Practical guide

Asset maintenance: a recurring plan, and an order that carries its real cost

The machine needs servicing every three months. The generator every six. In the end the person who remembers is the technician — if he is still with you. And the moment something actually stops, it gets fixed in a hurry: parts pulled from the store with no paperwork, the technician on it for two days, an outside bill paid in cash. Fine — but a year later, when you ask what that machine cost you, there is no number. The cost scattered across petty expenses, a stock shortage and wages, and the preventive service that would have avoided the breakdown was never remembered.

The idea in a minute

A maintenance order=The asset (or the unit)+The work needed+Parts, labour and other costs

The order is not a to-do note. It is the container every pound drops into as the work goes on, and at the end it closes to the maintenance expense account as a single figure.

How it works

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1. You set a plan for the recurring service
You pick the asset, how often — every so many days, weeks, months or years — the window from one date to another, and the work needed. You can also set the technician, the branch and one of three priorities. Before you save, the screen shows you how many maintenance orders will be created and the first and last date, so you know exactly what you are agreeing to.
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2. Every order is created up front, not one at a time
The moment you save the plan, all of its maintenance orders are created immediately with their dates — it does not wait for each one to come around. So you can see next year's whole service schedule from the start: what is due in March, what in June. An order whose date has not arrived yet sits as scheduled: visible in front of you, with no accounting effect whatsoever, and you can start it straight away if the technician turns up early.
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3. The calendar is fixed — a delay does not push the next one
If March's service happened in April, June's service stays in June. That is deliberate: a recurring service is anchored to the calendar, not to the last time somebody remembered. If it shifted, every delay would push the next one, and after a year a quarterly service would quietly have become a five-monthly one.
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4. You are notified on the date, and again if it slips
On the due date a notification reaches you, and if the order is still sitting scheduled past its date you get one more. So the plan is not something you set up and forget inside a table — it speaks to you.
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5. The board: all your maintenance in front of you, by stage
The same orders as a board: one column per stage, one card per order, nearest due date on top. At a glance you know what is due, what is in the workshop right now, and what is finished. And not every repair has to come from a plan — if something breaks unexpectedly you raise a maintenance order on the asset directly.
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6. You start the repair and record everything spent on it
When you start, the order moves to in repair and you record against it: parts, which genuinely leave the warehouse at their cost; labour; and other costs. Parts have three possible endings — what went into the machine stays on the order, what you did not use returns to the warehouse at the cost it left at, and what was damaged is written off. So the warehouse stays accurate and the cost stays true.
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7. The asset keeps depreciating while it is in the workshop
A maintenance order never touches the asset's status, its value or its depreciation. That is deliberate and it follows the standard: an asset depreciates while idle just as it does while working — it is the passage of time that consumes it, not the running. And if you hold a quantity of that asset, it is the individual unit in the workshop whose status moves; the rest carry on working.
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8. You close the order, and learn what that repair cost
When the repair is finished you close the order, and everything that accumulated on it — parts, labour and other costs — moves in one entry to the maintenance expense account. That is where the question that never had an answer comes from: what has this machine cost me this year? And you decide which account it lands in: one for that asset, one for the whole asset category, or a single company-wide account. The order takes its account the moment it is created, so changing the mapping later never disturbs an old order.

In short

The recurring service is not forgotten: a plan generates the whole year's orders up front on a fixed calendar, and notifies you on the date and again if it slips.

Every repair with its real cost: parts, labour and other costs accumulate on the order and close to the maintenance expense account as one figure.

Parts genuinely leave the warehouse: what you did not use returns at the cost it left at, and what was damaged is written off.

One board for all the maintenance: columns by stage, cards by order, nearest date on top — what is due, what is in the workshop and what is done, at a glance.

Who this is for

Factories and production lines

A machine whose breakdown stops the line. A service on a fixed calendar is cheaper than a failure, and a cost per machine shows you which one eats more than it produces.

Vehicles and equipment

A small fleet or site equipment: each unit with its own plan, repair history and cost. And if you hold several of the same kind, the one in the workshop is the one that shows.

Restaurants and branches

Fridges, ovens and air conditioning spread across branches. The order carries its branch, so you can see whose maintenance costs more — a figure that matters when you compare branch profit.

Clinics and labs

Devices with mandatory calibration and periodic servicing. The plan records that it happened, who did it and when — a full history of every order and who moved its status.

The limits, stated plainly

Plans run on dates, not on hours or kilometres. You can say every three months, but not every ten thousand kilometres or every five hundred running hours. If your fleet is serviced by the meter, that does not exist yet — better said now than discovered after you have entered your plans.
A repair goes to expense; it does not raise the asset's value. A major overhaul that extends an asset's life is something an accountant may want to capitalise onto its value. That is not available: the order always closes to an expense account. For an overhaul of that size, your accountant posts it with a manual entry.
An outside workshop's invoice is not linked to the order. You record the amount on the order as a cost with a description, but there is no link between the order and the supplier's own invoice. The cost comes out right; tracing from the order to that invoice is still manual.
This is for your own assets, not your customers' devices. If your business is receiving a customer's device, repairing it and invoicing it, that is a service centre — something else entirely, and it does not exist. This module is for the assets recorded on your own books.