Work Order Checklist Template
One sheet for checking that work orders were raised, released and closed properly, before you rely on what they say.
- Thirty-five checks across four sections, scored per work order
- Sign-off by someone other than the person who did the work
- Failure cause coded from a list, not typed as free text
- A compliance rate you can track against last period
Work Order Checklist
Sample, score, and act on what it finds
| # | Check | Yes | No | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | What was actually done is described, not just completed | |||
| 2 | Deficiencies found were raised as their own work orders | |||
| 3 | Signed off by someone other than the person who did the work |
The document you will get. Download for the full, editable file.
Who this work order checklist is for
Four people use this document, and none of them are holding a spanner at the time.
Maintenance manager or supervisor
You are running the review. The sample, the section scores and the actions table with owners and dates are what turn an afternoon of reading into something that changes next month.
CMMS administrator or data owner
You are the one blamed when the reports look wrong. Section D is your section: coded failure causes, sensible dates, no blank mandatory fields, and status matching reality.
Team leader whose jobs are being sampled
You want the review to be fair. Every check has a not applicable column and a comment box, so a job scored down has a written reason rather than an impression.
Client or contract manager
You are auditing a provider rather than a team. The compliance rate against target and against last period is the number that belongs in a service review.
Which section matters the most in your sector
The checklist is the same everywhere. What changes is which section you fail on, and that is usually the one your regulator or your client looks at first. If you run one of these, the sector page goes further than the template does.
- Data centres
Section B. Permits, isolation and a proved zero-energy state are the checks an auditor samples, and the ones where not applicable needs justifying.
Data centre maintenance software - Healthcare
Section C. Function tested after isolation was removed, and signed off independently, are the two lines that matter on clinical plant.
Healthcare maintenance software - FM service providers
The compliance rate itself. When you report to a client, the trend against last period is the number under discussion, not the individual jobs.
FM service provider software - Commercial real estate
Section A. Across a large portfolio, imprecise locations and missing asset IDs are what make portfolio-level reporting impossible.
Portfolio maintenance software - Education
Section D. Costs captured against the right cost centre is what makes a maintenance budget defensible at the end of the year.
Campus maintenance software - Retail and malls
Downtime recorded. Where an asset stopping means trading stops, an uncaptured downtime figure is an uncaptured commercial loss.
Retail maintenance software
What a work order checklist should cover
A work order checklist is a review instrument: you sample work orders that have already been closed and score them against a fixed list of checks. It asks whether each was raised properly, released safely, closed honestly, and recorded well enough to report on, then turns the answers into a compliance rate.
A. What the four sections check
| Field | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| A. Was it raised properly | Requester recorded, location precise, asset identified, problem described, work type and priority set, target date set, right trade first time, duplicate checked, approval obtained where needed | Ten checks. A work order that fails here cannot be rescued later, and almost every complaint that starts our data is bad traces back to this section. |
| B. Was it safe and ready to start | Risk assessment reviewed, permit issued, isolation applied and zero-energy state proved, parts confirmed in stock, access arranged, technician competent, tools available, area protected | Eight checks. Dispatching before parts are confirmed is the most common cause of a second visit, and a second visit costs more than the wait would have. |
| C. Was it closed properly | Work described rather than completed, labour hours, parts booked out, meter reading, as-found and as-left, photos, deficiencies raised as their own jobs, asset history updated, isolation removed and function tested, independent sign-off | Ten checks, and the section where most reviews find their failures. The last line is the one people skip. |
| D. Is the data good enough to report on | Cost for labour and parts, downtime where the asset stopped, failure cause coded from a list, dates that make sense, status matching reality, no blank mandatory fields, job not left open after the work finished | Seven checks. Free-text failure causes cannot be counted, and a field that cannot be counted will never appear in a report however carefully it was typed. |
| The sample | Which work orders you looked at, how many, and how you chose them | Recorded up front so the result is defensible. Random, all P1s, one per trade and all closed last week are different reviews and produce different numbers. |
| The score | Section totals per work order, then pass, partial or fail | Section scores make the result diagnosable. A run of partials all failing section C is a closure problem; the same count spread evenly is noise. |
| Compliance rate | Passed outright over work orders sampled, against a target and against last period | The number that belongs in a management or client review. The trend is the point, not the individual jobs behind it. |
| Actions agreed | Each finding with an action, an owner and a date | What separates a review from an observation. A finding with no owner and no date will be found again next period, unchanged. |
If you cut the checklist down, keep the independent sign-off line and the coded failure cause. The first is the difference between a job somebody says is done and a job somebody has verified. The second is the difference between a maintenance history you can count and a pile of sentences. Both are single checks, and both are routinely the first to go.
B. What it looks like filled in
Five work orders sampled from one month. Section scores are recorded as they were found, which is the only way the result means anything.
| WO no. | Type | A | B | C | D | Result | Action needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WO-1042 | Reactive | 10/10 | 8/8 | 8/10 | 6/7 | Partial | Add sign-off step, code failure cause |
| WO-1043 | Preventive | 10/10 | 8/8 | 10/10 | 7/7 | Pass | None |
| WO-1051 | Reactive | 8/10 | 6/8 | 5/10 | 4/7 | Fail | Parts not confirmed, self-certified close |
| WO-1066 | Corrective | 10/10 | 8/8 | 9/10 | 6/7 | Partial | Downtime not recorded |
| WO-1072 | Inspection | 9/10 | 8/8 | 10/10 | 7/7 | Partial | Target date left open |
Five sampled, one passed outright: a compliance rate of twenty per cent against a target of ninety. Now read what the score does not say. Every one of these five repairs was actually carried out, and the assets are working. Four failed on records rather than on work: a missing signature, an uncoded cause, an unrecorded downtime, an open target date. That is the useful finding, because it tells you the problem is a closure process rather than a maintenance team, and those are fixed in completely different ways.
Word to reword the checks for your own process, Excel to count the results and work out the rate, PDF for the review meeting. Free, and yours to rebrand.
How do you run a work order review?
Run it on a sample rather than on everything, and score what you find rather than what you hoped for. Six steps, and the last one is the only one that changes anything.
Decide the sample and how you chose it
Reviewer, date, site or portfolio, the period, how many work orders and the selection method. Random, all P1s, one per trade and all closed last week answer different questions, so write down which one you asked.
Score section A, was it raised properly
Ten checks on the point of raising: requester, location, asset, description, work type, priority, target date, correct trade, duplicate check and approval. Failures here cannot be corrected later, only counted.
Score section B, was it safe and ready to start
Eight checks on what happened before dispatch: risk assessment, permit, isolation and zero-energy state, parts in stock, access arranged, competence, tools and area protection. Use not applicable honestly, and comment when you do.
Score section C, was it closed properly
Ten checks on closure, including the one most often missed: signed off by somebody other than the person who did the work. Also whether deficiencies became their own work orders rather than a sentence in a comment box.
Score section D, is the data good enough to report on
Seven checks on whether the record can be counted: cost, downtime, a coded failure cause, dates in a sensible order, status matching site, no blank mandatory fields, and nothing left open after the work finished.
Work out the rate, then agree actions with owners and dates
Count passes, partials and failures, divide passes by the sample for the compliance rate, and compare it with target and with last period. Then write each finding into the actions table with a name against it and a date. A finding with no owner is a finding you will make again.
Work order checklist vs a work order template
They contain similar words and do opposite jobs. One records work; the other inspects the records.
| Aspect | Work order checklist | Work order template |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A review of work orders that already exist | The form the work itself is recorded on |
| Who fills it in | A reviewer, afterwards | The technician, during the job |
| How many jobs | A sample, across trades and types | One |
| What it answers | Is our process working, and where does it break | What was done to this asset, and at what cost |
| What it produces | A compliance rate and a list of agreed actions | A completed job record |
| How they connect | The checklist can only score what the work orders captured | A work order nobody reviews is a work order nobody corrects |
It is worth being clear that this is not a task list. A checklist of jobs to do on an asset belongs on the work order itself, as its task rows. This document checks the work orders, which is a management activity carried out after the fact, usually monthly or quarterly, by someone who was not on site.
When the template starts to feel limiting
A sheet handles one review well. It handles a programme of reviews badly, and always in the same four ways.
The checks themselves drift
Somebody adds a check, prints a new version, and two reviews in the same quarter used different lists. The scores are then not comparable, which removes the only thing a compliance rate is for.
Agreed actions have no follow-up
An action with an owner and a date, written on a sheet in a folder, does not remind anybody. The findings are sound and the follow-through depends entirely on somebody remembering.
You cannot see which check keeps failing
The interesting question is which single line fails most often across every review you have run. On paper that means reading every past sheet, so nobody asks it.
You are auditing by hand what could be measured
Most of section D, and much of section A, are things a system can check on every work order rather than on a sample of ten. Sampling exists because manual checking does not scale, not because sampling is better.
What running this in Facilio looks like
The template is the manual version of this review. The checks are the same ones; the difference is that most of them stop being a sample somebody reads afterwards and become conditions applied to every job as it happens.
Work Completion Validator
The closure checks run on every job, not a sample of ten
Section C becomes a condition of closing rather than an audit finding. A job closed with no work described, no hours booked, an uncoded cause or no independent signature is caught at the point of closure, which is the only point at which it is still cheap to fix.
Ops Performance Intelligence
The compliance rate is current, not quarterly
Because every work order is scored as it closes, the rate is a live figure per site, per trade and per work type, so a closure problem is visible in the week it starts rather than at the next review.
Audit Report Intelligence
The review assembles itself
Sample, section scores, the failures behind them and the trend against last period become a report you can produce for a client or an auditor on request, instead of an afternoon of reading closed jobs before a service review.
Contractor Work Tracker
Agreed actions are tracked like work
Each finding carries its owner and its date and behaves like any other job, so an action agreed in a review is either done or visibly overdue, rather than rediscovered in the same state at the next one.
Audit-trailed. Every answer Atom AI gives traces back to the record it came from, so a claim in a report can be followed to the visit that produced it.
Frequently asked questions
What is a work order checklist?
A work order checklist is a review instrument. You take a sample of work orders that have already been closed and score each one against a fixed list of checks covering how it was raised, whether it was safe and ready to start, whether it was closed properly, and whether the data is good enough to report on.
The output is a compliance rate and a list of agreed actions with owners and dates. It is a management activity carried out after the fact, not something a technician fills in on a job.
What should a work order checklist cover?
Four sections. Raising: requester, precise location, asset identified, problem described, work type, priority, target date, correct trade, duplicate check and approval where the estimate exceeded the spend limit. Safety and readiness: risk assessment, permit, isolation and a proved zero-energy state, parts confirmed in stock, access arranged, competence, tools and area protection. Closure: work described, labour hours, parts booked out, meter reading, as-found and as-left, photos, deficiencies raised as their own work orders, asset history updated, isolation removed and function tested, and independent sign-off. Data quality: cost, downtime, coded failure cause, sensible dates, status matching site, no blank mandatory fields, and nothing left open after the work finished.
Then the sample details, the scoring, the compliance rate and the actions.
How many work orders should I sample?
Enough that the rate means something and few enough that the review actually happens. Ten is a common starting point for a monthly review on a single site.
What matters more than the number is recording how you chose them. Random, all P1s, one per trade and all closed last week are four different reviews, and comparing this month's random ten with last month's P1s tells you nothing.
Which check catches the most problems?
Signed off by someone other than the person who did the work. Self-certified closure is the reason a closed work order and a working asset are not the same thing.
Close behind it is whether a coded failure cause was selected from a list. Free text cannot be counted, so a cause typed as a sentence will never appear in any report, however carefully it was written.
What is a good compliance rate?
The template carries ninety per cent as an example target, but the first honest review of a process that has never been reviewed usually comes in far below that, and that is expected rather than alarming.
Track the rate rather than the individual failures. One badly closed work order is an accident; the same check failing every month is a process or a training problem, and only the trend tells you which.
Is this the same as a maintenance checklist?
No. A maintenance checklist is a list of tasks to perform on an asset, and it belongs on the work order itself as its task rows.
This document checks the work orders after they are closed. Different author, different moment, and a completely different purpose.
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 add or reword checks to match your own process; the Excel version is the one to use if you want the results counted and the compliance rate worked out for you.
In one paragraph
A work order checklist is how you find out whether the work orders you rely on are worth relying on. Decide a sample and record how you chose it, then score each job across four sections: was it raised properly, was it safe and ready to start, was it closed properly, and is the data good enough to report on. Score what you actually find, including the checks that fail. Divide the outright passes by the sample for a compliance rate, compare it against target and against last period, then write every finding into the actions table with an owner and a date. Track the rate over time rather than arguing about individual jobs.
The template is the floor, not the ceiling
Take the template; it will tell you honestly how a sample of work orders scored. When reviewing ten jobs a month stops being enough, a connected CMMS applies the same checks to every job as it closes, so the compliance rate is a live number and the failures are caught while they can still be corrected.
