Short answer. Every piece of equipment installed at a customer’s has a record: model, serial number, location, QR tag stuck on it, contract, warranty, and the history of all interventions. Every intervention is a work order: equipment, type, corrective or preventive, priority, dated states, technician, parts reserved before leaving, hours, report; it is what becomes the invoice or is charged to the contract. Dispatch is a board per technician and day, where an order is placed on someone who has the skill, who is in the zone, and whose van or depot has the part; an emergency moves a preventive visit and warns the moved customer. The technician app works offline: tag scan on arrival, checklist per equipment type, coded cause, van-stock parts deducted, hours, photos, signature, report sent on site. Contracts’ preventive plans generate orders in advance, and a visit note becomes a planned intervention. Three figures: fixed in one visit, response time, breakdowns per equipment.
This guide is for the installer and maintainer in refrigeration, air conditioning, electrical, lifts, solar, medical or IT equipment, the distributor who maintains what it sells, the company with dozens of sites to visit, and the founder based in France who wants to know how many interventions were fixed in one visit this week. It does not repeat how a complaint is handled, described in the after-sales guide, nor how a delivery round is planned, described in the rounds guide; it describes what happens when a ticket requires a technician to travel with a part, and it extends our software engineering page. The solar installer guide is one special case; this one is the common construction.
One installed piece of equipment
The figure follows a cold room installed in a minimarket, from commissioning to this morning’s emergency.
The equipment exists before the breakdown: a record with model, serial number, geocoded location, manager contact, access mode, contract with its included visits, warranty, and a QR tag stuck on the panel. The tag’s code carries only an identifier; everything else is in the record, which can change without reprinting. The history is the list of closed work orders: installation with checklist, preventive visits, breakdowns with coded cause, each with the technician, duration and parts. The note from a preventive visit, “door seal wear”, became a planned intervention five months later, not a technician’s memory.
Parts consumed are movements in the ledger of the stock guide, with a stock per van: the relay came from Sofiane’s stock, the seal was ordered and fitted in one visit, today’s compressor has been reserved at the depot since 9:26, before the technician left. Three figures per equipment: breakdowns over the period, intervention hours, days since the last preventive visit. The customer sees the same record in their space, with the reports. Equipment, dates, technicians and parts are a constructed example; the take-over of the existing base is done tag by tag, in the second and third weeks.
«The equipment is a record, not a line on an invoice: it has an identity, a contract and a history that every intervention extends.»
Six real situations, and what the application does
Every row is a sentence heard at an installer or maintainer, and the answer is a construction.
The technician leaves without the part: the history and likely cause are known before leaving, the part is reserved at the depot or located in the van stock, and the order does not leave without it; the measure is the first-visit fix rate. Nobody knows when it was serviced: the record carries the history, and the tag scan opens it on site. The emergency lands on the wrong technician: dispatch proposes by skill, zone and part.
The report is written in the evening, from memory: the checklist, hours, parts and photos are entered on site, offline, following the offline guide and the trustworthy photos guide. The contract includes two visits, one is done: the preventive plan generates orders in advance, and the contract’s remaining visits are visible to the manager and the customer. The invoice does not match the work: it comes out of the closed order, parts, hours, contract flat rate, through the engine of the quote and invoice guide, without retyping.
Field interventions, in five layers
The work order is the accented layer: it links everything, and it becomes the invoice.
Equipment base. One record per installed piece, with tag, contract, warranty and history; equipment is replaced or retired, not deleted. Work orders. One order per intervention, with dated states, created, planned, assigned, en route, on site, done, closed, invoiced; the ticket of the after-sales guide becomes an order as soon as someone has to travel, and keeps its link. Dispatch. A board per technician and day; placement by skill, zone and part; the order of visits within the day follows the logic of the rounds guide; an emergency moves a preventive visit, never another emergency, and the moved customer is warned through the notifications guide.
Technician app. Offline by construction; tag scan; checklist per equipment type, written in the first week with a senior technician; cause coded from a list; van-stock parts deducted; hours; before and after photos; customer signature; printable report following the printing guide. Preventive and measurement. Plans per contract that generate orders in advance through the jobs of the background jobs guide; due-visit alerts; fixed in one visit, response time, breakdowns per equipment and per model in the manager’s dashboard. Who can close, invoice or reopen an order follows the roles guide.
One intervention, in six beats
The tag scan is the accented beat: it opens the right record and timestamps arrival. Everything else is entered on site.
Receive the order: the equipment, its history, the likely diagnosis deduced from previous breakdowns and the reported cause, the reserved part, the window agreed with the customer. Travel: the day’s orders are on the phone, and the customer receives the planned time. Scan the tag: the record opens, arrival is timestamped, and equipment that is not the order’s is refused, which avoids the report written on the wrong machine.
Check and diagnose: the equipment type’s checklist, the coded cause, the before photo. Repair and enter: van-stock parts are deducted by scanning them, hours are the phone’s, the after photo. Close on site: customer signature, report sent by WhatsApp or e-mail, invoice or charge to the contract; if a part is missing after all, the order goes to “awaiting part” with the linked order, and the second visit is planned before leaving the site, not the next day on the phone. For refrigeration equipment, temperature readings attach to the same order, following the cold chain guide.
Wednesday’s dispatch: one emergency at 9:20
The figure follows one Wednesday’s board: four technicians, fourteen orders, and an emergency placed in four minutes.
The board shows, per technician, their skills, zone, orders of the day and travel. At 9:20, the minimarket calls: the cold room’s compressor is faulty, goods at risk. The application looks for who has the refrigeration skill, who is or will be in the East zone, and where the part is: Nadir finishes a preventive visit at 9:15 ten minutes away, and a compressor is at the depot. The urgent order is placed on him at 9:24, the part is reserved at 9:26, and his 11:00 preventive visit is moved to Thursday 9:00; the moved customer receives the new date before Nadir changes route.
The dispatcher confirmed a proposal, they did not search. The rules are written in the first week: an emergency moves a preventive visit, never another emergency; an apprentice does not take an order alone on equipment under warranty; a reserved part blocks the part for other orders. In the evening, three figures: fourteen orders, twelve fixed in one visit, one hour ten of travel per technician. Technicians, orders and times are a constructed example, and the definition of “fixed in one visit”, closed without a second intervention on the same fault, is the one the company writes.
«An order goes to a technician who has the skill, who is in the zone, and whose van or depot has the part: the board knows it before the dispatcher does.»
Tooling field interventions in 2027, in weeks
Seven weeks, the first without code, and two for the base and the orders, because taking over the existing base is what takes time.
- What the manager sees: the base with its contracts and due visits, the day’s board, orders awaiting parts, and three figures on Monday.
- What the technician no longer does: leave without the part, look for the last report, write the report in the evening, guess which equipment is in front of them.
- What is measured: fixed in one visit, response time per priority, breakdowns per equipment and per model, contract visits done, hours and parts per order.
Week 1, rules: equipment types and their checklists, technicians’ skills, zones, priorities and response times, contracts and included visits, coded causes; with the manager and a senior technician. Weeks 2 and 3, base and orders: the equipment record, QR tags printed and stuck, take-over of the existing base from old invoices and notebooks, with the same dry run as the import guide, the work order with its states and the link with the ticket. Week 4, technician app: offline, scan, checklist, van parts, hours, photos, signature, report.
Week 5, dispatch: board per technician and day, placement by skill, zone and part, emergency and moved preventive visit, customer messages. Week 6, preventive and invoice: plans per contract, due visits, invoice from the closed order, accounting export. Week 7, measurement: fixed in one visit, response time, breakdowns per equipment and per model, contract visits done, Monday review. A garage keeping the service record of its customers’ vehicles, as in the garage guide, follows the same construction with the vehicle as equipment.
- Why one record per equipment and not a customer list?
- Because the history, contract, warranty and likely part belong to the equipment, not to the customer; one customer may have ten pieces of five models. The record exists from installation, and every work order extends it. The QR tag on the equipment opens the right record on arrival.
- How do you avoid the technician leaving without the part?
- By knowing the history and likely cause before leaving, reserving the part at the depot or locating it in the van stock, and not letting an order leave without it when it is known. When it is missing after all, the order goes to awaiting part and the second visit is planned before leaving the site.
- Who decides the dispatch?
- The dispatcher, by confirming a proposal: skill, zone, available part, customer window. The rules, an emergency moves a preventive visit and never another emergency, an apprentice does not intervene alone under warranty, are written in the first week and run by the application.
- And maintenance contracts?
- Each contract carries its included visits and frequency; a preventive plan generates orders in advance, and due and done visits are visible to the manager and the customer. A visit not done is an alert, not a discovery at the end of the contract.
- Does it work without network in a plant room?
- Yes, the technician app works offline: the record, checklist, parts, hours, photos and signature are entered on site and synced when the network returns. Only dispatch happens server side.
- Can the existing base be taken over?
- Yes, from old invoices, notebooks and files, with a dry run and refused lines raised to the manager; then tag by tag during the first visits, where the technician completes the record on site. It is the second and third week of the typical calendar.
- How long to set this up?
- Seven weeks in the typical calendar, the first without code and two for the base and orders. A company that already has the after-sales ticket and the stock ledger takes less; one starting from notebooks and calls takes all seven.