A recent post on Multi-family Insiders asked about software for work order management for apartment complexes. 

I work for a fast growing apartment management company in Gainesville, Florida. When we were brainstorming our ideal work order management system, we found that the best (and most cost effective) option was to develop the software internally. 

Why You Should Develop Your Own Work Order System

Today, even small property management companies have a company website. Frequently, these websites serve many purposes-- they market the property to potential renters, they provide downloads of leases and other leasing forms, they have pre-screening information for tenants who are considering leasing from out of town, and they give detailed information on availability and floorplan information. 

Whether or not you have a full-time web designer working for your company, you can integrate a customized work order management system into your company website. By integrating it with your branded website, you'll be marketing the convenience of the work order system to prospective residents. You can also develop a searchable database of work orders that will be accessible by company staff, so that they can track past work orders, set maintenance goals, chart improvements in response time, track inventory of parts, set metrics for customer service (in order to increase renewals), and create an editable backend where managers can send updated information after a work order is closed.

I recommend building your own work order management system rather than purchasing a work order system for multiple reasons. First, many solutions are more expensive and require monthly maintenance contracts when purchased from outside first specializing in work orders. Secondly, building the work order system yourself will allow you to easily change and improve the system over time, without the constraints set by the outside agency. Many firms, for example, have a cap on the number of potential properties, or do not allow for easy integration with your website. Our self-designed program, in contrast, automatically requests tenants to submit reviews and automatically publishes the positive reviews on our website. 

A Basic Outline For Designing an Online Work Order Management System

From a design standpoint, the easiest method is to ask your web designer to add another button to your website menu for "Work Orders" or "Maintenance Requests". The designer can then build a landing page that describes how the work order system works and allows the tenants to enter the work orders directly into the provided form. When they hit the send button, two very important things happen:

1. The work order is added to a backend database (accessible via password) so that staff can have a log of all work orders.
2. The work order is emailed to the maintenance director and/or maintenance techs for the community, so that they are immediately notified of the issue.

The web designer will create an admin portal on your website (typically found at website.com/admin/) where individual employees can log in. Today, most property management employees have smart phones that they can easily access from their pockets, which eliminates the need for paper-based work order systems. Each maintenance tech can have his/her own login account, and each employee can be assigned various levels of authority allowing them to edit different sections of the backend. For instance, many maintenance directors want the maintenance techs to be able to read the work orders, but they do not want the tech to be able to close a work order. Your web designer can set various access levels that match your company's comfort level.

The backend section of the work order system should be sortable and searchable. Typically, the landing page in the work order system gives a list of all open work orders that are not yet complete. There is typically also a menu of other options, such as searching closed work orders, adding an update to a work order, closing a work order, reopening a work order, viewing feedback on closed work orders, and viewing reports. 

When adding an update to a work order, maintenance managers have several options. At properties which have multiple maintenance techs, it's common to have the ability to assign the work order to a drop down list of potential employees. Once assigned, the work order is typically either emailed or texted to the staff member. 

The maintenance director can also put in comments, and we've built a series of data points which allows them to enter costs that should be billed to tenants. After adding that cost, the system automatically sends an update to our property manager, so that she can bill the tenant directly. It's a wonderful, automated system that recuperates costs for damages quickly and effectively and allows multiple departments to work together.

When our maintenance director closes the work order, the system automatically emails the tenant and informs them that we believe that the work order is complete. A full explanation of our work is included in the email, along with a few short questions:

1. Was the work order completed to your satisfaction?  Yes  No
2. Please rate our response time:  Excellent   Acceptable   Poor
3. Please rate your overall satisfaction with our work, with 1 being not satisfied and 5 being fully satisfied: 1  2  3  4  5
4. Based on this experience, would you recommend our community to a friend?  Yes   No
5. Want to share your experience on our website? Your review will be published on our site and help prospective tenants decide whether or not they should live at our community. Please write a short review: 

The results of the satisfaction survey are logged in the backend, and a report is automatically generated monthly and emailed to the maintenance director, outlining our response time, average time to complete a work order, average satisfaction rates by maintenance tech, and compares each of these items to previous months of the year, so that the maintenance director can look for areas of improvement for each staff member.