Software for work orders is bought by a small shop for one reason: the sheet, the price and the status are in three places and the invoice is typed from memory. The software has to put them on one record: the order raised against the customer, priced from the business's own hours, rate, parts and markup, moved through its statuses with a date on every change, and exported with its lines intact when the bill is raised. That is four jobs, and the products that do them well are not always the ones with the longest feature list. This guide is the four, and where the free worksheets on this site sit among them.
Raise and price: the order and its figures on one sheet
The order should exist against the customer from the moment it is raised, with a number and a date, and its price should be worked from lines rather than typed as a total. Labour hours at the rate, parts at cost with the markup, a trip charge and the tax on the parts line: the work order template on this site takes those and returns the labour, the marked-up parts, the tax, the total and the balance after any deposit, free and with no account, printed as it stands.
Track: a status and a dated history
Raised, in progress, done, invoiced and paid, closed. Software for work orders has to carry a status on every order and date every change against the person who made it, so the orders that are done and not invoiced are one glance away and the argument about who added the extra parts is settled by the record. In Jobcardo Pro that is what the paid plan is: the record with the status and the history, a login for each technician, one flat price for the team.
Export: the same figures to the invoice
The last job is the one most often left out: the order's lines and total leaving the software without being re-typed. Jobcardo exports customers, orders and documents whenever you ask, and for 90 days after you cancel, which is how the figures reach the invoice and the books. It does not raise the invoice itself, because estimating, invoicing and payments are each their own product and a shop that needs all of them should buy a suite and pay per seat for it.
Questions people ask about software for work orders
Is software for work orders the same as a CMMS?
No. A CMMS runs maintenance work orders over an asset register with preventive schedules and meter readings. Software for work orders in the small-shop sense is the job card itself, priced and tracked. This estate serves CMMS from its maintenance hub.
How much does work order software cost?
Suites price per user per month, tiered by module; MaintainX's tiers are cited on the pricing page with their retrieval date. Jobcardo Pro is $25 a month for the whole team, and the worksheets are free with no account.
Can I use the free worksheets without buying anything?
Yes, as often as you like, with no account, no card and no cap. The paid plan is only for keeping the orders as records with a status and a history.