How to record what a technician did at a customer's site so that someone finds it three months later

Recording what a technician did at the customer's site means writing it down against the order while still on site: what was done, what was replaced, how long it took, a photo of the condition and the technician's note. Not in an e-mail, not on paper in the van. If the record is created directly with the order, three months later anyone dealing with a complaint or a follow-up site visit will find it.

What ServisBook can do today: in My day the technician starts and finishes the work, logs the tasks and can add a short note for the office. Photos and other attachments to the order are uploaded and managed by the administrator. This article does not promise direct photo upload by the technician.

• The record should be created on site, not at home in the evening from memory.
• The minimum is: who, when, what they did, what they replaced, what condition they left it in.
• A photo that is needed is handed over to the administrator and stored with the order, not only in the phone's gallery.
• The change log makes clear who recorded what and when. This matters especially in a complaint.
• For a company with one technician, a notebook is still enough.

What a site visit record should contain

A record is usable when another technician can carry on from it without calling anyone. That is the whole yardstick. If they have to call, the record exists, but it is not serving its purpose.

In practice that means these eight items:

• the date and time of arrival and departure,
• who was there, and if two went, both of them,
• what the assignment was and what was actually done, because they tend to differ,
• parts replaced and material consumed,
• measured values, if you measure,
• the condition of the equipment on leaving, i.e. whether it runs, runs with reservations, or does not run,
• what remains to be finished and why it was not finished,
• photos before and after the job.

The last point is underestimated most often. In a dispute over a complaint, a photo of the condition before the job is the only evidence that cannot be questioned. The note "it was clogged" can be.

Why records fall apart in e-mail

Because e-mail is a queue, not an archive. The technician sends the office a message with a photo, the dispatcher reads it, deals with what was needed, and the message slides down. Three months later they search for it by the customer's surname, but the technician only wrote "air conditioning, Thursday" in the subject line. The search takes time and sometimes leads nowhere, because the message was sent by a different technician from a private mailbox.

The second place where it falls apart is the camera. The photo gets taken but stays on the phone among all the others. Nobody uploads it, because that means sitting down at the computer in the evening. After a phone change it is not available at all.

The third is the paper work log. It works well until someone needs it from the office while the binder is in the van.

Where the record is created and where you then look for it

The difference is not in how much the technician writes but in the gap between the job and the entry. The longer it is, the fewer details remain in the record, regardless of how carefully the technician works.

How to record so that it is part of the work

The entry must be possible on site, on the phone and without installing another app. The shorter the path from finishing the work to confirming the tasks, the smaller the risk that the record will be pieced together from memory afterwards.

Mobile for technicians is therefore an ordinary browser: the technician opens their day, sees where they are going, starts the work and logs the tasks performed when finishing. They can add a short note for the office. In the current version photos and other attachments are managed by the administrator, so you need an agreed procedure for handing them over to the office.

A note on dictation: let technicians put it in their own words. When a technician dictates "I cleaned the evaporator, the condenser is clogged, the customer knows someone has to come back for it", that is a better record than a form sentence nobody reads.

A procedure for introducing records in a small pilot

1. Write down what you want to know about every site visit. Stay under ten items, otherwise nobody will fill them in.
2. Pick three technicians who will record on site for a week. Not everyone at once.
3. At the end of the week open five random orders and try to carry on from them as if you had not been there.
4. Whatever you were missing, add to the list. Whatever you did not need, cross out.
5. From the second week everyone records, and paper remains only as a backup.

The third step is the only one that shows the real state of things. Without it, for a year people record something nobody ever opens.

Photos and attachments belong with the order

Everything about one order should be in one place, including documents from the customer: the purchase order, the report from the previous job, a photo of the equipment nameplate, the technician's note from last year's visit.

Orders and history keeps logged work, notes, photos uploaded by the administrator and other attachments, and a record of every change, with a single order. If the customer later gets in touch saying the problem is back, you open the order and see what was done, who carried out the job and what was recorded as unfinished.

The change log pays off inside the company too. When the schedule moved and the customer claims they did not know, it is not a dispute between two memories. It is a line with a time and a name.

Name statuses the way you call them

One company calls an order after the job "done", another "accepted", a third leaves it open until the spare part arrives. Records that force you to use someone else's vocabulary get worked around in operation: technicians write the real status in the note in their own words anyway.

Customisation without a programmer lets you name statuses, appointment types, tags and qualifications the way you call them. Then nothing has to be translated and nobody has to guess what "status 3" means.

Records and planning are two sides of one order

A site visit record often leads to further work: a part is missing, a second technician is needed, or the job will only be finished during a shutdown of the customer's plant. If records and planning exist separately, this information is lost in the gap between them.

That is why the note "come back with the part" should end up as an appointment, not as a sentence in an e-mail. On the planning board you enter the follow-up assignment by dragging across cells, and it warns you of a clash before it happens. The order then does not depend on someone remembering.

With inspections, records are part of the work itself

In industries that do inspections and regular checks, the record is not extra paperwork. It is the output the customer pays for, and it must be traceable years back, not just until the next phone change.

In these industries it pays to record more strictly: measured values, faults found, the date of the next check. Above all uniformly, so that the result does not depend on which technician carried out the job.

When you do not need to deal with records

If there are two of you and you travel together, records in a notebook work and there is no point changing them. The same goes for one-off jobs with no follow-up. The problem starts when different technicians go to the same customer and when you are dealing with jobs you were not at. That is where memory stops being enough.

Recognising that moment is easy: if this month you have called a colleague at least twice to ask "what did you actually do there", this is it.

Frequently asked questions