External contractors: the outside vendor, inside your maintenance

The problem, as it actually happens

A work order goes on hold because a part is missing or the manufacturer's technician has to come. Someone picks up the phone, sends a few photos from a personal phone and describes from memory which machine it is and where. Two weeks later nobody knows whether it was actually sent, to whom, or what they were told. And when the quote arrives, there is no way to tell which work order it belongs to.

How it works

1. Register the vendor once, in Settings, with its contact emails: as many as you need, because in a larger shop the office and the service manager are not the same person.
2. In the work order, tab "External" → "Send to a contractor", pick it from the list and write any instructions.
3. All of its contacts receive an email with the job as a PDF, with a clear reference for the quote and the delivery note.
4. The work order is tagged with its contractor, and the dispatch is logged with its date, time and recipients.

The contractor does not enter your application

This is the design decision that holds everything else up. The obvious move would be to give them a user account, and it would be a mistake: in any CMMS a technician sees the company's inventory, so the contractor coming for one repair would walk away with the full list of your machines. It would also take up a seat and require managing a password they will never use. Here they receive a PDF and nothing else.

What the job sheet contains

A one-page PDF with what is needed to do the work: the asset with its brand, model and serial number; where it is, with the site address; what is wrong; the priority and whether the machine is down; the target date; up to four photos of the fault; and who to reply to. With its reference (WO-0003) to quote on the estimate and the delivery note.

And what it deliberately does not contain: the name of the technician assigned to it, who reported the problem, the time logged, or the cost. That sheet leaves your company for a third party and gets filed on their computer; it carries what is needed and nothing more.

And it is on record

Under the button sits the history: to whom, which day, at what time, who sent it, to which addresses and with what instructions. The work order list can be filtered by contractor, which is how you answer the question that used to have no answer: how much work is going outside, and who is doing it.

Contractors do not count as users: you can register as many as you want on any plan, including Free.

Screenshots show the current interface, which is in Spanish. An English interface is on the roadmap; read where it stands.