Preventive Maintenance Schedules
A preventive schedule is planned work that repeats: a quarterly service, an annual inspection, a monthly filter change. The schedule holds what the work is, which asset it is on, how often it comes round and what job to raise when it does. Done properly it is the difference between maintenance you plan and maintenance that happens to you.
Setting one up
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Title | Name the planned work, for example Quarterly service. |
| Asset | The item the schedule is for, with its serial, location and dimension. |
| Frequency / Period | How often: a whole number from 1 to 999, and days, weeks, months or years. |
| Next Due | When the work is next due. After that the app maintains it. |
| Lead time (days) | How far ahead the schedule should start showing as due, 0 to 365. |
| Instructions | What the work consists of. Copied onto the job's notes. |
| Job Defaults | The job type and priority the raised job will carry. |
How a job gets raised
| Route | When |
|---|---|
| Raise Job Now | You press it. Useful for bringing work forward, or the first time round. |
| Automatically | Raise due jobs automatically every day is on in General settings. Schedules inside their lead time raise their job without anyone touching them. |
The raised job carries the schedule's title as its description, its instructions as notes, and the job type and priority from the schedule's defaults. It then behaves like any other job.
Rolling forward
When the job raised from a schedule is completed, the schedule's next due date is recalculated from the completion date plus the frequency — not from the old due date. A quarterly service done three weeks late next falls due three months after it was actually done, which is what you want: the interval is a service interval, not a calendar slot.
Lead time
Lead time is how much warning you want. A schedule with a fourteen-day lead time appears on the Overview's Preventive Due card and on the Preventive Maintenance Due report a fortnight before the date, giving you time to order parts or book a contractor. Set it to 0 and the work shows as due on the day, which is usually too late to arrange anything.
The default for new schedules comes from Default lead time (days) in settings.
The register
The Preventive Schedules tab lists every schedule with its asset, frequency, next due date and whether a job is already open against it. That last column matters: a schedule showing as due with a job already open needs no action, and one showing as due with nothing open does.
Schedules are guarded by Preventive Schedules permission, separate from raising ordinary jobs. Planned maintenance is a policy decision about how the equipment is looked after; day-to-day job raising is not.