What Is A Work Order? Definition, Types, And Process

A work order is the record that turns a request into an assigned, tracked job. It names the work, the owner, and the deadline, then collects the time and parts. The request comes first; once it's accepted, a work order goes to the team that does the job.

If you searched "what is a work order" because facilities requests started landing in your IT queue, this guide is for you. It comes from the team behind SherpaDesk, a helpdesk and PSA (professional services automation) a small IT team can run alone.

What Is A Work Order?

ITIL's 2011 glossary defines a work order as "a formal request to carry out a defined activity." In IT service management, change and release teams often use work orders to hand jobs to the technical teams that do them. Once it's closed, the work order becomes the history: who did what, how long it took, and what it cost.

Work request vs work order

The request comes first. At the University of Florida's engineering college, repair and maintenance requests go to Facilities Services as work requests. Once the request arrives, a work order goes to the right shop to do the repair.

A request can be a duplicate, out of scope, or the wrong team's job. A work order should only exist for work someone has agreed to do.

Work order vs purchase order

In federal contracting, a purchase order is an offer to buy supplies or services on specified terms. A failed rooftop unit needs a work order for the repair, and may also need a purchase order if the compressor is bought.

In a helpdesk, one ticket can carry the first two rows: the coordinator's review turns it into a work order.

Why Work Orders Matter

Work that isn't written down risks being done late, done twice, or forgotten. A work order gives each job an owner and a date someone can check. The Government Accountability Office surveyed a national sample of public school districts from November 2025 to January 2026. For the 2024-25 school year, it found:

Districts in that last row had more chronic facility problems and more disruptions to instruction. Use recurring work orders to keep jobs like boiler servicing on the schedule between emergencies.

Some building systems have already moved to IT, as one r/k12sysadmin member noted. "I remember when phone, security cameras, and intercom/clocks were all Facilities items. As things moved to IP based, these all got handed over to I/T."

For an MSP, work order management is also billing: hours that never reach a record never reach an invoice.

How The Work Order Process Works

Good work order management starts with a process everyone follows. The work order process below is one we recommend, built on the flow Ohio University's facilities team publishes. It has three roles: the requester, the coordinator who accepts, prioritizes, and assigns the work, and the technician. On a small team, the coordinator is often the IT lead. One badge reader runs through every step.

1. Request

   Someone reports a problem by phone, email, walk-in, or web form. Accept whatever channel people will use, and confirm receipt.

   Example: a staff member emails that the badge reader at the east entrance won't open the door.

2. Review

   The coordinator checks the request and either accepts it or turns it down with a reason. Our ticket triage guide covers the routing rules.

   Example: a second email about the same door is merged, and the request accepted.

3. Create and prioritize

   The accepted request becomes a work order with a priority and a due date.

   Example: staff can't badge in at the only staffed entrance, so the coordinator marks it urgent and agrees on a next-day fix with the requester.

4. Assign and schedule

   The coordinator picks a technician by skill and current load, then books the time. Ohio's shop managers handle this step. If the fault is already diagnosed, order parts now.

   Example: the technician who knows the access system gets it for that afternoon.

5. Do the work and log it

   The technician records the work on a log sheet: hours, notes, and parts. Ohio's managers update the status, such as "progressing" or "parts on order."

   Example: the reader has failed. The technician logs 45 minutes and puts the job on hold for a part, and the coordinator gives the requester a new date.

6. Close and review

   At Ohio University, technicians can't close a work order; managers close it after a quality review. A small team can drop the second person, but not the check.

   Example: two days later, the technician fits the part and logs time and parts; the coordinator tests and closes the job.

Types Of Work Orders

This guide groups work orders by what starts them: a schedule, a failure, or a request for something new. Urgency is a separate question, covered by the priority levels below.

The University of Central Florida's maintenance policy describes preventive maintenance as scheduled inspection, cleaning, adjustment, and minor repair, meant to stop failures that would need corrective work. In this guide, a maintenance work order is one of the first three rows: work on existing buildings or equipment. An install is new work.

Here, emergency is a priority rather than a type, usually on a corrective job, such as a water leak above a switch rack.

Priority levels and response times

Priorities are the other half of work order management: they tell you how fast someone must respond. The University of Kansas facilities office publishes four levels with response targets.

Note where preventive maintenance sits: priority 3, with a date. Our guide to incident priority levels sets the same kind of scale for IT tickets.

What Is Work Order Management?

Work order management is the practice of moving every work order through those six steps, on time, and learning from the closed ones. A work order management system is the software that holds the queue, the schedule, and the history.

For a team of three, it's mostly four numbers, checked once a month, each with a next move:

• Backlog in weeks. Open work order hours divided by the hours your team spends on work orders each week. If it grows two months running, move routine jobs to fixed dates.
• On-time work. Here, response means the assigned person's first contact with the requester, not the start of work. Track two shares: responses within the priority's target, and jobs closed by the original agreed deadline. If response slips, check what's marked urgent; if completion slips, look for parts waits.
• Planned share. Preventive and inspection work orders as a share of all closed. If it falls, protect a weekly block of hours for scheduled work.
• Repeat work. The same problem on the same asset, or for the same user, back within 30 days. If it rises, tighten the check before closing.

Start your work order management review with backlog, using your own numbers.

Example: a three-person team has 96 estimated hours in open work orders and spends 60 hours a week on them. That's 96 ÷ 60 = 1.6 weeks of backlog.

Watch the trend monthly. If backlog grows, check whether preventive jobs are slipping despite having no user complaints.

What To Look For In Work Order Management Software

Work order management systems range from maintenance suites to the queue inside a helpdesk. Pick by the work you do most. If you run a plant or a large equipment program, a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) fits. An IT team that also takes facilities requests may do better with work orders in its helpdesk. Check for:

• One intake. Email, a portal, and phone land in one queue.
• Short forms. One r/k12sysadmin member on long category trees: "If they have to pick categories or drill down to complete a ticket, they won't do it. Teachers aren't going to spend a ton of time making a ticket."
• Routing by category. Another member's district keeps only two categories, "IT Request" and "Facilities Request."
• Recurring work orders with a checklist, created on a schedule. Our helpdesk automation guide shows how to set them up.
• Time, parts, assets, and sign-off recorded on the work order itself.
• Work order management reports for backlog, on-time work, and repeat work.

Schools that want dedicated work order management software can compare options in our guide to school facilities maintenance software.

Common Mistakes

Check your own work order management against this list.

As one r/k12sysadmin member put it, "Let the end user type in the issue, hoping you get some details. Allow your IT staff to select the category."

Skip review, and three reports of one outage can become three work orders, with three technicians chasing one fault.

Marking everything urgent hides the real emergencies. If a projector and a leak above the server rack both arrive as urgent, the leak can end up waiting. Save urgent for a risk of injury, damage, or serious disruption of service, as Kansas does.

Closed counts alone reward easy jobs. Pair them with backlog and repeat work.

How SherpaDesk Handles Work Orders

About the author

Patrick Clements Co-founder & CEO, SherpaDesk

Patrick co-founded SherpaDesk and has led it as CEO since 2013. He has worked with IT service providers since 1998, first on network projects for schools and government offices, then on the helpdesk software their technicians use every day.

All Articles