Maintenance plans

The Maintenance plans register lists every rule your organisation has for raising planned work by itself: what is done, to which assets or places, and what makes it fall due. Open it from Work → Plans in the navigation.

If you don’t see this in your navigation, your administrator can switch the module on under Administration → Modules, or it may not be included in your plan.

A maintenance plan does not do the work. It produces rounds — one scheduled visit to one asset (or one place) on one date — and each round becomes either a work order or an inspection round, depending on the plan’s type. How plans raise work follows a round from the plan to the job.

Who can do what

What you can do on this screen depends on the permissions your role holds. The names below are the ones shown on the roles screen.

Permission	What it lets you do here
View maintenance plans	Open the register, open a plan, and read every tab. Without it, Plans is not in your navigation.
Create maintenance plans	Start a plan with New plan, and Copy an existing one (a copy is a new plan).
Edit maintenance plans	Change a plan in the plan builder, and use Assign and Set terms on a selection.
Activate maintenance plans and publish revisions	Take a plan live, Pause it, resume it, and publish a new version of a plan that has changed.
Export the maintenance programme	Use Export to download the register as a spreadsheet.

The split between editing and activating is deliberate: a planner can write and tune a plan, while the decision that the site actually starts (or stops) doing that maintenance can sit with somebody else.

The header and stat strip

Element	What it shows or does
plans	How many plans match the current search and filters.
active	How many of those plans are switched on.
draft	Plans still being built. A draft raises nothing.
paused	Plans stopped without being deleted.
Export	Downloads every plan that matches the current filters, with the columns you are showing. The button shows how many rows the export will contain.
New plan	Opens the plan builder on a new, unsaved plan.

The counts are taken over everything that matches your filters, not only the page on screen.

Searching and filtering

Control	What it does
Search plan names	Narrows the list to plans whose name contains what you type.
Active only	Hides drafts and paused plans.
Views	Saves the current filters, sort and columns as a named view, or opens one you or a colleague saved.
Filter	Opens the filter panel. Every column below can be filtered, including the ones you have not switched on.
Columns	Chooses which columns are shown, and their order.
Select all	Ticks every plan on the page and opens the bulk bar. Once a page is ticked you can extend the selection to every plan that matches the filter.

The list is sorted with active plans first, then by the soonest next due date, so the top of the register is what is about to happen.

Columns

Shown by default

Column	What it means
Plan	The plan’s name, with its plan number underneath. Click the name to open the plan. Plan numbers are allocated automatically from your numbering settings.
Type	The name of the work order type the plan raises, such as Preventive, Lubrication, Inspection or Compliance. Types are configured under work order settings.
Status	The plan’s status. The defaults are Draft, Active, Paused and Retired, and your administrator can rename or extend them under statuses.
Scope	What the plan covers, by name: up to three assets, asset categories or places, then “+N more”. Hover to see how many of each kind. A plan with nothing in scope says nothing in scope in amber — it can never raise a round.
Frequency	The plan’s triggers as one sentence, such as “every quarter or every 2000 running hours”. The same sentence appears on the plan itself and in the reminder that a round is due. A plan with no trigger says no trigger.
Next due	The date of the plan’s soonest round that has not happened yet. Empty for drafts, paused plans and plans whose next round is not yet known (for example a meter-based plan waiting for readings).
Duration	How long one round is expected to take. This is what capacity planning uses.
Tasks	How many checklist steps one round carries. A dash means none.
Jobs raised	How many work orders the plan has produced so far.
Auto	automatic when each round becomes a work order by itself; manual when a planner raises each one from Maintenance Due.

Available from Columns

These columns are mostly the terms of each plan. Turning them on lets you compare thirty plans side by side instead of opening thirty plans.

Column	What it means
Where	The site the plan is filed under. This decides who can see the plan and how the site switcher filters it, not what the plan covers.
Categories	Every asset category named in the plan’s scope. Its filter lets you tick categories from your own category tree.
Assets covered	Every asset named individually in the scope. Filter by asset number or name.
Places covered	Every site or area named in the scope.
Assets named, Categories named, Places named	How many of each kind the scope names. Useful for finding plans with nothing in scope, or plans covering more than fifty assets.
Priority	The priority the plan’s work orders are raised at.
Criticality	The criticality recorded on the plan.
Triggers	How many triggers the plan has.
Trigger rule	ANY (the plan falls due when the first trigger fires) or ALL (only when every trigger has fired).
Lead time	How many days before the due date the work order or inspection appears.
Tolerance	How many days late a round can be and still count as on time.
Requirements	How many parts, tools, skills and vendors one round needs.
Permit	Whether the work needs a permit to work. Only shown when your organisation uses permits to work.
Shutdown	Whether the asset has to be stopped for the work.
Crew	The crew each round is handed to.
Preferred worker	The technician each round is handed to, when no crew is named.
Preferred vendor	The contractor the work goes to when nobody in-house is named.
Assigned to	The person reminder emails go to.
End date	The date the schedule stops by itself.
Inspection	The inspection template the plan raises, if any.
Last generated	When the plan last produced rounds.
Version	The number of the plan’s version currently in force.
Active	Whether the plan is switched on.

Any custom fields your organisation has added to maintenance plans can also be shown as columns, as can the usual created and updated stamps.

Row actions

Every row ends with up to two buttons.

Button	Who sees it	What it does
Copy	People who can create plans	Opens Copy this plan, described below. Shown on every row, drafts and paused plans included — a finished or mothballed plan is usually the best starting point for its replacement.
Pause	Shown on active plans	Opens a small form under the header asking Why it is being paused (required), then Pause plan. Rounds already generated stay; no new ones are raised until the plan is resumed. Paused rows show the word paused instead.

The reason for a pause is required because a plan that quietly stopped generating months ago is a compliance gap nobody can explain later. The reason is kept in the plan’s activity.

Copying a plan

Copying is how you build the variant of a plan that differs only in what it covers — the same service on the next line, or at another site. The copy always arrives as a draft and generates nothing until you activate it.

Field	What it means	Notes
Name the copy	The new plan’s name.	Optional. Left empty, it takes the original name with “(copy)” after it. The plan number is allocated for you.
What it covers	Copies the assets, categories and places named in the scope.	On by default. Turn it off when you want to aim the copy at something else.
What makes it fall due	Copies the triggers — intervals and meter rules.	On by default. The copy starts its own clock, so nothing arrives already overdue.
Task list	Copies every checklist step, in its sections, with its measurements and evidence requirements.	On by default.
What it needs	Copies the parts, tools, skills and preferred supplier.	On by default.
When it may be worked	Copies the plan’s working windows, blackout periods and preferred days.	On by default.
Your own fields	Copies the answers to your organisation’s custom fields.	On by default.

Create draft makes the copy and opens it. Cancel closes the dialog without creating anything.

Bulk actions

Tick one or more plans (or use Select all) and a bar appears at the bottom of the screen showing how many are selected.

Setting the terms on several plans at once

Action	Permission	What it does
Activate	Activate maintenance plans and publish revisions	Takes drafts live and resumes paused plans. Each plan activated publishes a version and starts generating rounds. A plan with no trigger or nothing in scope is reported with what it is missing rather than taken live half-built, and a plan already generating is left alone. The button says how many of the selection will actually change, for example Activate 2 plans.
Pause	Activate maintenance plans and publish revisions	Asks Why they are being paused (required) and records the same reason against every selected plan. Rounds already generated stay, because they are work somebody may already be standing in front of.
Assign	Edit maintenance plans	Sets who each round is handed to. Prefer chooses A crew, A worker or A vendor; Namely chooses which one, or Nobody — clear it. When a round is raised it goes to the crew first, then the worker, and the vendor only when neither is named. Rounds already raised are not changed.
Set terms	Edit maintenance plans	Writes the same values onto every selected plan. Only what you fill in is written; anything left as Leave as is stays as each plan has it.
Clear	—	Empties the selection.

Set terms offers these fields:

Field	What it means	Notes
Priority	The priority the plans’ work orders are raised at.	Options are your organisation’s priorities.
Lead time (days)	How much warning the shop gets before a round is due.	Whole days, zero or more.
Tolerance (days)	How much slip is allowed before a round counts as late.	Whole days, zero or more.
Raises its own job	Whether each round becomes a work order automatically.	Yes, No or Leave as is.
Needs a permit	Whether the work needs a permit to work.	Only where your organisation uses permits.
Needs a shutdown	Whether the asset must be stopped.

After a bulk action the bar reports how many plans were changed and lists any it refused, with the reason for each. Activate and Pause can also run as background jobs over every plan that matches the filter, so selecting several hundred plans is fine.

Plan statuses

The defaults are below. Your administrator can rename them or add others under statuses.

Status	What it means
Draft	Being built. A draft generates nothing, so a half-built plan is harmless. You can leave the builder and come back without losing work.
Active	Running. It raises rounds on schedule, and those appear on Maintenance Due.
Paused	Stopped without being deleted. Nothing new is raised, and the work orders and rounds it already produced are untouched. Use this for an asset out of service rather than deleting a plan you will want back.
Retired	Finished with for good. Kept for its history.

Open a plan

Every tab of a plan explained.

Build a plan

The builder, one step and one field at a time.

How plans raise work

From trigger to round to work order.

Get started

Work

Maintenance

Assets

Sites

Inventory

Procurement

Workforce

Vendors and contracts

Finance

Property

Gatehouse

Analytics

Knowledge base

The field app

Release notes

Who can do what

The header and stat strip

Searching and filtering

Columns

Shown by default

Available from Columns

Row actions

Copying a plan

Bulk actions

Plan statuses

Open a plan

Build a plan

How plans raise work