Creating a work order

A work order records what has been carried out on 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 turn it into an invoice or an order.

Creating a work order

You are best off creating a work order in the place where the job is already known, so that the customer, the project and the address come along straight away:

• In the work orders module — click the action button add. You fill in everything yourself.
• From a planning item — open the planning item and, in the overview block, click the + next to work orders.
• From a project, order, customer, installation, purchase order or purchase invoice — there too you find the + next to work orders in the overview block. On a project and a purchase invoice you also have the action button make work order.
• Automatically after a stock change — switch on create work order after entering stock changes via settings > stock changes > create work order after entering. Every stock change you enter then produces a work order with the items used on it.

Do you work with Wappy? Then you do not have to create anything yourself: your engineer fills in the work order in the app and it ends up in Robaws automatically, linked to the planning item.

Filling in the work order fiche

Work order info

At the top you find the work order info card with the general data of the work order. Exactly which fields you see depends on your settings and on which modules you use.

If you work with extra fields, those appear at the bottom of that same card.

Address

The address block is the site address — so where the work is carried out, not your customer's invoicing address. If you choose a project, an order or a customer, Robaws suggests the matching address.

Employee hours

In the employee hours block you record who worked for how long.

You always add hours with an hour code: an item of the type 'hour code - employee'. That hour code determines the cost price and the sales price of the hour. How you create hour codes and link them to your employees is explained in working with hours and time operations in Robaws. If you work with hour types, Robaws automatically takes the hour type of the hour code over onto the hour line.

The block is one table. You click add line and fill in the employee, the hour code and the number of hours per line. Next to those you find remarks, billable hours, cost price, price, vat and total. Extra columns appear as soon as you use the matching function: hour type, activity, post, and start time, end time and pause (m).

You can make one work order per employee, or one work order for a whole team: you then simply add several lines or cards.

The columns start time, end time and pause (m) only appear once the switches enter the start/stop time and enter pause are on. You find those on the Wappy card of the work order settings, but they apply to the work order in Robaws itself as well.

Material hours

The material hours block records how long a machine or vehicle has been used. Per line you choose the equipment, the matching item (an hour code of the equipment type), the quantity and the unit. Next to those you find billable quantity, cost price, price, vat and total.

Kilometers

In the kilometers block you fill in the km to and the km back per employee. Robaws adds those up in km total. In the mobility column you choose the mobility type that determines the allowance; how you set up those types is explained in applying a mobility allowance.

The guess button clears the existing kilometer lines and creates a new line per employee from the employee hours block. Robaws does not fill in those lines on the basis of a route calculation, but with what is already known:

• the kilometers that are on the project fiche, and the mobility type from the employee's mobility field;
• on top of that a second line with the employee's home/work distance, if the apply home/work mobility switch is on for them.

If the apply mobility switch is off for an employee, they do not get a project line.

Items

On the items tab you put what has been consumed or installed: items, equipment and installations. Those are the lines that will end up on your invoice. Besides item, description, quantity, unit and the price columns, you can also work with posts and activities here. With the line column you choose the line type, to add a subtitle or a text line for instance.

Signature

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

Whether that signature also ends up 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.

Files and photos

On the files tab you find the documents and photos of the work order — including what your engineer uploads via Wappy. The number of files appears as a counter on the tab.

Do you want those photos on the work order pdf? Then 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.

Remarks, tasks and forms

On the remarks tab you keep an internal conversation about the work order. On tasks you put what still has to be done. If you work with forms, the completed forms appear on the forms tab. Each of those tabs shows a counter with the number of items.

Putting items on your lines quickly

You do not have to build up the lines of a work order one by one. There are three faster routes.

Searching and copying to the clipboard

Press F2 anywhere in Robaws to open the items window. There you search in three tabs: item, post and item group. Tick what you need and click copy to clipboard. Then go to the items tab of your work order, right-click on a line and choose paste.

Copying and pasting lines

On the employee hours and material hours blocks and on the items tab the same principle works within Robaws itself. Tick the lines, right-click and choose copy. Open another work order, right-click on the place where the lines have to go and choose paste. Handy if you register the same team or the same machines week after week.

Items from a webshop

If you work with a webshop link, you load items straight in from your supplier. Click the action button webshops (or press F3), 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 that you can paste them onto the work order lines.

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

Viewing your work orders

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

• Table — the classic overview with your own columns, filters and sorting. How you set that up is explained in using overview screens.
• Analysis — the totals of your hours, cost price and sales price, with charts per employee, per hour code, per project and per kilometers. The analysis follows your filters and search term from the table.
• Calendar — a detailed picture of the work carried out per employee, with the number of hours per entry. If an employee is absent, you see that on the calendar as well.

The calendar also holds the time check. If you click on an employee's day, you open their hours and approve them with save & approve. You can also add presence hours or add absence hours there. Everything about that is in time check.

Invoicing a work order

Select one or more work orders in the overview and click the action button make invoice. That same action button is on the work order fiche itself, where you choose the journal and the invoice template straight away.

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

With the action button make order you turn a work order into an order instead of an invoice. Both action buttons only appear if the make invoice and make order switches are on in the work order settings.

More about the different ways of invoicing is explained in invoicing one or more work orders and in billable hours.

Invoicing strategy

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

Which strategy you choose also determines which extra fields appear. With 1 line per work order you fill in compact total line entry with what has to appear as the description on that total line. With detail per work order you get three fields to shape the description yourself: employee hours detail entry, material hours detail entry and line detail mention when invoicing. In all of those fields you work with replacement codes.

Man-day Register

From the work orders overview you request a pdf with the man-days carried out via the action button pdf > man-day register. If you have selected work orders, it concerns those work orders; without a selection Robaws takes your complete current view, so including your filters and your search term.

The pdf sorts first per project (alphabetically) and within that per week (chronologically). If you work with several companies, every company gets its own part in the same pdf.

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

You request the same man-day register from the pdf menu of an order and of an invoice as well.

Work order templates for Wappy

If your engineers send you photos and documents via Wappy, you want to find those back neatly organised. With a work order template you fix the folder structure that a work order is given.

This is how you set that 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 take over the folder structure of an existing work order. With edit template you adjust the folders later on.
• Link the template to the order in the wappy work order template field on the order fiche. The work orders that come out of that order take the folders over.
• Switch on show document folders in the work order settings, so that your engineer sees the folders in Wappy as well. That setting applies to every screen where Wappy shows documents: orders, tasks, work orders and installations.

Settings

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

Do you want certain users not to see sales prices on the work order? Then you arrange that not here but under the permissions of your users, with the hide sale prices permission. Those users also no longer see margins, totals and analysis amounts on the work order.

Updated on: 18/09/2026