Creating a work order

A work order records what has been done on a site: the hours of your employees, the equipment that was used and the items that were consumed. That way you know, per day and per project, what a job has cost.

A work order is not an invoice, but you can create one from it.

Creating a work order

You create a work order in the place where the job is already known, so that the customer, the project and the address come along automatically:

• In the work orders module — click the add action button. You fill in everything yourself.
• From a planning item — open the planning item and click the + next to Work orders in the overview block.
• From a project, order, customer, installation, purchase order or purchase invoice — the + next to Work orders is there too, in the overview block. On a project and a purchase invoice you also have the make work order action button.

If you work with Wappy, you do not have to create anything yourself: your technician fills in the work order in the app and it arrives in Robaws automatically, linked to the planning item.

Filling in the work order

Work order info and address

At the top you fill in the general data. The address block is the site address — so where the work is carried out, not your customer's invoicing address.

Employee hours

In the employee hours block you record who worked and for how long. Click add line and choose the employee and the time operation.

You can create one work order per employee, or one work order for a whole crew: you simply add several lines. With save & approve you save the lines and approve them in one go.

Material hours and kilometers

The material hours block records how long a machine or vehicle was used. In the kilometers block you fill in, per employee, the kilometers there and back, together with the mobility type that determines the allowance. The guess button fills in the kilometers for you based on the addresses.

Items

On the items tab you list what was consumed or installed: items, equipment and installations. Those are the lines that will end up on your invoice.

Signature

On a smartphone, tablet or pc with a touchscreen, you have the customer sign on the signature tab, with their name in the signed by field. That gives you immediate proof that you can send along with the invoice.

Whether that signature also appears on the pdf is determined by the PDF signature switch in the work order settings. If it is off, a textual signature block appears on the pdf instead.

Documents and photos

The documents tab holds the documents and photos of the work order — including whatever your technician uploads via Wappy.

To get those photos onto the work order pdf, switch on show image files on Pdf per pdf template via settings > work order settings > pdf > templates. Robaws then includes all images of the work order, alphabetically by file name, with the file name underneath.

Pro work order

The Pro work order is the extended version of the work order. You switch it on with use Pro work order in the work order settings; new work orders adopt that setting automatically.

Without the Pro work order you see a simpler hours block, and the material hours and kilometers blocks are not available. We therefore recommend Pro as soon as you want to record more than employee hours alone. Work orders that come in from Wappy are always Pro.

Viewing your work orders

At the top right of the module, three action buttons let you switch between three views:

• Table — the classic overview with your own columns, filters and sorting. How to set that up is described in using overview screens.
• Analytics — the totals of your hours, cost price and selling price, with charts per employee, per time operation, per project and per kilometers. The analysis follows your filters and search term from the table.
• Calendar — a detailed picture of the work done per employee, with the number of hours per entry. If an employee is absent, you see that on the calendar too.

Invoicing a work order

Select one or more work orders in the overview and click the make invoice action button. That same action button is on the work order itself.

Robaws groups per customer: if your selection contains work orders from different customers, you get several invoices. If you send an invoice covering several work orders by mail, those work orders are merged into one pdf.

Invoicing strategy

The invoicing strategy determines how much detail of the work order ends up on the invoice. You set it via settings > work order settings > settings in the invoicing strategy field:

The strategy you choose also determines which extra fields appear. With 1 line per work order you fill in compact total line entry to say what the description on that total line should be. With detail per work order you get three fields to shape the description of the employee hours, the material hours and the ordinary lines yourself. In all those fields you work with replacement codes.

Man-day register

From the work orders overview, the pdf > man-day register action button gives you a pdf of the man-days worked. If you have selected work orders, it covers those; without a selection, Robaws takes your entire current view, filters included.

The pdf sorts first by project (alphabetically) and within that by week (chronologically).

Which employee data appears on the pdf is up to you, in the employee format field via settings > work order settings > man-day register. By default it holds ${employeeFullName}, but you can extend it with for instance ${insz}, ${employeeFunction} or ${employeeNationality}. In the same card you also set the declaration, the footer and the statuses to export.

Loading items from a webshop

If you work with a webshop connection, you load items straight from your supplier. Click the webshops action button, open the webshop and fill your basket. With import items from shopping cart to Robaws, those items end up in your item library, and on your clipboard at the same time, so you can paste them onto the work order lines.

Robaws supports Van Marcke, Rexel, Cebeo, Facq, Desco, Deschacht, Dupont and Würth, among others. You activate and configure them via settings > integrations. If no webshops have been set up yet, you get a message about it.

Work order templates for Wappy

If your technicians send you photos and documents via Wappy, you want to find them neatly filed. With a work order template you set the folder structure that a work order receives.

This is how you set it up:

• Create the template via settings > work order settings > wappy > work order templates. You choose create blank template and build the folders yourself, or choose existing to adopt the folder structure of an existing work order. With edit template you can adjust the folders later on.
• Link the template to the order in the Wappy work order template field on the order. The work orders that come out of that order adopt the folders.
• Switch on show document folders in the work order settings, so that your technician sees the folders in Wappy as well.

Settings

Everything above is set via the gear icon in the work orders module, or via settings > work order settings. The main cards:

If you want certain users not to see selling prices on the work order, that is not set here but in your users' rights, with the 'hide selling prices on work order' right.

Updated on: 04/09/2026