Maintenance Plans & Reports

All maintenance and repairs are logged against a maintenance "plan" which has the name of the work needed, information about the maintenance being done, can automatically change the Status of an item to control if the item can be checked out or reserved while needing or in maintenance, and where you can track the internal or external provider who performs the maintenance.

Only admins with "Inventory" or Super Admin privileges can perform maintenance, but any admin can "report an issue" with an item if confgured.

Maintenance Plan Types

There are two main types of maintenance plans, and one enterprise option:

• Scheduled plans can be required on set frequency (e.g. every 3 months)
• On Demand plans can be run as needed by clicking the Report Issue button, or can be started when an item is checked in.
• Linked: Some Enterprise plans have access to "Linked" plans where you can have a second plan start immediately, or after a delay" after the current plan has been completed on the item

Before you can track maintenance, you need to set up at least one plan.

Note: as soon as you add at least one "On Demand" plan, then the button to manually change the status of an item on the Transaction Receipt after check in will change to a "Report Issue" button that allows for specifying the type of maintenance needed and notes about why the admin is reporting the issue.

We recommend setting up at least one On Demand plan which can be called "One Time Repair" or "General Repair" or similar to use when admins report issues with an Item. 

Creating & Editing Maintenance Plans

To create a maintenance plan:

1. Go to Settings > Inventory > Maintenance Plans
2. Click "Add New"
3. Name: Enter the "Name" of the plan (e.g. "Yearly Calibration")
4. Type: Specify if the plan is
   • "On Demand" (can also be used to automatically specify an item needs maintenance after every check in.
   • "Scheduled" (maintenance is needed on a specific schedule/frequency, like quarterly or yearly)
5. Description: An optional description of the plan (what needs to be done, what the plan is used for, etc.)
6. Provider: if this type of maintenance is done by a third party provider, you can specify the name and contact information for that provider
7. If the plan is Scheduled, you can set how frequently the maintenance should be done
8. Maintenance Stages let you specify if the item should have statuses added or removed during each stage of maintenance, or if someone should be emailed when entering that stage. If you do not change the settings here, the system work as it did prior to September 2022 (no statuses are changed, no email is sent when you put an item into maintenance). 
   • Required / Due: When an issue with an item is reported maintenance will be "Required". When scheduled maintenance is "Due" the stage will be Due. When maintenance is Due or maintenance is required after check in, you may want to automatically set one or more statuses to prevent the item from being checked out and email an address that a repair is needed. 
   • In Progress: When maintenance is started or updated, you may want to set statuses to prevent the item from being checked out to it is not given to a user when it is in the middle of being repairs.
   • Done:  When maintenance is successfully completed, you may want to remove statuses set by prior stages when maintenance is completed. If the repair was completed unsuccessfully (the item will need to be recycled or sent for further maintenance) you can also override the statuses being set so that it stays in maintenance or is given a new 
   • Skipped: if an item does not need scheduled maintenance, you can skip schedule maintenance and schedule it for next time. You may want to send an email or remove statuses set by prior stages when someone skips scheduled maintenance.
   • Aborted:  if you start maintenance, but realize you can't/don't want to finish it, you can abort it. We recommend removing any statuses you may have set during an earlier stage when you abort the maintenance.
9. Save

Similarly, you can edit any existing maintenance plans by clicking the "Edit" button next to the maintenance in the list of plans.

Statuses and Maintenance Stages

Item Statuses let you control if an item can be reserved, checked out to a user, and even if the user can see the item. For each maintenance stage, you can add and/or remove statuses to control what can be done with the item or if users can even see it.

We recommend that if you want to limit if the item can be borrowed or reserved, you set a status on the both of the following stages (e.g. to make it so the item can't be checked out while maintenance is needed):

• Required / Due
• In Progress
  • This ensures if someone "starts" maintenance on the item without an issue bring reported first, the item will get the status

Then remove the status on the following stages:

• Done
• Skipped
• Aborted

This way no matter how the maintenance was "resolved" the item is put back into service. The maintainer will have the ability to override the status when completing maintenance, for example if the item can not be replaced and must be recycled.

Maintenance Due / Needed Report

You can see all upcoming (or overdue!) maintenance by going to:

Inventory > Maintenance Due

By default, this item shows the most recent or next time maintenance is due for your items. If an item is overdue, it will be highlighted in red, if the item is due soon, it will be highlighted in yellow. You can search or filter the report by typing in the "Search" box in the upper right of the listing, or sort by any of the columns (due date is the default).

The Stage for each item will be one of the stages listed above.

Possible Actions:

• Start: this allows you to start maintenance on the item, which species the item is now undergoing (or has been sent out for) maintenance
• Record: record maintenance once the maintenance is completed. You can skip the "start" step and directly record maintenance was completed.
  • You can even specify when maintenance was recorded in the past.
• Skip: skipping maintenance will skip this scheduled maintenance and automatically reschedule it for the next maintenance period.