#Maintenance (MRO)

MRO — maintenance, repair and operations — is where you keep the machines running and know what it costs. Two things live here: the equipment you maintain, and the spare parts you consume doing it. Withdrawing a part from stock against a piece of equipment is what turns a shelf item into a maintenance cost.

#The equipment register

Every machine, vehicle, building system or tool worth tracking is an equipment record: name, type (production, vehicle, building, tool, other), manufacturer, model, serial number, location, purchase and commissioning dates, notes. Equipment can nest — a compressor as child of a plant — with Add child equipment, and can link to a fixed asset so its book value and its maintenance history are one story.

Open an equipment record for its withdrawals — every part ever consumed on it, with date, quantity and cost — the practical answer to "what has this machine cost us?"

#Spare parts

A spare part is a product flagged spare part, stocked like any other and valued the same way. Spare Parts is that slice of the catalogue: on hand (from the shelves — the same figures as Inventory → On hand), value, and below reorder so you can restock before a breakdown does it for you. Buy them through purchase orders and receipts like anything else.

#Withdrawals

A withdrawal takes parts out of stock for maintenance. Withdrawals → New: the equipment it's for (optional but the whole point), a reason, and lines — the part and the quantity. The cost isn't typed: the line shows the part's stock cost, and the value is an estimate until posting. Save as Draft; Post when the parts are actually taken.

Posting moves the parts out of inventory at the stock's own cost — the average, FIFO's oldest layers, or the standard, the same way a delivery takes stock — and charges exactly that to the company's maintenance expense account, out of the part's MRO inventory account — so the P&L shows maintenance as a cost of the period, and the equipment shows what was spent on it. Cancel on a posted withdrawal reverses both and puts the parts back at exactly the cost they left at, each under the lot or serial number it left with. The reversal is dated today (the first open day, should today be locked), so a withdrawal from a month that is now locked can be cancelled too; the locked month isn't touched. A part the valuation holds at no value still leaves the shelf, with nothing to post.

A withdrawal can't take more than the shelf holds — posting is refused with what is there — and a part with serial numbers is taken in whole pieces. Posting needs the Withdrawals — create right and cancelling needs Withdrawals — edit; a withdrawal can be cancelled once.

#The dashboard

Equipment by status, what's under maintenance right now, spend this period, spare-parts value and what's below reorder.

#Common questions

A contractor did the work — no parts from stock. That's a vendor bill to the maintenance expense account, not a withdrawal; note the equipment in the bill's reference.

Can I schedule preventive maintenance? Use tasks and reminders in Projects or the Calendar for now; the equipment's withdrawal history tells you the intervals that have been true.

Parts came back unused. Cancel the withdrawal if it's whole; otherwise a stock adjustment back in, with the reason.

#If something goes wrong

• Post is refused → not enough on hand for a line, or the part isn't flagged as stockable.
• The cost went to the wrong account → the value leaves the part's own MRO inventory account (or the company's MRO inventory) and is charged to the company's maintenance expense account; check the product's Accounting tab and the company's default accounts.
• Equipment doesn't appear in the picker → it's decommissioned.