone reporting a problem. A work order is the authorisation and the record that follows it. One request can produce several work orders, and some requests produce none.
The work order request form covers the intake side if you need both.
Can I edit and rebrand this template?
Yes. It's free to use, edit, rename and put your own logo on, internally or for clients. No attribution required.
When does a work order template stop being enough?
Roughly when you can no longer answer "what's open right now?" without opening several files. Documents don't hold asset history, can't be assigned, don't warn you about an overdue job, and can't be edited by two people at once.
In one paragraph
A maintenance work order authorises a job and records what happened to a named asset. Use one form for corrective and preventive work, separated by a work type field. Copy the asset ID off the equipment, keep the reported fault apart from the diagnosis, and book hours and parts on the visit. Close it with two signatures. When you can't answer what's open without opening files, the document has reached its ceiling.
The template is the floor, not the ceiling
A spreadsheet records maintenance. A connected CMMS runs it: assigning jobs, holding asset history, and telling you what's overdue before somebody asks.
