PM Schedule Setup
Preventive maintenance schedules allow you to track when maintenance is due for a certain subset of equipment. Setting up your PM schedule properly is important to ensure the maintenance on your equipment is accurately tracked and that you are notified promptly when service is due.
Lets start by going to Setup in the top menu and clicking PM Schedule Templates. You'll be presented with this screen:
On the left hand side you will see the templates with their corresponding template names. On the right, you will see the maintenance tasks setup for the highlighted template.
You will want to setup one template for each group of common equipment. For example, all cars and trucks have these common preventive services at around the same time. This makes sense. All tractors or generators would each have their own template setup for them. It is not recommended to setup a separate template for each piece of equipment. This will make it very difficult to change anything later.
Creating A New Template
To create a new template, click the New button on the bottom left:
Here you'll have the option to enter a new name and choose how you want the equipment to be tracked. You can check more than one option here. This is useful if, for example, you need to do a weekly maintenance tasks on a piece of equipment (date tracking), but also have other maintenance tasks,(such as an oil change) that are tracked by how many miles have been driven (meter/mileage tracked).
Please note than any equipment assigned to this new schedule will inherit its meter based on what you choose here.
Track By Date - Check this is you have maintenance that needs to be done once a week, once a month, or another date-only interval.
Track By Meter - Use this option if you want maintenance tasks tracked by a specific meter. Mileage, Kilometer and Hours are the drop down options.
Track By Meter Secondary - Usually not required unless you wish to track something by both hours and mileage/kilometers.
Track By Fuel Usage - This option tracks by how much fuel has been used. Not commonly used.
Click Save when complete.
Adding Tasks To A PM Schedule Template
Once you click Save you'll see the new schedule on the left hand side. Highlight it, make sure you are in the Preventive Maintenance Services tab at the top, and click on the New button on the bottom. Note that it's the second New button, which belongs to the right hand side of the screen:
The Add PM Service window appears:
We'll go through a few of the options here.
PM Service - This is the name of the service to be performed. Examples: Oil Change, Filter Change, Tire Rotation, Fluid Check, etc.
Type - This is the category the service belongs to. Optional, but it does help you to organize things a bit.
Priority - In most circumstances this can remain at NORMAL.
Enabled - This means the task is 'turned on'. If it is set to disabled then notifications about this particular task are turned off
Master - If you have more than one task setup in the schedule, you can put tasks 'underneath' another task. It will inherit tracking from the master task. This is rarely used.
Frequency Tab
Any tracking options selected on initial template creation will be available to use here. You can check as little or as many options as you need. For example, if this new task was going to be tracked by mileage only, I would uncheck "Date".
Use Due Every to set your tracking interval. Use Due at if you have a specific meter number or date in mind (this is rarely used). Notify is used for advanced notifications. If my Oil Change is due every 4000 miles but I want to know about it 1000 miles before so it shows up on my equipment list as something that is due soon, I would put 1000 in the Notify box.
Advanced Tab
Here you will have additional options for labor time, e-mail notification (defaulted to 'on), linking, PM service termination and seasonal tracking. Modifications here are usually not made unless you have a very specific circumstance, such as seasonal work.
Equipment Tab
This is a list of all equipment currently assigned to this template. You usually do not need to access this tab, as you can edit equipment from your equipment list to assign templates. However, this is an easy way to see which equipment is assigned to this task right now. This is also a way to remove this specific task from certain equipment, if you so choose.
Assigning Templates To Equipment
From your equipment list, right click on any equipment and go to Edit. On the Edit screen, click Select and choose a template from the list:
Notice that the meters will update based on which template is chosen. Since my Cars & Trucks template is tracked by miles, Mileage is automatically added to my meter configuration:
How do I make changes to an existing template?
You can change templates by going to Setup | PM Schedule Templates. However, be aware that any changes made here will affect all vehicles that have that template selected. So, if all of my Cars are assigned to my Car template, and I delete Oil Changes from that template, the program will no longer remind me about Oil Changes being a maintenance that's due.
How do I tell the system the maintenance has already been completed on equipment? I want to accurately track it based on maintenance I've done in the past.
Right click on equipment from your equipment list and choose Last PM. On this screen, you can tell the software the last time maintenance was performed, so that it gets tracked appropriately. Enter the values and close the window to save.
How do I import tasks from an existing PM Template to my new template, to help save time setting it up?
Make sure you have your new template selected on the left, ready to enter new tasks in. Click on the Import button on the bottom. You'll get this screen:
At the top, choose a template to copy tasks from. Check any tasks you want to copy and press OK. All of the items you checked should now appear as a task in your current PM template.