FireDeck

Field Service · Updated

Work Orders

Every job for your shop in one list — field work synced from the tablets, drafts your AI assistant took on calls, scheduling, and the handoff to billing.

Field Service → Work Orders is every work order your shop has: jobs your technicians created on their tablets, jobs you create here, and drafts the answering service captured while it was on a call. Whatever you change here syncs to the field app your techs work in.

This page requires the Answering module — it is served by the same backend as the answering service, so a shop without that module won't see the link.

Read the list

The tabs across the top are All, To review, Answering, Field, and Deleted. To review carries a count badge when the assistant has drafts waiting on you. Deleted is the archive, loaded separately from the rest.

Rows are grouped by day, with a heading for each date and a count of jobs on it — the same shape the field app uses. The columns are When, Source, Customer, Status, Tech, Total, and Actions; clicking When, Customer, Status, or Total sorts by that column.

The Source badge tells you where a job came from and where it stands: Answering · draft, Answering · approved (or Answering · sent once it has been dispatched), Answering · dismissed, Field · draft for a tablet job not yet submitted, or plain Field.

Click any row to expand it. You get the customer's account number, address and phone, the job date, assigned techs, categories, the Equipment and Labor line items, the Parts / Labor / Tax / Total breakdown, the notes, and — on an answering job — the Call summary. If the caller's number is on the row, it links to that call recording.

Where FireDeck has a dispatch suggestion, the panel shows Suggested assignment with the tech, the dispatch day, and why. It's read-only: approving the job is what actually assigns that tech, and you can still reassign in the field app afterwards.

Create a work order

  1. Click New work order.
  2. Under Customer, use Pick a customer. Their address and phone are copied onto the job so the tech has them in the field. You can't save without one.
  3. Under Job details, set the Status — New Construction, Proposal, Scheduled, In Progress, Partial, Completed, or Cancelled. Whatever you pick is what the tech sees on their tablet.
  4. Set the Date. It defaults to today and is the service date sent to the assigned tech.
  5. Tick the Categories that apply. These come from your shop's own category list (Fire, Security, Cameras, Access Control and Proposals if you haven't configured your own), and they feed the dispatch suggestion — a tech who has worked that category before scores higher next time.
  6. Tick the Assigned techs. The job lands on their field app. You can assign more than one.
  7. Add Notes for anything the tech needs on site — gate code, access, what to bring.
  8. Add Equipment lines (qty × unit price) and Labor lines (qty × rate). Both carry over as invoice lines when the job is billed.
  9. Click Create & send to tablets.

The tax shown in the totals box is a 7% preview only. On save, FireDeck recalculates it with your shop's default rate from Settings → Billing, and that figure is what the job and its invoice carry.

Edit a job, or schedule a draft

Every row has Edit, which opens the same form against the live field-app job and saves with Save changes.

Answering drafts are different. They exist only in FireDeck until you schedule them, so their button reads Edit / schedule and the page opens as Edit & Schedule Work Order. Set a date, assign a tech, and the save button — Schedule & send to app — pushes a real, scheduled job to your techs and takes it out of the review queue.

You can also handle a draft without opening it: Approve sends it to the field app as-is (applying the suggested tech if there was one), and Dismiss sets it aside. A dismissed draft keeps Edit / schedule plus Reopen, which puts it back under To review.

Cancel, delete, restore

Cancel marks a job Cancelled on the tablets and keeps the record — that's the one to use for a job that was called off. Delete (the trash icon) removes it from the tablets and the list but keeps it on file; it lands in the Deleted tab where Restore puts it back. Both ask you to confirm first.

Billing a finished job

Completed work orders that haven't been invoiced queue up under Billing → Invoicing → Ready to bill.

That page has two tabs. To bill lists customer, FAM account, completion date and amount; Bill turns one job into an invoice, Skip sets it aside with a reason, and Bill all or the checkboxes plus Bill selected handle them in bulk. Skipped shows what you set aside with the reason and date, where Unskip returns a job to the queue.

The equipment and labor lines you entered on the work order become the invoice's line items. See Invoicing for what happens after that.

The PDF your customer receives is laid out under Settings → Documents on the Work Order tab — see Price List, Contracts & Documents.

Frequently asked questions

Why is there no Work Orders tab in my navigation?

Work Orders is served by the same backend as the answering service, so the link only appears for shops on the Answering module.

Do my techs need the field app to get a job I create here?

Yes. Assigning a tech and clicking Create & send to tablets is what puts the job on their tablet, and anything you edit afterwards syncs to the app as well. It runs both ways — jobs your techs start in the field show up in this same list.

Why is the tax on my saved work order different from what the form showed?

The totals box previews tax at a flat 7% while you are typing. On save FireDeck recalculates it with your shop's default rate from Settings, Billing, and that is the figure the job and its invoice carry.

Should I cancel or delete a job the customer called off?

Cancel it. That marks the job Cancelled on the tablets and keeps the record intact. Delete pulls it off the tablets and into the Deleted tab, where Restore can bring it back — use that for jobs entered by mistake.

How does a finished job turn into an invoice?

Completed work orders that have not been billed queue up under Billing, Invoicing, Ready to bill, where Bill turns one into an invoice and Bill all clears the queue. The equipment and labor lines from the work order become the invoice lines. For work you are not charging for, Skip it with a reason such as warranty.