Work Orders Tracking

Hi all. New member here. I have been asked by the Board to create a database to track work orders for the HOA. We are a small HOA - 66 units.

Although retired for 10+ years, I do have previous experience with dBase and MS-Access databases. But, it's not like riding a bicycle - I have forgotten quite a bit over the years. Please help.

How does your HOA track/manage work orders? Is there a freeware program available, or have you created your own? I would prefer to use LibreOffice Base as this is open-source and can easily be used by subsequent boards without the expense of buying MS-Access.

Thanks for your help.

Dennis

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Hi, Dennis. Welcome to the forum. My HOA uses paper maintenance request forms; they're white with yellow "carbon copy" second pages.

I wanted to implement something more modern that would allow us to track the requests and in general provide for more accountability than the current process. I played around with a few designs. I ultimately decided I didn't want to be the IT guy volunteering multiple hours a week to keep it running and maintained. The big reveal for me was about 6 months ago when I set up our clubhouse Windows computer so that one of our board members could attend meetings via Skype. It was easy to set up and it works fine. Every board meeting, they wait for me to show up, turn it on, start Skype and place the call to "Joe" in New Jersey. If I didn't do that, they wouldn't use it. They don't know and, more importantly, they don't want to know how to use it.

If you do anything, please consider a demo system first that shows what it would look like and how it would be used. Your board now might want something like you've described today. Next year's board might feel differently.

I'd consider adapting an existing "issue tracking" system, many of which are open source and don't cost anything to use. Check out this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue-tracking_systems

A lot of those may be overkill. Note that none of them use MS Access or dBase

My preference would be Trac. It has 14 years of development behind it. Of course, all that depends on how much time you're willing to spend designing, implementing, and documenting the system. It can be simple enough that people wouldn't need a whole lot of training to use it. The main concerns would be maintaining it and keeping it running in those inevitable crises where a storage drive (disk or SSD) goes bad and the database needs to be restored from a backup. And oh yes, setting up a procedure by which the database is backed up on a regular basis haha.)

Good luck to you.

Thanks for all the replies.

I guess I should have been more in depth in my original post but I didn't want to ramble on. We are a small, self-managed HOA. We currently use QuickBooks for HOA accounting and can easily get reports for maintenance expenses. We've tried 2 different management companies in the past and their service was horrible. Additionally, we are a residential community - not a condominium community - more like a PUD community - but not officially a PUD. So some maintenance items are the HOA's responsibility, and some are not. It's really confusing to most.

Over the last 20 years we have gone from having someone processing maintenance requests by keeping up with them in their head, to having them keeping a handwritten log and providing the board with a copy of that log at each board meeting, to using a three-part work order form, to now a spreadsheet that i set-up for the designated person to record and track work orders. In previous years there were always a handful of residents that complained about submitting a request (sometimes several times) and never receiving a response. Same stuff I'm sure other HOA's have encountered.

I have searched the web extensively over the past several weeks for a free or inexpensive program to manage work orders and I have not found any that are simple enough for most anyone to use. The free ones are not quite what we need and the payware ones are too expensive and too complicated. I will look more into "issues tracking" software.

I agree that LibreOffice Base is a lame excuse for a database program. I just wanted to keep it simple and inexpensive for future boards to use. Using a simple switchboard menu for the user to add and print work orders, update work orders, and easily provide status reports to the board. Additionally the table should provide a unique/sequential work order number to prevent subsequent users form making up their own WO numbers.

I don't want to overthink the issue. I just want to make it simple..

Thanks again for all your help.

Dennis