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Habitia Help

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.

Screenshot: Add work order form

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

There are two ways to record what a job cost, and they’re not the same:

  • The Costs tab (use this for anything you want in reports). Open the work order and go to its Costs tab → Record cost. Each entry is logged as an expense — amount, category, date, payment method, reference number, and an optional receipt — linked to this work order and its vendor. You can log several (e.g. the plumber’s invoice and a separate parts receipt). These entries are what feed your Spending reports and the dashboard’s spending charts.
  • The Materials / Labor cost fields on the edit form — a quick running total shown on the work order itself. Fine for a rough number at a glance, but they don’t feed the spending reports.

If you recorded a cost 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 Costs tab (expense payments) — which also include standalone expenses you log with no work order at all.

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.

Updating a work order over time

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

  1. Open → you logged it but haven’t scheduled it.
  2. Scheduled → you set a scheduled date and (usually) assigned a vendor.
  3. In progress → the vendor started.
  4. 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