A work order template is a solved problem and a trap. Solved, because the fields have not changed in fifty years and a blank printable form does the job on a site with no software at all. A trap, because most templates you can download are built for invoicing a customer rather than for maintaining your own equipment, and they carry a price column and a customer address while leaving out the two fields that make the record worth keeping. This page sets out what a maintenance work order template needs, what to delete from the ones you find, and how to use paper without losing the history.
Delete the customer, keep the asset
A contractor's work order template is aimed at billing somebody. Yours is aimed at a machine. The customer block, the rate column and the total are dead weight on an internal form, and the asset identifier, which those templates rarely have, is the field everything else hangs off. If the form has no unambiguous asset field, the record it makes cannot be looked up later.
Keep the found field, however small the form
The commonest omission on a printable work order form is anywhere to write what was actually found. A tick against 'completed' is not maintenance knowledge. Even a two-line box changes what the form is for, and it is the box that lets somebody argue for lengthening or shortening an interval a year from now.
Record time in hours, not in shifts
'Morning' is not a duration. Start and finish, or hours, and it matters because the schedule is priced in hours: on the worked example this site publishes, 180 assets at four tasks a year at 1.1 hours is 66 technician hours a month, $3,168 at a $48 loaded rate. None of that arithmetic exists if the form collects half-days.
Paper is fine, filing is the problem
A blank work order form on a clipboard is a perfectly good record until somebody needs the history for one pump across two years, at which point paper costs more than any subscription. The honest test is not whether paper works today but whether anybody has ever successfully answered a question from the file.
Questions people ask about work order template
Is there a standard work order format?
No, and any template claiming to be the standard is somebody's house style. What is consistent across good ones is the field list: asset, date, person, job, found, hours.
Should the template include priority?
Yes, with defined levels rather than a free-text box, because priority set in words drifts. Three or four levels with a written meaning each is enough, and more than five is a matrix nobody will apply consistently.
Can we start on paper and move later?
Often the best order. Get the register finished and the form habit established on paper, then move; a team that cannot fill in a paper form reliably will not be fixed by software.