Done, According to Whom?
A work order closed on the technician’s word tells you the technician thinks the job is finished. Whether the equipment came back working is a different fact, held by a different person — and most maintenance records never ask them.
Friday, a little after four. The forklift that has been off the warehouse floor since Tuesday comes back from the workshop bay. The technician types Hydraulic seal replaced, tested, OK into the work order, sets it to completed and goes home. On Monday morning the shift supervisor drives it twenty metres, finds a fresh puddle under the mast and parks it again. By lunchtime three people are in a room, and the only document anyone can point to says the job was done.
Nobody in that room is lying. The technician did replace the seal and did test it, on the bench, unloaded. The supervisor did find a leak, under load, three days later. What the record cannot tell anyone is the one thing that would settle it: whether the forklift worked when it was handed back, and whether anybody on the receiving side looked before they took it.
That is not a maintenance problem. It is an evidence problem, and it sits at the single moment almost every maintenance system treats as a formality: the click that turns a work order from in progress to completed.
Completed is a claim made by one party
Think about who is involved in a repair. Someone uses the equipment and reports the fault. Someone fixes it, in-house or from a contractor. Someone pays for it. In the typical record, only the second person ever speaks. The work order is opened by whoever noticed the fault, and closed by whoever did the work, and between those two events the people who will actually rely on the machine are absent from the paperwork entirely.
Closed on the technician’s word
- Says the person doing the job believes it is finished.
- Dated whenever somebody got round to typing it in.
- Settles a dispute only if everyone already trusts the technician.
- Leaves a contractor’s invoice approved on the contractor’s own say-so.
Closed with acceptance evidence
- Says what was done, and shows the finished job.
- Dated when the work finished, with the asset back in service from then.
- Names the person who took the equipment back, with their mark.
- Gives whoever pays the bill something other than the bill to look at.
Most organizations already know how to do this in the other direction. When a laptop goes out to an employee or a generator goes out to a site, somebody signs for it. Custody changes hands, and the hand that receives it makes a mark. A repair is the same handover run backwards — the equipment left its user, spent time in a workshop, and is now being handed to its user again — and yet the return leg is very often the one with no signature at all.
A repair is a handover run backwards. The equipment left its user and is coming back to them, and the person taking it back is the only one who can say it arrived working.
What completing a work order records here
In AWRA OpsHub a work order is completed from its own page on the web or from the work order screen in the mobile app, by someone with permission to manage asset maintenance. The form is the same in both places, and it asks for the following, in this order of importance.
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What was done
The only required field. A completion with no description is refused, on the web, in the app, and through the API. Everything that follows is evidence for this sentence.
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Condition after
A short note such as Good or Serviceable, monitor seal. When the work order had taken the asset out of service, this becomes the asset’s recorded condition on the movement that returns it.
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What it cost
Labour, parts and other, kept separately so a later repair-or-replace conversation has the split rather than a single total.
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When it was finished
Optional on the web, and it defaults to now. Set it when the work finished earlier than the moment of typing. It cannot be in the future and cannot fall before the work started.
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Photographs of the finished job
Up to six, as ordinary uploads on the web or straight from the camera in the app. The fitting, the gauge reading, the serial plate, the wide shot of the machine standing where it belongs.
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An acceptance signature
Under a pad labelled Accepted by, the person taking the equipment back draws their mark, and their printed name is recorded beside it. The record then shows who accepted the work and when they signed.
Proof is optional, and that is a decision
Photos and the signature are both optional. A filter change on a desk fan does not need a witness, and a system that demands a signature for every five-minute job teaches people to scribble on the pad to get past it — which produces a record that looks like evidence and is not. The useful habit is to decide which kinds of work need acceptance, usually anything that went out of service or anything a contractor will invoice, and to ask for it there every time.
When the work finished, not when someone typed it
The second half of a trustworthy completion is its date, and it matters for a reason that has nothing to do with blame. When a work order takes an asset out of service, the system records the moment it left and the moment it returned, and the difference is downtime. Downtime is what gets added up, quarter by quarter, when somebody asks whether a machine is worth keeping. If the return is dated when the paperwork was done rather than when the machine was ready, every late entry inflates that figure.
One repair, two ways to date its completion
The asset’s return-to-service movement is dated at the finish time you enter, not at the moment you save, so the register and the downtime figures agree with what happened on the floor.
Two guards keep the date honest in the other direction. A completion time in the future is refused, and so is one earlier than the moment the work started or the asset was taken out of service. And a work order completed straight from open, without anyone ever pressing start, claims no downtime at all: the work evidently happened, but nobody recorded the asset being away, so the system does not invent an absence for it.
Evidence that cannot be kept is a warning, not a lost repair
Photos and signatures travel from phones and browsers, and phones and browsers misbehave. Every image is checked by its bytes rather than by what the device claims it is: a signature must really be a PNG of a modest size, a photo must really be a JPEG or a PNG under a sensible ceiling, and the file name is never one the device chose. Something that fails those checks, or that the storage refuses to write, is not kept.
What happens next is the design choice worth understanding. The completion still goes through, and the person completing it is told, on the web as a warning beside the confirmation and in the app as part of the saved message, that a photo or the signature could not be stored. The reasoning is that a forklift which was genuinely repaired should not stay recorded as broken because a canvas glitched. The cost of that choice is that the warning has to be read: a record that says completed, with no signature on it, is honest about what it holds, but only if someone notices before the signer walks away.
One thing to know in practice. Once a work order is completed it is closed, and the acceptance signature belongs to the act of completing it. More photographs, a job card or a contractor’s report can still be added to the work order afterwards from its attachments panel — but a signature that did not survive the completion is retaken by asking for it while the person is still standing there, not later.
At the machine, without a signal
The workshop bay, the plant room and the far end of the yard are where repairs happen and where connections fail. In the mobile app, completing a work order is deliberately the one maintenance action that works offline. The resolution, costs, photos, signature and printed name are queued together on the phone, and the work order is shown as still open until the queue reaches the server.
Each queued completion carries a one-time key. If the phone sends it, loses the reply and sends it again, the server recognises the key and returns the first answer rather than refusing a work order that is already closed or, worse, closing it twice. If somebody else completed or cancelled the job while the phone was out of reach, the replay is refused and the queue says so, rather than overwriting what the other person recorded.
Where each part of the proof can be captured
| At completion | Web | App, online | App, queued offline |
|---|---|---|---|
| What was done, condition, costs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Photos of the finished job | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Acceptance signature and printed name | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Finish time set by the person | Yes | No | No |
| Told when proof could not be stored | Yes | Yes | No |
Built and maintained Configurable by you, not maintained by us Not built
The two offline rows are the ones to plan around. A completion queued on Tuesday and synced on Thursday is dated Thursday, and that date becomes the asset’s return to service. Where a long sync is likely, completing from the web with the real finish time keeps the downtime figure true.
Who gets to look at the proof
A signature is a personal mark belonging to somebody who may not even use the system, and a photograph of a plant room can show more than the repair. Neither is published as a public file. The proof is stored privately, the storage location is never sent to the app, and each photo and the signature are served through their own routes that require the permission to view asset maintenance — the same permission that lets someone open the work order in the first place. Being signed in to the workspace is not enough on its own.
On the work order page, a completed job with proof carries a Proof of work card: the photographs, the signature on a plain white plate so it reads the same in light and dark themes, and the line Accepted by, with the printed name and the time of signing. The app shows the same thing on the work order screen.
Before you call a repair done
- The resolution says what was done in words the next technician can act on, not just OK.
- If the asset was out of service, the finish time is when it was ready, not when the form was opened.
- Somebody from the receiving side has looked at the equipment working, not just at the paperwork.
- That person has signed, and their printed name is legible on the record.
- At least one photo shows the finished state, ideally including a serial plate or reading.
- Any warning about unsaved proof has been read and dealt with before the signer leaves.
None of this replaces a planned maintenance programme. How a schedule opens these work orders before the service falls due is covered in From Maintenance Records to Preventive Schedules. And if your organization has already started asking which handovers went out without a signature, the reasoning behind that report is in Which Handovers Went Out Unsigned? — the same question applies to the return leg of a repair.
Four questions for any system that closes maintenance jobs
Who, other than the technician, appears on a completed work order?
What you will hear
Often nobody, or a free-text notes field.
How to read it
If only the person doing the work can close the job, the record is a statement of their opinion. Look for a named acceptance with a mark, kept with the work order rather than in a separate folder.
If I complete a job a day late, when does the asset go back in service?
What you will hear
Usually when the form was saved.
How to read it
Then every downtime report overstates idleness by however long the paperwork waited. Ask whether the finish time can be set, and whether the return movement follows it.
What happens when the signature or a photo fails to upload?
What you will hear
A spinner, an error, or nothing at all.
How to read it
Two bad answers sit either side of a good one. Losing the whole completion punishes a real repair; dropping the evidence silently produces a record that claims proof it does not have. The useful answer is that the completion stands and the person is told.
Who can open the photographs and the signature afterwards?
What you will hear
Anyone with the link, or anyone signed in.
How to read it
A signature is a personal mark. It should be served only to people with a reason to view maintenance records, through a route that checks that, not a public file address.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- Completion photos and an acceptance signature on the web and in the mobile app, with the signer’s printed name and the time of signing kept on the work order.
- A required description of the work, with condition after and separate labour, parts and other costs.
- A completion time you can set on the web, refused if it is in the future or before the work started, with the asset returned to service at that time.
- Offline completion in the app with a one-time key, so a replay returns the first answer and never closes a job twice.
- Proof served through gated routes that require permission to view asset maintenance; storage locations are never sent to the app.
- Keep-and-warn on unsaved proof: the completion stands and the person completing it is told what was not kept.
More we can add to your workspace
- A workspace rule that requires acceptance before a job can close, for chosen work order types or for anything that took the asset out of service.
- The finish time captured on the phone and carried through the offline queue, so a completion synced days later still returns the asset when the work ended.
- Unsaved-proof warnings delivered after an offline sync, to the person who queued the completion.
- Re-taking the acceptance signature on a completed work order, within a short window after it closes.
- An acceptance signer chosen from the asset’s custodians or your users, with a prompt when the signer is the same person who did the work.
- Work order completions counted in the unsigned-handovers report, beside asset custody movements and stock receipts.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We will not certify that equipment is safe to use. Where a repair needs a statutory inspection or a competent person’s sign-off, that certificate belongs to the inspector, and the work order is where you attach it.
- We will not decide on your behalf who is entitled to accept a repair. That is an internal control your organization sets, and the record shows whoever you chose.
The first two items in the middle column work as a pair: a rule that requires acceptance is most useful once a completion queued at the machine also carries the moment the work actually finished.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsSee how maintenance fits into asset tracking
Custody, movements, preventive schedules and work orders with completion proof, on the web and in the mobile app.
Explore asset trackingFrequently asked questions
Is the acceptance signature required to complete a work order?
No. Photos and the signature are both optional, on the web and in the app. The only required field is a description of what was done. Many jobs do not need a witness, and forcing a signature on every small task tends to produce scribbles rather than evidence. Most organizations decide which kinds of work need acceptance, typically anything that took equipment out of service or will be invoiced by a contractor, and ask for it consistently there.
What happens if the signature or a photo fails to save?
The completion still goes through and the person completing it is told. On the web the message appears as a warning beside the confirmation; in the app it is part of the saved message. The design keeps a genuine repair from being lost because a phone canvas misbehaved, but it relies on the warning being read while the signer is still present, because a completed work order is closed and the signature belongs to the act of completing it.
Can I record that a repair finished earlier than when I entered it?
Yes, on the web. The completion form has a completed-at field that defaults to now. Set it to when the work finished and the asset is recorded back in service at that time, so downtime reflects the floor rather than the paperwork. It cannot be set in the future or earlier than the time the work started or the asset was taken out of service.
Can a technician complete a work order from the app without a connection?
Yes. Completion is the one maintenance action the app queues offline, together with its photos, signature and printed name. Each queued completion carries a one-time key, so a retry after a lost reply returns the first result instead of an error. Today the queued completion is dated when it reaches the server, so if a long delay is likely, completing from the web with the real finish time keeps downtime accurate.
Who can see the completion photos and the signature?
People with permission to view asset maintenance in the same workspace. The files are stored privately and served through dedicated routes that check that permission; the storage location is never sent to the app, and being signed in is not enough on its own.
Does the acceptance prove the equipment is safe?
No. It records that a named person accepted the equipment back after the work, with photographs of its state. Where a repair needs a formal inspection or certificate from a competent person, that document comes from them, and the work order is the place to attach it.
