Every service business already has a work order process, whether or not anybody wrote it down. Somebody takes the request, somebody decides who goes, somebody attends, somebody records what happened, somebody bills it, and somebody closes it. The value of writing it down is not bureaucracy: it is that each step gets an owner, and the steps nobody owns are the ones that fail.
Raise, assign, attend
Raising captures the request in the customer own words, which matters later when what was asked for and what was found turn out to differ. Assigning names a person, not a team. Attending records arrival, because arrival time is the input to every other measure and the one nobody can reconstruct honestly a fortnight afterwards.
Record, bill, close
Recording is what was found and what was done, written at the address. Billing follows the record rather than the memory. Closing means somebody has confirmed the work is finished rather than merely that the visit ended, and that distinction is what makes a return visit a separate work order rather than a mystery.
The two steps that are usually skipped
Arrival time and closure. Both feel like admin and both are the ones that make the history worth having. Without arrival you cannot say what a job really takes; without closure you cannot tell a finished job from an abandoned one, and the open list becomes something nobody trusts enough to read.
Write the procedure down once
Six steps, one owner each, one page. The point of writing it is that a new dispatcher or a new technician can be told what happens rather than absorbing it over a year. Records supporting income and expenses have to be kept anyway; a process makes the keeping automatic rather than an act of individual conscientiousness.
Questions people ask about work order process
Who should close work orders?
The person who can confirm the work is finished, which is usually the technician. Office closure without confirmation turns the open list into fiction.
Does every visit need its own work order?
Yes. One document per visit keeps the history readable and makes a return visit visible as a return visit rather than an edit.
How much detail is enough?
Enough that somebody who was not there can say what was found and what was done. That is the bar, and it is lower than most forms demand and higher than most notes achieve.