Service History and Service Logs
A service log is the record of one visit: what was done, by whom, on what date, for how many hours and how it turned out. A job can carry several — a machine that needed three attempts has three logs, and the difference between a job fixed first time and one that took three visits is exactly what the maintenance history is for.
Recording one
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Date | The date of the visit. |
| Description | Required. Describe the work done. |
| Hours | How long it took. Feeds the labour cost on the job. |
| Technician | The employee who did it. |
| Outcome | Completed, Partly Done or Not Fixed. |
| Notes | Anything worth knowing next time. |
The outcome
| Outcome | Use when |
|---|---|
| Completed | The work is done and the asset is back in service. |
| Partly Done | Some of it is done; something is outstanding — a part on order, a second pair of hands needed. |
| Not Fixed | The visit did not solve it. |
Recording Not Fixed honestly is more useful than it feels at the time. Three Not Fixed logs against one asset is a diagnosis in itself, and it is invisible if everyone records Completed because the visit ended.
Hours and labour cost
Hours from the service logs are valued at the own labour rate per hour in General settings and shown as the labour component of the job's cost. It is a costing rate for reporting; it posts nothing to the ledger, because your technicians are already being paid through payroll and costing them twice would be wrong.
Contractor time is not costed this way — what an outside firm charges comes in through its bill.
When logs can be recorded
Service logs belong to work in progress. A job that is completed, closed or cancelled will not accept new logs or changes to existing ones; reopen it first. Recording and editing logs needs Service Logs and Spare Parts permission — the technician's permission, which also covers starting and completing jobs and issuing parts.
The Service History tab
The Service History tab lists logs across all jobs for a period, with the asset, the job, the technician, the hours and the outcome. It is the asset history view: open it filtered to one asset to see everything that has ever been done to it, rather than working job by job.