Work order types and statuses field definitions
Work order types
Every work order belongs to exactly one type. The type drives which step types are available, which permissions are checked, and how the WO appears in lists and reports.
| Type | Used for |
|---|---|
| PRODUCTION | Manufacturing a product to stock - typically built from an assembly task and a BOM. |
| REPAIR | Fixing a specific customer-owned item. Tracks serial numbers, repair tasks and shipments. |
| INTERNAL | Maintenance on the company's own machines or fleet - internal cost. |
| PROJECT | A long-running, multi-phase job that does not fit Production or Repair (custom builds, installations). |
| LEAVE | Auto-generated workflow for leave, overtime and custom-schedule requests. Created by the leave module - not made by hand. |
Work order statuses
A work order moves through these states. Most users see a coloured chip on the WO card showing the current status.
| Status | Meaning | Can edit steps? | Can complete steps? |
|---|---|---|---|
| DRAFT | Planning - you are still building the routing. Not yet active. | Yes | No |
| TEMPLATE | Reusable blueprint. Saved routing that spawns new WOs but is never executed itself. | Yes | No |
| RELEASED | Approved with stock soft-allocated. A transient state - the system flips it to IN_PROGRESS as soon as the first step activates. | No | - |
| IN_PROGRESS | Active on the floor. Steps are running; partial completions are allowed. | Add only at a higher priority than the active group | Yes |
| COMPLETED | All steps physically done (100%). | No | No |
| CLOSED | Financials finalised and synced to Unleashed. End of life. | No | No |
| CANCELLED | Aborted. Reachable from DRAFT, TEMPLATE or IN_PROGRESS. All non-finished steps become CANCELLED with it. | No | No |
Transitions: DRAFT -> IN_PROGRESS -> COMPLETED -> CLOSED. DRAFT can also become a TEMPLATE (blueprint, not executable), and CANCELLED is reachable from DRAFT, TEMPLATE and IN_PROGRESS. You will rarely see RELEASED on screen - it is the half-step between DRAFT and IN_PROGRESS while the engine activates the first batch of steps.
Priority
A secondary axis. It does not change what the WO does or the order its steps run in - only how urgently it is shown in lists and notifications.
| Priority | Used for |
|---|---|
| Low | Best-effort - pick up when nothing more urgent is open. |
| Normal | Default - standard turnaround. (Shows no badge.) |
| High | Promote ahead of Normal in the queue. |
| Show-stopper | Highest visual priority - used sparingly, typically with a customer SLA at stake. Draws a red border on the card and row. |
Priority shows on the WO card and on the dashboard; the routing engine does not read it. The order steps run in is governed by each step's own priority slot, not by the WO's priority. The effective priority of a child work order is inherited from its root parent, so a whole hierarchy sorts together.
Tips
- You can only delete DRAFT and TEMPLATE WOs. Anything else must be CANCELLED - that preserves the audit trail.
- A TEMPLATE never has an IN_PROGRESS life of its own - it spawns DRAFT WOs, either manually (New Work Order > From Template) or automatically (the Schedules tab). See Work Order templates and schedules.
- CLOSED is a one-way street - the system's mark that a WO is fully reconciled with Unleashed. Do not confuse it with COMPLETED, which just means physically done.
- Cancelling an IN_PROGRESS WO is a heavy action: it runs cleanup on every non-finished step, which can roll back leave deductions and refund inventory reservations. Always read the cancel-confirm dialog.