What a work report should contain

A work report is a record of what the technician actually did at the customer's. It contains the identification of the order and the site, the date and time of the job, a description of the work done, the material used, the defects found and the customer's confirmation. It serves as the basis for invoicing and as evidence in a complaint. Without it, the scope of the work done is reconstructed from memory and from e-mails.

• The minimum content of a report is six items: who, where, when, what was done, what was used and the customer's confirmation.
• A work report, a handover report and an inspection report are three different documents with different purposes.
• The report should be created at the site of the job, not in the evening in the office from notes on a scrap of paper.
• Invoicing is done from the report, so the hours and material in it must be in a form that can be carried over to the invoice without arguing.
• The description of the work written for the customer and the internal note for colleagues are two different fields, not one.

What belongs in a work report

A year later, the report must on its own answer the question of what happened at the site and why it cost exactly that much. That determines the range of items. The following table divides the content into the part without which the report is pointless and the part that is useful only for certain types of job.

Two fields get mixed up most often. The description of the work done is read by the customer, so it cannot take abbreviations or internal assessments. The internal note is meant for colleagues and holds what you do not write to the customer: where the shut-off valve is, how to get to the site, what to watch out for next time. In well-kept records these are two separate fields on one order, not one paragraph that gets edited before sending.

A work report, a handover report and an inspection report are not the same thing

Each of these documents is created for a different reason, and that is why they cannot replace one another.

A work report describes one job: what the technician did, when and with what material. It is created for every site visit, including repeat servicing of the same equipment.

A handover report closes the whole work or delivery. It deals with handover and acceptance, the client's reservations and the start of the warranty period. A multi-day installation produces one at the end, whereas there are as many work reports as there were days on site.

An inspection report is a professional output with prescribed content under the relevant technical regulations and is drawn up by a person with a valid certificate. An ordinary work report does not replace it, even if it contained the same data. If the company's main business is inspections and periodic checks, expect a separate document with its own records and deadlines to be created alongside the record of the job.

How the report is created in the field

The report should be created on site, while the technician can still see the equipment. Filling it in from memory the next day is a source of missing items and understated hours.

1. Before setting off, the technician opens the order and reads the description of the fault and the notes from the previous job.
2. On arrival they start the work, which records the actual start time.
3. During the job or immediately after it they log the tasks done and the material used.
4. They add the defects found and recommendations for the next steps.
5. They attach photos of the state before and after, if it is an installation or a contentious site.
6. They have the job confirmed by the customer and set the order status: done, in progress or waiting for a part.
7. In the office, the invoice is issued from the report; there is no more hunting for the scope of work.

For this procedure to work, the technician needs to see their day and write directly from the site. That is what mobile for technicians is for: the technician opens the browser, sees their day, starts the work and logs the tasks done. No installation and no phone call to the office.

Why reports get filled in badly

The most common cause is not the technicians' reluctance but the form they were given. A paper pad is quick to fill in, but ends up in the van or in a bag and reaches the office at the end of the week. A form in Word or Excel is created only after returning, that is afterwards. Both lead to the same result: missing material, rounded hours and a two-word description of the work.

The second cause is length. A report with twenty fields, half of which are not filled in for a routine job, stops being filled in at all. A short form the technician always fills in is better than a complete one they fill in once every three site visits.

The third cause is a mismatch with how the company actually operates. If the company has called jobs something different for years from what the statuses in the form are called, a translation arises, and it is done wrongly. Customisation without a programmer removes this trouble by letting the company name statuses, appointment types and labels its own way.

Where the report belongs once filled in

The report belongs with the order, not in the mailbox of a particular person. That is a difference that only shows during a complaint or when a colleague leaves.

The order should hold together the description of the fault, all the jobs, the attachments and a record of every change, so that the question "what did we do there last year and who approved it" is answered by the application, not by memory. That is exactly what orders and history is for: attachments, internal notes and a timeline of changes in one place.

ServisBook records the logged tasks, notes, attachments and the history of the order. The report for the order is generated from them as a PDF and the customer signs it with a finger on the phone; the company sets the name of the document itself, so it can be a work report as well as a handover report (see report with signature).

At the same time, it is honest to say what this does not solve: the records alone do not issue an invoice; they provide the basis for it in the form of hours, material and times.

When a paper report is enough

Paper holds up where one technician goes out, jobs follow one after another and invoicing is done the same week. A pre-printed pad with a carbon copy is faster in such an operation than any application, and there is no point changing it.

But as soon as orders run concurrently, technicians take turns at one site and appointments change during the week, paper starts to go missing exactly when it is needed. Then it is no longer about the form, but about the record of the job being attached to the order as soon as it is created, and being visible to whoever happens to be sitting in the office. For service and installation companies this is usually the first reason they move away from paper.

The report, then, is not an extra administrative burden. It is the only moment when what happened at the customer's can be recorded, at the cost of a few minutes on site instead of tens of minutes of searching later.

Frequently asked questions