Work orders | General

A work order records what has been carried out 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 turn it into an invoice or an order with one click. The work orders module is included in the Go and Pro licences. You give a user access via the permissions on work orders in their user role.

Navigate quickly to:

• the overview of the work orders
• creating a new work order
• the work order file and its fields
• the various tabs
• the action buttons
• the man-day register

Overview screen

You can adjust the overview of the work orders via the settings: which columns you want, in which order, which quick filters? In addition, every user can create their own overviews and personalise them. Via the overview screen you can make bulk changes to several work orders at once.

If a work order is linked to a planning item, you can also show data of that planning item as a column, such as the equipment scheduled on it. If your environment contains a very large number of work orders, Robaws first shows only the latest work orders and says so at the top. With Load all work orders you retrieve the rest.

Views

Besides the table view, the work order overview has four more views:

• Kanban: your work orders as cards, in a column per status.
• Map: your work orders on a map, based on the address of the work order.
• Analysis: the totals of the Hours, the Cost price and the Sell price of the work orders in your overview, with charts per employee, per time operation, per project and per kilometers. The analysis takes into account the filters and the search term that are active at that moment.
• Calendar: the Time check. You see per employee and per day how many hours have been registered, and also who was absent. Click on a day of an employee to open their hours. There you add presence or absence hours and approve the hours with Save & Approve. You can read all about this in Time check.

Creating a new work order

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

1. from a planning item in the dayplanning, via the plus sign next to 'Work orders' in the Overview block. Robaws takes over the customer, the project, the order, the address, the installations, the items and the extra fields of the planning item. If take hours to work order is switched on in the dayplanning settings, every scheduled employee also gets an hour line.
2. from an order, via the plus sign next to 'Work orders' in the Overview block. All lines of the order then come onto the work order as items.
3. from a project, via the Make work order action button at the top of the project file or via the plus sign in the Overview block. The site address of the project becomes the address of the work order.
4. from a customer, an installation or a supply order, via the plus sign next to 'Work orders' in the Overview block.
5. from an incoming invoice, via the Make work order action button. Robaws makes one work order per project, with the lines of the incoming invoice as items.
6. from the overview of your work orders, via the Add (+) action button. You then fill in everything yourself.

In addition, work orders are also created automatically:

• If you work with Wappy, your team fills in the work order in the app. It ends up in Robaws automatically, linked to the planning item.
• If you switch on Create work order after entering stock changes in the settings of the stock changes, every stock change you enter produces a work order with the items used on it.
• If you register hours in the time check, Robaws creates a work order for them per day.

Every new work order gets the Default status, the Default remarks and the extra fields from the settings. Do you have a list of work orders? Then you can import them.

The work order file

The work order file consists of the Work order info, Address and Overview blocks, with the blocks for the hours below them. At the very bottom you find the tabs and the totals of the work order.

Work order info

If you work with extra fields, those appear at the bottom of this block.

Address

The address where the work was carried out, so not your customer's billing address. Based on this address Robaws shows the work order on the map. If you choose a project, an order or a customer, Robaws suggests the matching address.

Overview

Here you see the documents linked to the work order: Invoices, Orders, Stockchanges and Maintenance services. Click on a module to view the linked documents, or on the plus sign to create a new document for this work order straight away.

Track and Trace

(visible if you use Track and Trace) The presence of your employees on the site, based on their location.

Employee hours

Here you record who worked for how long. Click Add line and fill in the employee, the time operation and the number of Hours per line. A time operation is an item of the type 'hour code - employee'. It determines the sales price of the hour. How you create time operations and link them to your employees is explained in Working with hours and time operations in Robaws. Where the cost price comes from is explained in How is the cost price of my hours on a work order determined?

Next to the hours is the Billable hours column: the hours you charge to the customer. Robaws fills them in automatically. You can adjust them per line, for example so as not to charge travel time. How exactly that works is explained in What is the difference between hours and billable hours on a work order?

A number of columns only appear once you use the matching function:

• Start time, end time and pause: if Enter the start/stop time and Enter pause are switched on in the Wappy card of the work order settings. If you fill them in, Robaws calculates the hours itself.
• Hour type, activity and post: if you work with hour types, activities or posts.

You can make one work order per employee, or one work order for a whole team with a line per employee.

Material hours

(visible if Show material hours is switched on in the work order settings) Here you record how long a machine or vehicle has been used. Per line, choose the equipment, the time operation (an item of the equipment type) and the Quantity. Robaws takes over the Billable quantity from the quantity. You can still adjust it per line.

Kilometers

(visible if Show kilometers is switched on in the work order settings) Fill in the kilometers to and back per employee, and choose the mobility type that determines the allowance. How you set up those types is explained in Applying a mobility allowance

With the Guess button Robaws clears the existing kilometer lines and creates a new line per employee from the employee hours block. Robaws does not calculate a route, but uses what is already known:

• the kilometers on the project file, with the mobility type of the employee;
• on top of that a line with the home-work distance, if Applying home/work mobility is switched on on the employee file.

If Apply mobility is switched off on the employee file, that employee does not get a project line.

Tabs

Items

Here you put what was consumed or installed: items, equipment and installations. Those are the lines that go onto your invoice. With the Line column you choose the line type, for example for a subheading or a text line. If Show line nrs. is switched on in the work order settings, you also see the line number.

You don't have to enter the lines one by one:

• Press F2 to look up items, posts or item groups. Tick what you need, click Copy to clipboard and paste the lines onto your work order with the right mouse button.
• Tick lines on another work order, copy them with the right mouse button and paste them onto this work order. That also works in the employee hours and material hours blocks.
• Load items directly from your supplier's webshop, via the Webshops action button (or F3). See Importing items from a webshop

Remarks

You use remarks to communicate internally about this work order and as a reminder.

Documents

Here are the files and photos of the work order, including what your team sends through via Wappy. If you want the photos on the PDF, switch on Show image files on Pdf in your PDF template. Robaws then takes along all images of the work order, alphabetically by file name.

Tasks

As in all modules, you can also create a task from the work order.

Signature

Have your customer sign off the work order on a smartphone, tablet or PC with a touchscreen, and fill in their name under Signed by. If PDF signature is switched on in the work order settings, the signature appears on the PDF. If it is switched off, a textual signature block appears on the PDF. In the overview you use the Signed and Signed by columns to show which work orders have already been signed off.

Forms

(visible if you work with forms) The forms that have been filled in for this work order, including those from Wappy.

Action buttons

In the overview screen

For most action buttons in the overview, you first tick the work order(s) on the left on which you want to perform the action.

On the work order file

At the top of the work order file there is a row of action buttons. The name of an action button appears as soon as you hover over it with your mouse.

Do you want certain users not to see sales prices on the work order? Then switch on Hide sale prices in the permissions of your users. Those users no longer see prices, margins and totals on the work order, and the Excel action button and the man-day register disappear as well. The cost price does remain visible.

Man-day Register

(visible if NL features enabled is switched on in the general settings) The man-day register is a PDF with the man-days carried out per employee. It belongs to the Dutch functionality. You request it in the work order overview via the Pdf > Man-day Register action button. If you have selected work orders, it concerns those work orders. Without a selection Robaws takes your complete current overview, so including your filters and your search term.

The PDF sorts first per project (alphabetically) and within that per week. If you work with several companies, each company gets its own part in the same PDF. You request the same man-day register from the PDF menu of an order and of an invoice as well.

Which data of the employee appears on the PDF and which text goes with it is set on the Man-day Register card of the work order settings.

Updated on: 19/10/2026