Property Management Work Order Template
One record for a single tenant request, from the call to the settled bill. It carries the entry permission and the notice the lease requires, the owner approval limit that decides whether you may proceed at all, the vendor assignment, and the allocation of every cost line between owner, tenant and warranty.
- Entry permission and notice given, on the form
- Owner approval limit against the estimate
- Habitability flagged, not buried in the description
- Every cost line allocated as it happens
Property Management Work Order
Request, approval, entry and allocation
| # | Work performed | Done | Hrs | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Log how the request arrived, and in whose words | |||
| 2 | Classify it, and flag habitability separately | |||
| 3 | Confirm entry permission and the notice required | |||
| 4 | Estimate, then check it against the approval limit | |||
| 5 | Assign the vendor and verify insurance and licence | |||
| 6 | Allocate every cost line at the time |
A preview of the real document. The download is the complete file.
Download the property management 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 classifications and notice terms to match your leases and local law.
- Excel (.xlsx) where the estimate against the approval limit, and the owner and tenant split, calculate themselves.
- PDF print-ready, for the tenant file and the vendor.
Who this property management work order is for
Four people read this document, and each of them wants a different line out of it.
Property manager
You are balancing three parties. The approval limit, the notice given and the allocation table are the three entries that keep a routine repair from becoming a complaint.
Tenant
You want the issue fixed and to know when someone is coming. The classification, the entry arrangement and the best time to attend are what affect you.
Owner or landlord
You are approving spend on your asset. The estimate against your standing limit, and which lines are yours rather than the tenant's, are what you read.
Vendor or contractor
You are attending someone else's property. The access arrangement, the scope and the purchase order number are what you need before you travel.
Where a property management work order is used
The document is the same shape everywhere. What changes is which fields carry the weight.
| Setting | What the form has to capture there |
|---|---|
| Single-family rentals | Owner approval. One owner per property means the standing limit and the contact record decide how fast anything happens. |
| Multifamily and apartments | Habitability and notice. Classification, the habitability row and the notice period are what determine legal exposure. |
| Commercial leases | Who pays. The lease decides whether a repair is landlord or tenant, so the allocation table carries more weight than the description. |
| HOA and managed communities | Common versus private. Whether the fault sits inside the unit or in common property is the first question, and it belongs on the form. |
| Student and short-term lets | Turnover speed. Occupied, vacant or turnover, plus the best time to attend, drive everything during changeover. |
| Mixed-use portfolios | Consistency. The same classification words across residential and commercial units are what make a portfolio reportable at all. |
What a property management work order should include
A property management work order is the record that takes a tenant request through approval, entry and a vendor visit, and settles who pays. It captures the issue in the tenant's words, classifies it, records entry permission and notice, checks the estimate against the owner's approval limit, and allocates every cost line.
Fields every work order needs
- Work order number
A unique reference, e.g. PM-2026-0642
- Date and time raised
When the request came in, not when you got there
- Priority
Set at intake, from the contract, before anyone forms a view
- Site and location
Where the work happens, precise enough to find unaided
- Raised by and contact
Who asked, and how to reach them on arrival
- Target completion
The time you are committed to, so the SLA is measurable
- Parts and materials
Item, quantity, unit price and who it is charged to
- Labour
Date, who attended, hours and rate
- Sign-off
Both signatures, named and dated
Fields specific to a property management work order
| Field | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Received via | Phone, email, tenant portal, in person or an inspection | The same fault reported three ways is three records unless this is captured. It is also how you learn which channel your tenants actually use. |
| Reported issue, in the tenant's words | Quoted rather than paraphrased | A paraphrase loses the detail that turns out to matter, and it removes the tenant's account from the file if the matter is ever disputed. |
| Classification and habitability | Emergency affecting habitability or safety, urgent, routine or cosmetic, plus which service is affected | Habitability is a legal threshold, not a severity. Heat, water, sewage, electricity, security or structural belongs in its own row, not inside a description. |
| Permission to enter and notice | Written consent held, the notice period the lease or law requires, and the date notice was given | Legal fields. Entering without the required notice is a problem no completed repair fixes afterwards. |
| Owner approval limit | The standing amount you may spend without asking, the estimate, and the difference | The page's whole argument. If the difference is zero or negative you proceed. This one calculation is what most often delays a repair while somebody waits for an answer they did not need. |
| Tenant caused | Yes, no or disputed, with the evidence | Recorded at the time, with photographs, this is a fact. Recorded at the end of a tenancy it is an argument, and the deposit is already contested. |
| Cost allocation | Every line split between owner, tenant, and warranty or insurance | Allocated as the work happens rather than at the end. A repair reclassified months later is how disputes start. |
| Vendor assignment | In-house or vendor, trade, contact, insurance and licence verified with expiry, and the purchase order number | Sending an uninsured contractor to somebody's home is the risk this row exists to remove. |
If you cut the form down, keep the approval limit calculation. Estimate against standing limit, and the difference. Most delayed repairs are not waiting on a vendor or a part; they are waiting for an owner to answer a question the manager already had authority to decide. One subtraction on the form removes that wait.
What it looks like filled in
A real request, filled end to end. This is the same job the Excel version totals for you.
| Cost element | Amount | Owner | Tenant | Warranty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Replace kitchen mixer tap | 148.00 | 148.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Plumber labour, two hours | 130.00 | 130.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Replace cracked sink strainer | 22.00 | 0.00 | 22.00 | 0.00 |
| Dishwasher pump, under warranty | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 264.00 |
| Totals | 300.00 | 278.00 | 22.00 | 264.00 |
Work order PM-2026-0642, unit 4B, occupied. Received by phone, classified urgent, habitability not affected. Standing approval limit 500.00, estimate 300.00, so the difference is negative and the manager proceeded without contacting the owner. Written consent to enter held, notice given on the twelfth for a visit on the fourteenth. The strainer is allocated to the tenant with a photograph on file, taken on the day rather than argued at checkout. Vendor insurance verified to expiry.
How do you fill in a property management work order?
Fill it in the order the request moves, and settle the money question before the vendor travels. Six steps, and the fourth is the one that removes most of the delay.
Log how the request arrived, and quote the tenant
Received via phone, email, portal, in person or an inspection, with the issue in the tenant's own words. Three channels reporting one fault is one job, and only this field lets you see that.
Classify it, and answer habitability separately
Emergency, urgent, routine or cosmetic is severity. Habitability is a legal threshold and belongs in its own row, naming the service affected.
Confirm entry permission and give the notice
Whether written consent to enter without the tenant present is held, the notice the lease or law requires, and the date you gave it. This is the part a completed repair cannot fix retrospectively.
Check the estimate against the approval limit
Standing limit, estimated cost, and the difference. If the difference is zero or negative, proceed. Only contact the owner when the arithmetic says you must.
Assign the vendor and verify them before they travel
Trade, contact, purchase order, and insurance and licence checked with the expiry date. Then the scheduled date and the access arrangement.
Allocate every cost line as the work happens
Owner, tenant, or warranty and insurance, against each line, with evidence for anything attributed to the tenant. Then the completion note and the tenant's confirmation.
Property management work order vs tenant service request
They are the two ends of the same job. One is what the tenant sends; the other is what you run.
| Aspect | Property management work order | Tenant service request |
|---|---|---|
| Who creates it | The manager, after triage | The tenant, in the moment |
| What it contains | Approval, entry, vendor, cost allocation | A description of a problem and a contact |
| How many per issue | One | Often several: a call, an email and a message |
| The load-bearing fields | Approval limit, notice given, allocation, vendor verification | The issue, the unit, and how to reach the tenant |
| What it settles | Who does the work and who pays for it | Nothing yet |
| Where it goes wrong | Cost allocated at checkout instead of on the day | Three requests treated as three jobs |
The relationship matters more than the distinction: several requests should collapse into one work order. A tenant who calls, emails and then messages about the same leaking tap has raised one job, and counting it as three inflates your volume, ruins your response-time figures, and risks sending two vendors.
Where a document stops working
A form handles one request well. It handles a portfolio badly, and the failure modes are consistent.
There is no version control
Notice periods and classifications differ by jurisdiction. Somebody edits the form for one state, emails it round, and units are being managed to the wrong terms.
Notice and approval clocks are not running
Notice given on the twelfth for a statutory two days is arithmetic nobody is doing. Nothing warns you that entry tomorrow is too early.
Tenant-caused evidence cannot be produced
A tick and a note claim a tenant caused damage. At checkout, the question is the photograph and the date, and a paper file rarely holds both together.
You cannot see the portfolio
One form describes one request. Which unit generates the most callouts, and which owner's limit is set too low to be workable, exist only across records.
What running this in Facilio looks like
The template is the paper version of this record. The fields below are the same ones; the difference is that they become state the platform can act on.
Work Completion Validator
Cost allocation becomes a condition of closing
On paper, a job closes when the vendor invoices. Work Completion Validator checks the completion record against what the job required, so a work order closed with lines unallocated, or with tenant-caused damage claimed and no evidence attached, is caught before it becomes a deposit dispute.
Ops Performance Intelligence
Notice and response become live clocks
The notice date and the classification drive timers that warn before an entry is too early or a response target breaches, and roll up by property so ageing is acted on rather than reviewed.
Audit Report Intelligence
Entry permission and vendor checks become retrievable
Written consent, the notice given, and each vendor's insurance and licence expiry, held once against the property and produced as the record a dispute or an audit asks for.
Contractor Work Tracker
Owner and tenant splits reconcile themselves
Every allocated line rolls up per owner statement and per tenant ledger, and the approval limit is checked as the estimate is entered rather than after the vendor has travelled.
Permission-aware by default. Atom AI inherits RBAC from your Facilio config, so if a user cannot see it in Facilio they cannot see it via Atom AI.
Frequently asked questions
What is a property management work order?
A property management work order is the record that takes a tenant request through approval, entry and a vendor visit, and settles who pays. It captures the issue in the tenant's words, its classification and any habitability impact, entry permission and notice, the estimate against the owner's approval limit, the vendor and their verification, and the allocation of every cost line.
It differs from other work orders in having three parties. The work is on the owner's asset, in the tenant's home, done by a vendor, and the form has to satisfy all three.
What should a property management work order include?
At minimum: a unique work order number, the date and time received and via which channel, the property and unit, the owner and manager, whether the unit is occupied, the tenant's contact and best time to attend, entry permission and the notice given, the reported issue in the tenant's words, the classification and habitability impact, whether it is tenant caused with evidence, the owner approval limit against the estimate, the vendor with insurance verified, the cost allocation, and the tenant's confirmation.
Why record the issue in the tenant's own words?
Because a paraphrase loses the detail that turns out to matter, and it removes the tenant's own account from the file. A tenant who said the ceiling is wet in the corner has described something different from a leak.
If the matter is ever disputed, the quoted words are evidence. A summary written by the manager is not.
What does the owner approval limit do?
It tells you whether you may proceed without asking. Subtract the estimate from the standing limit: if the difference is zero or negative, you have authority already.
This is the single most common cause of avoidable delay. Repairs sit waiting for an owner to answer a question the manager did not need to ask.
When should cost be allocated between owner and tenant?
On the day, line by line, with evidence for anything attributed to the tenant. Photographs taken at the visit are worth more than any description written later.
Allocation deferred to the end of a tenancy is how deposit disputes begin, because by then the evidence is a recollection and the tenant has a different one.
Is a work order the same as a tenant service request?
No, and the difference matters for your numbers. The request is what the tenant sends, often several times through several channels. The work order is the single job you run in response.
Three requests about one leaking tap should collapse into one work order. Counted as three, they inflate your volume, distort your response times, and can send two vendors to the same unit.
Can I edit and rebrand this template?
Yes. It is free to use, edit, rename and put your own logo on, internally or for clients. No attribution required.
The Word version is the one to edit if you want to change the classifications or notice terms for your jurisdiction; the Excel version is the one to use if you want the approval limit check and the owner and tenant split to calculate themselves.
In one paragraph
A property management work order takes one tenant request from the call to the settled bill. Log how it arrived and quote the tenant rather than paraphrasing. Classify it, and answer habitability in its own row. Confirm entry permission and give the notice the lease or law requires before anyone attends. Check the estimate against the owner's standing limit and only escalate when the arithmetic says you must. Verify the vendor's insurance before they travel, and allocate every cost line on the day, with evidence for anything charged to the tenant.
The template is the floor, not the ceiling
A document records one request. A connected CMMS runs the portfolio: duplicate requests that collapse into one job, notice and approval clocks that warn in time, and owner statements that reconcile themselves.
