Work orders, vendors and bill approvals

A work order is the file for one repair: what is wrong, where, who fixes it, when they may enter, what it costs and who pays. It moves through six steps, shown as a stepper across the top of its page. Each step is stamped with the person and the time.

The work order never posts to the ledger itself. Its lines (parts and labor) become the vendor's bill, an ordinary bill paid the usual way (Chapter 3.3), and, if the tenant caused the damage, a chargeback invoice on the lease.

Maintenance → Work orders → New work order. Fill the form top to bottom; the property narrows the unit list, and the unit narrows the leases.

1. 1

   Describe the work

   A title a stranger would understand, the property, unit and lease, who reported it, the priority and the trade. A no-heat call in November is High. Put what the tenant said, word for word, in the notes.

1. 2

   Schedule it, record the permission to enter, and enter the lines

   Riley agreed to let the technician in between 3 and 5 pm, so choose Granted. The lines are the vendor's quote: labor $145.00 and parts $68.50, total $213.50. "The bill and the chargeback take their amounts from here." Click Open work order.

The work order opened as WO-0001, but the banner carried a second sentence, the one the form had already shown under the vendor.¹

High Desert HVAC had worked on the store for years, but nobody had ever recorded its insurance in the books. If a technician is hurt in a tenant's apartment, or burns it down, the first question is whose insurance pays. A work order warns about a vendor with no current insurance; with Require current vendor insurance on work orders switched on (Chapter 13.1), it refuses the vendor instead.

1. 1

   Open the vendor: Maintenance → Vendors, then the vendor's name

   The vendor page has a Compliance card: insurance carrier, policy number, coverage, expiry dates for insurance and workers' compensation, and the license. Copy them from the certificate the vendor e-mails you, tick I checked these against the vendor's certificate and Save compliance. The page answers "Compliance saved. Insured to 06/30/2027.", the chips beside the vendor's name turn green, and the note under the box changes from Not verified yet to Verified on and the date.

1. 2

   File the certificate itself: Add the certificate

   The Compliance card records the facts; the Certificate of insurance card below it keeps the PDF with the vendor's files. Choose the file the vendor sent and click Add the certificate. The page answers "coi-high-desert-hvac.pdf was added as the certificate of insurance." The button now reads Replace the certificate: when next year's certificate arrives, add it the same way, and the newest file is the one on file.²

1. 3

   Link the vendor to the property

   On the property's Vendors tab (Properties and people → Properties, the property, Vendors), Link a vendor: High Desert HVAC, trade HVAC, Preferred. From now on an HVAC work order on the Galveston Building offers it first, marked (preferred). The tab carries the same compliance chips as the vendor page and a link to the certificate, so whoever calls the vendor sees at a glance that the paperwork is current.

1. 1

   Schedule, then Start, then Done

   Each click moves the stepper one place: "WO-0001 is scheduled.", "WO-0001 is in progress." Done asks for the completion date, in a Completed on box beside the button, which may not be after today. The technician replaced the thermostat and the high-limit switch and had heat back by 4:40 pm. The page answers "WO-0001 is done. Match the vendor's bill next."

2. 2

   Create the vendor's bill from the work order

   The Bill card offers two ways. Match, one button per open bill of the vendor, attaches a bill already entered; Create the bill makes a new one from the lines. While the vendor has open bills, Create the bill is a folded heading under the list: click it to open its form (it opens by itself when the vendor has none). The form asks for the bill date (11/01/2026), the due date (12/01/2026), the account and a memo. The account defaults to "The property's repairs account (Expenses:Galveston Building:Repairs)".

The cost lands on the building, not on the store: that is the point of the property's own expense accounts (Chapter 13.1).

Most repairs are the landlord's cost: things wear out. Some are not. When the tenant, their guests or their pets cause the damage, the lease usually lets the landlord recover the cost.³ The work order handles both halves: the vendor's bill (what the building pays) and the chargeback (what the tenant pays back), from the same lines.

On November 5 Riley Chen reported a water stain on the bedroom closet ceiling of 2A. Cascade Roofing & Gutter, a roofer Summit had just linked to the building as its preferred Roofing vendor, found the cause. (Its chip reads Insurance ends 11/30/2026, so it already shows under Expiring on the Vendors list, and it has no certificate on file yet: the agent has promised the renewal certificate before November 30.) The cause: a satellite dish mount bolted through the roof above 2A, which the lease forbids without written consent. The crew removed the mount and patched the roof that afternoon.

1. 1

   Open the work order on the tenant's lease, and work it to Done

   As in Procedure A: unit 2A, Riley's lease, requested by Riley, priority High, trade Roofing, vendor Cascade Roofing & Gutter, permission to enter Granted. Write the cause in the notes in plain words, because the tenant may ask why they are paying. Lines: labor Remove dish mount, seal and patch the roof $180.00 and parts Membrane patch, sealant and flashing $95.00, total $275.00. The order opened as WO-0004; Schedule, Start and Done (completed 11/05/2026) followed.

2. 2

   Create the vendor's bill

   The Bill card said "Cascade Roofing & Gutter has no open bill. Create it below." Create the bill, dated 11/05/2026, due 12/05/2026, on the property's repairs account: "Bill of $275.00 is created for Cascade Roofing & Gutter."

3. 3

   Choose Tenant under Who pays, then Save changes

   The choice is saved with the work order ("Saved with Save changes above.").⁴ Once saved, the Chargeback card opens a small invoice form. It names the lease the invoice goes to: Riley's is the only one running on the completion day, so the card simply says Charged to lease 2A / Riley Chen (active).⁵ Then come the invoice date (today or earlier), a memo (Repair: WO-0004 Roof leak into the Unit 2A bedroom closet), and every line of the work order, each with a tick box and a Markup % left at 0, and the invoice total, $275.00. Untick a line the tenant should not pay for; type a percent only if the lease provides for an administrative charge. Summit charges the cost only. Post the chargeback stands at the foot of the form; until the work is done it is greyed, with the note "The tenant is charged once the work is done."

4. 4

   Post the chargeback, then Close

   The page answers "Invoice 1249 of $275.00 is posted to the lease. It is on the lease ledger and changes only from there." The Chargeback card now shows Invoice 1249, the chip Locked to this work order, the amount, and an Open in lease button in its head. Close finishes the order: "WO-0004 is closed. Its Today row is done."

Two entries came out of one work order. Follow the money:

The building's repairs account still shows the full $275.00, and its Tenant Reimbursements account shows $275.00 recovered, so the net cost to the building is $275.00 − $275.00 = $0.00 once Riley pays. Keeping the two gross, rather than netting the bill, is deliberate: the repairs line tells you what the building really costs to keep up, and the reimbursements line tells you how much of that tenants caused. On Riley's lease ledger the invoice reads Chargeback, with a link back to WO-0004, and the balance due is $275.00.

The person who orders a repair, enters the bill and pays it should not be the same person every time; that is the oldest control in bookkeeping. A bill approval rule puts a second person between entering a bill and paying it: a bill at or above the rule's limit is marked waiting for approval, and no payment can be saved against it until someone else approves it. The rule never changes the ledger; it is a flag on the bill.

Rules come in two sizes, and the most specific one wins:

Summit runs its own building (own-portfolio mode), so no bill waits until a rule exists: "A rule is the switch." The owner wants every Galveston Building bill of $1,000.00 or more checked, and nothing else held up, so the rule is for the building alone.

1. 1

   Settings → Property Management → Fees and bills → Approvals → Add a rule

   Choose For: One property; Needs approval at: 1000.00 ("A bill at or above this total waits. 0 makes every bill wait."); Who approves: Lease ledgers (edit), which means anyone holding the edit right on lease ledgers, "except the person who entered the bill." Leave the owner markup empty; it matters only for managed properties.⁶ Keep Enabled ticked and click Add the rule, at the right of the form's foot beside Cancel.

The form refused the rule because a property rule needs its property. The opposite slip would have been worse and silent: leaving For on its default, These books, would have held every bill of $1,000.00 or more in the company, the store's inventory bills included. Read the For field twice.

1. 2

   Choose the property and add the rule again

   Property: Galveston Building, then Add the rule: "Rule added. Bills entered or changed from now on are checked against it." Bills already entered are not touched until someone changes them.

1. 3

   Enter the large bill as usual

   The roofer's second job became WO-0005, Replace worn shingles over the rear stair, on the whole building (no unit, no lease, nobody to charge back): labor $720.00 and materials $480.00, total $720.00 + $480.00 = $1,200.00. The crew finished it the same afternoon, and Create the bill made the bill: "Bill of $1,200.00 is created for Cascade Roofing & Gutter." Its lines use Expenses:Galveston Building:Repairs, so the bill belongs to the building, and $1,200.00 is at or above $1,000.00: it waits. (WO-0004's $275.00 bill is under the limit and was payable at once.)

   The work order's Bill card says so: its State reads Waiting for approval, "$1,200.00 to pay once it is approved (Approvals)", and the word Approvals links to the queue of step 5.

2. 4

   Try to pay it, and see the refusal

   Open the bill (Open bill on the work order). A yellow banner names the rule and says the bill cannot be paid yet. Both Pay this bill buttons are greyed: the one in the header and the one in the This bill side card, which adds "Waiting for approval: it can be paid once it is approved." A payment tried another way is refused with "This bill is waiting for approval: it cannot be paid yet.", and the message stays on the page until you close it. Combined Bill Payments leaves the bill out, the Expenses list will not pay it from its row, and the books refuse a payment however it is attempted.

1. 5

   The approver works the queue: Money → Approvals

   The page lists "Bills waiting for a second person, and the decisions made" in three tabs, Pending, Approved and Rejected, with filters for property, vendor and bill date. Each row shows the rule that caught the bill and who entered it, and ends in Approve and a ··· menu with Open bill (and, for an approver who did not enter the bill, Reject…). The approver opens the bill, checks it against the work order and the roofer's invoice, and clicks Approve, which opens a box for an optional note, or picks Reject… from the ··· menu and gives a reason, which the person who entered it sees on the bill. Ticking several rows brings up Approve selected… and Reject selected… to decide them at once.

Alex entered the bill, so Alex cannot approve it, however many rights Alex holds: nobody who entered the bill or changed it while it waits may decide it; the server checks this again when a decision is posted. In Summit the bill stays in Pending until a second member with edit on lease ledgers approves it. Once approved, the bill pays like any other (Chapter 3.3); if anyone later changes its total or lines, it goes back to waiting.

The drive-by inspection that found the sagging gutter (and opened WO-0002), the periodic inspection of 2B, and the notice of entry the tenant must get first are now covered in Chapter 13.9, together with meters and unit equipment. A poor item on an inspection opens a work order exactly like the ones in this chapter.

• [x] Every vendor on a work order has current insurance on its Compliance card.
• [x] Permission to enter is recorded before a vendor goes into an occupied unit.
• [x] Work order lines match the vendor's quote; the bill is created from them or the right bill is matched.
• [x] Each vendor's current certificate of insurance is filed on its vendor page; nothing shows under Expired, and every vendor under Expiring has its renewal certificate on the way.
• [x] Chargeback chosen only when the tenant caused the damage, with the cause written in the work order's notes.
• [x] The approval rule's scope is the one you meant (one property, or the whole books) and its limit is set where a mistake would hurt.
• [x] The Approvals page's Pending tab is empty before each payment run, or every bill on it has an approver lined up.