How to create a maintenance program (service schedule)

In this tutorial, we will see how to create and manage a service schedule (or maintenance program). A good maintenance program will help you reduce down time on your equipment, which could potentially helps you save money.

The first thing to do is to create some "Master services". These are the services you will use to create your service schedules later. See them as your base template for the creation of your schedule.

To create "Master services", go to menu "Configuration - Master services": 

You will see a list containing some demo master services:

As you can see, there is three columns here:

• Description : The description of the service to perform
• Service frequency : The frequency at which the service should be performed. Yes, the frequency for an oil change can be different from one vehicle to another. So what you can do is to change the frequency manually once the master service has been added to a service schedule (we will see how to do this later), or you can create two different master services. For example, the description of those two master services could be: "Change oil (3 months or 5 000 km)" and "Change oil (6 months or 10 000 km)".
• Create reminder : This column shows when a "Pre-reminder" will be triggered for this master service. This is a reminder before the reminder. It's optional.

Now let's create a new master service: 

Here we created a new "Check paint and repair if necessary" master service. This service should be repeated each year OR every 25 000 (miles, km or hours, depending on the setting of the vehicle to which it is assigned). There is also a "Pre-reminder" that will trigger seven days before the year is over OR 500 (odo. unit) before the 25 000 is reached. The service will then be considered as being "Due soon". 

Now, let's use those master services to create a service schedules.

Go to the vehicle view, select a vehicle then click on the "Service schedule" tab:

The service schedule is empty. Lets add our newly created master service to it:

Here is the first service item created in our service schedule:

Here are the columns descriptions:

• Service: It's the description we created previously in the master service.
• Service frequency: The frequency we previously defined in the master service.
• Last performed: The date this service was last performed for this vehicle. As it has just been added to the service schedule, it is "Not applicable" as it was not peformed yet.
• Last performed at (odo.): Represents the odometer value when the service was last peformed.
• Next service: When this service will be due next. By default, it is set to the current date and current odometer of the vehicle, so this is why this column appears in yellow. The yellow color means that this service is due soon.
• Create reminder: Again, it comes from the values that were previously defined in the master service. It's the number of days and the mileage before a reminder that makes the service considered as due soon.

You can take a look at the "Reminders" tab. As our newly created service item is "due soon", you can see that a reminder has been added to the list of active reminders:

Let's go back to the "Service schedule" tab. You can edit the new service item easily by double clicking the row or by using the "Edit" button. So let's change the "Next due date" for the reminder and let's disable the "500 km before due" value:



The result is that the service item is not considered as "due soon" anymore, and the reminder disappeared from the "Reminders" tab:

If you have multiple items in your service schedule (which is likely to be the case) and want to edit the "Next due date" and/or "Next due odo." in bulk, just select the service items you want to edit, right click the grid and use these menus:

At this stage, you know how to create a basic service schedule that will trigger alerts when some services are due or due soon. You can see the list of all active reminders for all vehicles from the "Reminders" view:



When this button is blinking, it means that there are active reminders.

Now there is a little more to know to help you manage effectively your service schedules.

The "Master services lists"
Adding service items one by one to the numerous service schedules you will have to create can be a bit tedious. This is why we will now learn how to create a master services list that will lets you add a bunch of master services at once to any service schedule.

Go to menu "Configuration - Master services list" and click on the "Add" button:

Name your new list "Basic services" and click save. With your newly created services list selected, click the "Add" button of the "Services that belongs to the selected list" grid, select a few services and click the "Ok" button:



That's it. You now have a list of services ready to be applied to any service schedule:

To add this list to a service schedule, just go back to the vehicle view, select a vehicle and click on the "Service schedule" tab. Then click on this "Add a list of services" link and select the newly created services list named "Basic services":

The list of services is automatically added to the service schedule:

Adding items to a service item
You probably noticed that there is a "Items related to this service" grid just under the service schedule:

This grid may be useful if you convert your due service items to "Completed services" or "Work orders". Items in that grid will be added to the newly created "Completed services" or "Work orders". This grid may also be useful to add parts that will be used just for reference during the job. It could help your technician knowing which part should be used for the job.

In the example above, you can see that we already have added a red paint can to our "Check paint and repair if necessary" service item. You can add more parts and/or labor items using the "Add" button. These items will be kept in memory for the selected service item of the service schedule. 

Actions you can do when service items are due or due soon
Once a service item is due (or due soon), you can choose to:

• Convert it to a completed service: The service item's "Last performed" and "Next service" values are updated and a new "Completed service" is created. You can convert more than one service item at a time. If you do so, a completed service will be created for each service item selected. Use this button to perform this action:
  
  
  
• Convert it to a work order: The service item's "Last performed" and "Next service" values are updated and a new "Work order" is created. If you selected more than one service item, it will still create only one work order, but the work order will contains more than one "Services to perform". See this article about work orders for more details. Use this button to perform this action:
  
  
  
• Cancel the service: The service item's "Last performed" and "Next service" values are updated but no other action is performed. Use this button to perform this action: