Logging a work order

A work order is the unit of work in Habitia — a leaky faucet, a broken fridge, a quarterly HVAC service, a paint touch-up. Logging it gives you a record of what was done, when, what it cost, and (eventually) who did it.

Open Work Orders in the left sidebar.

1. Click Add work order

Top-right of the page. A larger form opens.

2. Title and location

Title (required) — short description of the work (“Kitchen sink dripping”, “AC service - Building A”).
Property (required) — pick the property.
Unit (optional) — pick the unit if the work is in a specific one. Leave blank for property-level work (common areas, the roof, the elevator).
Room/Other space (optional) — pick the room if relevant. The list filters based on the unit you picked.
Asset (optional) — link the work order to a specific asset (e.g., the refrigerator in unit 101). This feeds the asset’s repair history and the lifecycle alerts described in Lifecycle rules.

3. Categorize and prioritize

Category (required) — Plumbing, HVAC, Electrical, Carpentry, Painting, Landscaping, Cleaning, Appliance, Roofing, General.
Priority — Low, Medium, High, Urgent. Affects sorting and alerting.
Status — Open (default), Scheduled, In progress, Completed, Cancelled.

4. Dates and assignment

Scheduled date — when the work is planned. Leave blank if not yet scheduled.
Started date — when the work actually began. Fill in when it does.
Assign vendor — pick a vendor from your list. Leave blank if you’ll do it yourself or assign later. See Assigning a vendor.

5. Costs

A job’s money lives on the work order’s Invoices tab, and it follows the real sequence: the vendor sends an invoice, you pay it.

Record invoice — enter the vendor’s invoice as it arrives: vendor, amount, invoice number, bill date, due date, and the PDF or photo of the invoice itself. Nothing is posted to the books yet; the invoice shows as Open with its due date, and turns orange or red as it ages. If you accepted an estimate for the job, click Create invoice on the accepted estimate and the form comes prefilled with the vendor and amount.
Pay — on an invoice, record each payment you make against it: amount (all or part), date, method, check or reference number. Each payment is an ordinary expense linked to this work order and its vendor, so it feeds your Spending reports, the owner’s balance and the year-end worksheets. The invoice moves to Partial and then Paid; the payments are listed under it.
Paid on the spot (no invoice) — for a receipt you paid at the counter (parts at the hardware store). It records the payment straight away, with the receipt attached, and lists it under Costs paid without an invoice.
The Materials / Labor cost fields on the Add and Edit forms — a quick estimate typed by hand. They don’t feed the spending reports, and they only set the work order’s Total cost while no payment has been recorded. Once one is, the work order says so under the cost cards and the typed figures are kept for reference only.

The tab shows three figures: Invoiced (every invoice that is not voided), Paid (every payment), and Outstanding (what is still owed). The Total cost shown on the work order, in the work-order list, in the activity feed and on turnovers is the Paid figure as soon as there is one payment (including a bill the owner paid the vendor directly, since it is still what the job cost). Recording, editing or deleting a payment updates it. Only when nothing has been paid does it fall back to Materials + Labor. An unpaid invoice is a commitment, not an expense: it never changes the total cost or the books.

The same invoices also appear in the Vendor bills card on the Payments page, where you see what you owe across all jobs and properties. See Vendor bills.

If you recorded a payment but it isn’t showing on the dashboard’s spending charts, it was most likely typed into the Materials/Labor fields. The charts read the payments (the Invoices tab) — which also include standalone expenses you log with no work order at all.

Two fields on the expense form matter at year end:

Paid by — us (default) when the bill came out of your operating or trust account, or the property owner when the owner paid the vendor directly. Owner-paid bills post nothing to your books, don’t reduce the owner’s balance, show on their statement as paid by owner, and move from your year-end forms to the owner’s. See Hacienda year-end worksheet.
Tax withheld at source (Puerto Rico organizations that withhold) — the amount you kept back from the invoice for Hacienda, at whatever rate your accountant told you applies. The amount above stays the gross invoice; the withheld part is booked as a liability until you deposit it.

6. Description and resolution

Description — what was wrong or what needed to happen.
Resolution notes — fill in when the work is done, what was done.

7. Save

Click Save work order. The work order appears at the top of the list with its status badge and a reference number (WO-12), numbered in order per organization. The number also shows on the detail page and in the breadcrumb, so you can quote it to a vendor or tenant.

Updating a work order over time

A work order isn’t a one-and-done. Most of them evolve:

Open → you logged it but haven’t scheduled it.
Scheduled → you set a scheduled date and (usually) assigned a vendor.
In progress → the vendor started.
Completed → done. Fill in the resolution notes, and record the final cost on the Costs tab.

Edit the work order from its row in the list (pencil icon) or by clicking through to its detail page.

Once a work order is Completed or Cancelled it’s closed. You can still reopen it if needed — a completed order back to In progress, a cancelled one back to Open — but other status jumps from a closed order are blocked, so finished work doesn’t silently come back to life.

Inviting vendors to bid first? That flow adds two extra statuses you’ll see on the badge — Soliciting estimates and Waiting parts. See Assigning a vendor.

Filtering the list

The page has two filters across the top:

Status — All, Open, Scheduled, In progress, Completed, Cancelled.
Priority — All, Low, Medium, High, Urgent.

Tip: Filter to Status: Open, Priority: Urgent as your first stop each morning. That’s your fire list.

What’s next

Assigning a vendor — picking who does the work.
Tenant-submitted maintenance requests — handling requests that come in from tenants.